Lunch break on the long ascent to the lakes © Glyn Davies
(from one RAW file processed through ACR)
On Sunday, and in spontaneous escapist agreement, both Carol and I decide that we fancied a proper bike ride. We checked out and chose a route from the web, which would take us on a 6 mile hill climb high across the sides of the imposing mountain of Cadair Idris, followed by a fast, rubber-burning, rim-eroding descent down to the Barmouth Estuary in the valley below. We haven't been on out bikes for ages so this 22 mile hilly spin would be just enough I thought.
More importantly, I was not going to carry my Canon 1DSMk3 and extra lenses with me, so I decided to use this as a real world trial for the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3, kindly loaned to me by a professional colleague. It is small, lightweight, has an eminently respected Leica lens, shoots RAW and has a rapid lens bevel which switches image format between 4:3, 3:2 and 16:9 pano. It fitted my jacket pocket perfectly without weighing me down or getting in the way. I have to admit that I'd played with the camera just twice before, didn't RTFM so as with most photographers I know, decided to suck and it see, learn as we go!
The first river crossing into Dolgellau town © Glyn Davies
(from one jpeg file processed through ACR)
We arrived at the RSPB car park, offloaded the bikes, geared up and set off along the Mawddach-Barmouth Trail (also a cycle route). Dog walkers as usual, allowed their lead-less dogs to chase all over the place, pretended they could control their mutts when bikes approached, only to fail miserably, scolding the animals for not understanding English or Welsh as they forced cyclists to jam on brakes, fall over handlebars, or simply stunt jump the spines of the ducking canines. Fortunately, we soon left the dangerous lane on untrained owners, urm dogs, and ended up in Dolgellau simply dodging cars and motorbikes, much safer. After sourcing some athlete's sustenance from the local Co-Op, in my case a banana, Lucozade Sports Drink, a Scotch Egg and a six pack of Caramel Wafer biscuits, we did a lovely circular tour of Dolgellau. This was not intentional I should say, but we really couldn't find the hill road out of the town, and the one-way system sort of swings you back round the town centre like a tennis ball in a dog walkers sling shot.
We finally located the exit route on our second trip around the town, and started up a really long and relatively unforgiving ascent, thankfully almost devoid of any sort of traffic and we rapidly reached open hillside, old farmhouses, stone walls and fields full of ewes and their lambs. Not sure why this year, but I have noticed far more ravens around, and here again two circled overhead calling to each other. Surprisingly, the tarmac was brand new, black and smooth and the wheels were almost silent as they rolled upwards. We removed several layers of clothing during our exertions and finally arrived at a small but welcoming and comfy hotel, the Gwesty Gwernan, in the middle of nowhere, with it's own 12 acre fishing lake right next to it. It was a good enough excuse to stop, catch our breath and have a pannad (cuppa). We sat outside in the sunshine and that tea tasted SO good, especially with the well deserved sugar :-) Carol as usual, had black coffee, no sugar, Spartan survivalist almost! I requested my order in Welsh, which made me feel good about all the Welsh lessons I'm doing, and the young woman behind the counter only just realised I was a Welsh learner, just when I spoke that is :-)
Well deserved tea © Glyn Davies
(from one jpeg file processed through ACR)
There now followed a long undulating road across the hillside before another long slow ascent up to the lakes of Llynau Cregennen. The full massif of Cadair Idris was just to our left, along with warm soft grass and stunning views. We stopped to eat lunch, chat and generally revel in the fact we were in such beautiful mountain surroundings, on our bikes, hardly a soul around, almost zero traffic, plane-less skies and just the occasional Wheatear and our first Swallow of the year. The silence was reverential. I used this opportunity to take some B&W Panoramic shots on the Lumix but really really struggled to make sense of the menus.
The final slog to the lakes © Glyn Davies
(from one RAW file processed through ACR)
What I really wanted was a nice simple Manual Program with easy lens/shutter adjustments but no matter what menu option I dialled in it just refused to do what I wanted. I eventually set it to auto, selected the Dymamic B&W option and got 'something'. Compared with the Canon menus, the Panasonic's seemed non intuitive, random even unnecessary. In fact I really really disliked the menus altogether. One really nice feature of this camera is a simple lens-bevel format-selector and of course the lens itself which delivers good sharp results. I found the screen very awkward to see in the bright light and without an eye piece viewfinder, composing was incredibly difficult. There was also no obvious way to use the delete key to simply delete pictures whilst in review mode, which was very annoying. As I said, I didn't RTFM but this was the first time any camera menu from a different maker has really drawn so many dead ends and blanks for me. My familiar Canon's really do have easy to navigate and logical menu's thank goodness. I may still have to consider the Canon compacts again after this test.
Glyn, in cut-offs and shades for the 1st time in 2010!
Pic. by © Carol Mead (from one jpeg file processed through ACR)
The descent from the lakes to the sleepy hamlet of Arthog below was indeed a very grinding, brake testing, wheel lifting affair, and several road gates later we were thankful to arrive in the valley. We passed a huge, gorgeous, spire studded house, with ornate gardens and a bonfire burning. Just 100ft beyond that, perhaps 30 ft below us to our left, a man tinkered with a steam train just a few feet long, back-dropped by a real steam locomotive engine just behind him, the smell of fuel and steam infusing the valley air. We rejoined the Mawddach Trail and powered along the gravel track to the amazing Barmouth Railway Bridge and a long, wobbly, clunky, noisy old wooden plank ride to the far side of the Mawddach Estuary. The bone rattling crossing brought us to an incredibly friendly toll-booth operator, who I again spoke Welsh with, though he seemed happy to speak Wenglish with me (I can't be that bad can I ?) and then the noise, food smells, cars and comparative chaos of the busy holiday town of Barmouth. The parade was heaving with perambulating families, kids and couples, demolishing ice creams and pretending the cold North wind wasn't really there in this glorious sunshine.
A lovely woman I met on a rustic bridge into Barmouth :-)
(from one RAW file processed through ACR)
We didn't stay long in this madness. We had been so happy to be up in the hills, alone and quiet, just nature to keep us company. We happily made our way straight back to a surprised Mr Toll Booth who nevertheless smiled again and wished us well. This time the noise of the bridge planks was a pleasurable escape back to quietness. The amazing friendliness of the residents of Dolgellau was not matched by the holiday makers of Barmouth who seemed in-sensed that they should have to share their path with anyone else, who gave us grumpy looks, unreturned greetings, and kept any words sewn in their narrow lips. It was a pleasure to leave them so far behind our back wheels as a following wind blew us up the estuary, our rotations in sync, our minds focussed our destination shared. Black clouds had built up now and the valley was dark. The water no longer sparkled but an ancient land welcomed us back. Literally as we arrived back at the van, the evening sun came out from beneath the weather front, and we changed in the warmth. A fast journey was made back across the moorlands home.
Technical Footnote: Whilst I have some niggles about functionality of the camera and menu options, and whilst I have had to do a lot more work to the RAW files using Adobe Camera Raw than with my Canon's, I have nevertheless found the information 'within' those files to be generally very good, with nice sharp lens definition (hardly surprising from a Leica lens) and reasonable latitude to play with. I have had to increase the contrast though far more than normal to get acceptable results, and this worries me as it it more time consuming. If I were forced to use the compact, I'd not be unhappy as it has a good, sharp wide-angle lens , fast access to different formats, a nice small size and weight and a reasonable grip. I am sure I would learn to process the files with more finesse as time goes on and reading the manual would be a big help for sure. Conversely, I am sure there must be other compacts out there with faster to navigate menu's and an easier to use manual control.
All words and images on this post are strictly copyrighted to
© Glyn Davies 2010 unless otherwise marked.
FLICKR Photostream HERE
AMAZON sales HERE
Main WEB Site HERE
