Today 70 years ago...

...Finland was attacked by the Soviet Union. Many cities and civil targets were bombed the very first day, just to terrorise and demoralise the home front. The outcome was of course quite the opposite.

Vaasa: (swe: Vasa)

Helsinki: (swe: Helsingfors)

About 1000 civilians died and 2000 were wounded throughout that campaign known as the "Winter War" that lasted until March 13 1940. Finland had to give up the Karelian isthmus and other parts along the eastern border and the area around Hanko (swe: Hangö) town and peninsula inclunding big parts of the surrounding archipelago. The Soviet turned that area into a marine base.

The hostilities ended with some 23000 dead Finnish soldiers and 270000 dead Soviet soldiers.

My father was located on the coastal artillery in the easternmost parts of the Gulf of Finland in the beginning and was later transferred to the coastal artillery at Taipale in the lake Ladoga where fierce fights took place.

He escaped the Winter War without wounds but his soul was scarred...

Growing our own Christmastree

We are growing our own Christmastree in a jar and we hope it will grow into full size before the Christmas eve.

Just kidding... :)

There must be something wrong with the weather now, the sun has been shining from blue skies for two consecutive days now. But tonight we will have rain again...

I have to confess...

...that I got carried away by Ingelas new Nikon D3000 and made up my mind to get my own DSLR and refresh some of my old knowledge of the art of photography and upgrade it to include digital photography.
I started to google around and search eBay for something cheap and nice to suit my wallet. The brand was of course already set because of the Nikon D3000 and my first impression was that a D40 would be the thing to get because of the 6 Mpix sensor with big pixels, but much to my surprise I found that D40:s are still quite expensive (seems to be kind of "cult" camera nowadays...) though it is not in Nikons program of products anymore. That added to the fact that the autofocusing and measuring system in D40 is rather simple my attention was turned towards the D50 and D70 series of cameras, sporting the same 6 Mpix sensor but a better and more versatile metering system and as a big advantage, the possibility to use the older fullformat Nikon AF-lenses without motor. You can only use AF-S lenses with own built-in motors with the D40, D60, D3000 and D5000.
Taking into the comparition that the D50 is just a "crippled" and cheaper version of D70 that was concocted to fill in at the consumer starter level some years ago before the D40, my opinion was clear, a D70 or D70s  it has to be! As my son, Markus, owns a D70s since some years ago, and have praised the functionality of that camera, I stared to search the web.
I soon found a good looking D70 body (with the D70s software), fired just in excess of 9000 times, just in the middle of my expected price range so I threw a bid on that and much to my surprise I won the auction.
The camera arrived last Monday and it really was in nearly mint condition. No signs of use other than the info in the EXIF-file that the shutter had been fired less than 10000 times.
It works like a charm though it is of course bigger and heavier than the D3000 but it fits like a glove in my hands.
The only drawback is a rather small screen but you get used to it...:) That is a small price to pay when it was about half the price of the D3000!
And yes, Ingela had to be compensated with another toy that is most permanently sitting on the D3000 now, the new 35 mm f:1.8 AF-S DX from Nikon.:) If you buy this lens you will most probably use it all the time.
You can then really forget about using your flash indoors.

Last Friday night we spent the evening in the sofa with some Glühwein, lit some candles and I took some pictures with my new toy:

Yeah, it is a little noisy but it is shot in candlelight at ISO 1600 without tripod :)

Looks warm and cosy, doesn´t it? But the morning after we woke up in a landscape like this:

Seems that the winter hit us once again but today, Sunday, it is nearly gone again.