Grape flowers, cameras, and comments

These are grape flowers. As you can see, the individual flowers are tiny. All the vines are in flower right now, but you have to look closely to notice that fact. By the way, I took this photo with the Canon SX700 HS camera.

I haven't modified or enhanced the photo in any way other than re-sizing it to 1600 x 1600 pixels, because that seems to be the biggest photo I can upload to Blogger. To see it at that size, you have to click on it, maybe twice. As you see it above, it is only 860 x 860 pixels. The Canon SX700 is capable of taking photos like this one.

So why did I buy another new camera? Well, as I said, I missed the Panasonic Lumix that I had before. Actually, this is my fourth Lumix since about 2007, and I've been happy with all of them. Look at this test photo I took with the new Lumix DMC-TZ60 (called the DMC ZS40 in North America):

And then look at this one, taken with the Canon SX700:

I did my best to take the two photos in identical conditions. Again, I have only cropped and resized them for posting in Blogger. To my eye, the Lumix photo is much sharper, expecially towards the top of the image. I'm happy with that. Here's a photo of tiny yellow flowers that I took with the Lumix TZ60 yesterday:

Click on all the photos to see them at full size, as always.

Meanwhile, this morning, I got a nice comment from a reader called NorthwestUSA. It said:

My grandmother was born in 1897 and raised at Castle Aiguevives (she was adamant that it was a castle and not a manor). Her father and grandfather were groundskeepers and her mother was the cook for the staff. She said it was an English widow that lived there and she had 2 sons and they were into horses. Wonder if it's still the same family? She had a postcard of the abbey and I was able to locate it by satellite map and see the surrounding area but the castle was hidden by trees so THANK YOU for sharing your picture of the house. That is a real treat to see. My grandmother was a WWI war bride and left France for the U.S. in 1919 and only made 2 trips back, 1928 and 1948. She died at 99 years of age.

Comments like this are one of the reasons I keep doing this blog. Besides the fact that I love taking photos, and I have to do something with them all! The post that NorthwestUSA commented on is this one, Aiguevives abbey near Montrichard, from 2006. Here's an even larger view of the château or manor house shown in my post:

Again, click on the photo to see it at full size (1475 x 1476 pixels) on your monitor. I took it on March 2, 2006, with an old Canon camera I had back then, before I got my first Panasonic digital camera (the TZ3).

Another note: it was 12 years ago today that we moved into our house at La Renaudière outside Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher in the Loire Valley region of France. Wow.