step into my office

All back to normal. Except for the streets which are strangely dead in the residential areas (allowing me to photographically squat, crouch, lean, peer and lurk comfortably without people wandering past giving me LOOKs) and Saturday-busy in town except for in Next where it is Hell-On-Legs-busy. If you had to go to Kinnaird, Straiton or the Gyle today you have my sympathy.

Today's first picture was taken twelve hours to the second after last night's last picture. OooOOowooOOO etc. Went past all the nice interesting old walls in the Grange and saw Mr Moss, Mrs Leaves, Captain Flake-Mortar and Frooldrang the Invaltrinator all enjoying the utterly featureless grey sky. My usual work-lunchtime walk (wasn't at work today but just happened to go the same way) has now shifted away from the Water of Leith to take in five camera shops but today I diverted to test out my new ND filter on the canal-water and then bumped into Herbert on the way to Morrison Street. He looked a little the worse for wear with terrible lines around his eyes although I didn't say anything as he can get a bit shouty at times. Continued to shops; I have resolved to buy nothing I don't need for a while although I did check Fat Face for shorts of which they had none. Saw some amusing potential car-rage parking-kerfuffle in Castle and Frederick Streets and got a more standard long-exposure shots of the spinnythings for the novelty value of getting 25 second exposures in sort-of-daylight with ND and polariser in place. Must head back down to the beach for some smoky water stuff now that I'm not tied to the 30-minute predawn window.

Results of walk apart from pictures: weak, swithering mind has stepped back a touch from the D80 in favour of the 400D based on a couple of review-gripes about the image sharpness, one of my current major moans. Always hard to tell with public-reviewers as you never know whether they've checked it properly or if they're just shooting handheld at ISO 1600 at the long end of the kit lens. Damn this insufferable choice we are exposed to.