(Microsoft Media) |
I had to take a photo of it, I decided, immediately, before it could vanish behind those trees and houses, and before it could become too bright for it to have that enthralling effect. Off I dashed, only just thinking about putting the dumbbells carefully on the ground instead of simply dropping them, and into the direction of where I had last seen my mobile phone, which I hoped was equipped with a sufficiently detailed onboard camera.
Then I stood there again, at the window, with the moon appearing on the little display of my mobile and suddenly seeming so tiny that I was beginning to wonder what all the fuss was about. But I could still see it "in person" (and if it still has a personality then it would definitely have to be "he" and "him", that good old Moon, even today) through the window, just to make sure there was a good enough reason for the exhilaration. The mobile's screen couldn't bring out the dazzling scene and atmosphere.
I took a shot anyway. And when I looked at the result, the moon had become a glowing dot at the back of a tiny landscape. But maybe, once downloaded to the computer, I found myself hoping, it was going to turn out much better.
I touched the moon on the screen, pulled it into the centre and then tapped on it twice in order to make it double in size, at the expense of some of the scenery that got pushed aside and away over the edge of the screen, and what did I see? The moon was squeezed into a grid of strings making it look even sadder. I hadn't thought about the flyscreen.
I went to a fixed window, one that couldn't be opened and where a flyscreen wasn't needed, to take another shot. But the result still wasn't all too impressive, though I tried hard to imagine it on a computer screen later, where there was more space to look at the finer details; it might still leave a bit to be desired, though; it was surely going to be too blurred.
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(Microsoft Media) |
I eventually found it, pressed a button to get it to work, but nothing much happened. There were no batteries in it. I faintly remembered taking them out, a rather long time ago, so that nothing could happen to the camera in case the batteries became so old that they were likely to leak. But where on earth were they now, those batteries? At the same time, it was decidedly getting brighter outside and I imagined the impressive scenery at the back window becoming less and less remarkable, the moon disappearing behind the horizon.
Disappointment began to build when I spotted the batteries at the back of a drawer. Was it still worth the trouble? I grabbed them with some indecision, looking at them on my palm, wondering, thinking about the dumbbells; the batteries were in a see-through plastic bag. I'd almost thought of everything, yes, they could just as well leak at the back of the drawer, leaving a sticky mass that might be too hard and tough to ever completely come off again.
I hastily took them out of the bag while it was getting brighter outside. Then I began trying to open the battery compartment of the camera. It wouldn't work. I pushed a lever from left to right and then tried to push the lid open. It wouldn't open. I tried a couple of times. No improvement. It was getting brighter still outside.
A tired look, getting weary, at the lid revealed that I had to slide the lid open after pushing the lever. Slide, it said, slide, not pull. I tried. It worked. I put the batteries into the compartment. There were four tubelike sections in there and I assumed that the plus poles of the batteries had to be up where there was a little bump opposite on the lid, and the minus poles had to be covered by a flat surface.
It was too dark in the room, and why hadn't I turned on the light, for me to see the plus and minus signs in the compartment? Oh, yes, surely because of the moon. I was beginning to forget the purpose of all my busyness for all the trouble I was having just for the sake of taking a nice photo of the moon, a single nice photo; I certainly wasn't being immoderate in my expectations.
While the details of the entire situation were beginning to dawn on me, I was hoping it wasn't dawning all too much outside, because too much light inside or out would spoil the purpose of my bustle even further.
I closed the battery compartment and pressed the "on" button of the camera. Nothing was happening. My assumption had been wrong. At least I could open the compartment more quickly this time, while it was getting decidedly brighter outside.
I took the batteries out again tilting the camera upside-down. Naturally, since gravity is a natural thing, after all, three batteries fell down and ended up on the floor. Luckily I didn't drop the camera. I picked the batteries up again and put them in the compartment's sections the other way round, and this time it worked.
But the camera's objective didn't move. Why? I was convinced something was wrong because I hadn't used the camera for too long. Luckily, again, I spotted another little lever that could switch the camera's mode of operation from input to output.
The lever was currently set to output, which meant that stored images were shown on the little screen that doubled as a lid at the back of the camera. I hadn't opened that lid. I had been using the eyepiece, instead, and wasn't aware of the images on the little screen.
I needed the input mode for new photos, I thought. With the lever switched over and the lid swung open, the objective moved with a zoomy sound and telescoped out, and the moon appeared on the little screen.
It was now very close to a tree, that moon, well, virtually at least, and the background had become distinctly brighter than before, making the moon a little less discernible before the morning sky. Before the morning sky? Virtually.
(Microsoft Media) |
Later, in the afternoon, when I found some time to have a closer look at the photos, when I had finally downloaded them into my trusted computer, I found out I had taken them in the "small" setting which resulted in rather weak image quality, the picture files were barely 80 kilobytes in size; compare that to a megabyte, two or more of high-quality image files. Everything was small, and there was no point enlarging the photos since they would only have turned out coarse and gritty, without any worthy details.
It was a botched job. Whenever it was that I had used the camera last, for some reason I must have left it on "small" instead of "large" or "widescreen". I should have stuck with my morning exercises. They would have been far less frustrating.
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