Two digital Photographs merged and digitally re-mastered. © MACJR
Photographed 2004, re-mastered January 28, 2005, by Michael A. Crane, Jr.

Siam (the Siamese cat on the left in the picture above), came to live with me in the spring of 1993. She is getting older now and has not been feeling well but she still likes to eat and play, and she is still the boss.

Shadow (the back cat, in the picture above), has been with me since the fall months of 1995. Shadow too is starting to get older. Even though Siam was like a mother to Shadow in the early days, Shadow has not let Siam's boss status go unchallenged for quite some time. They have scuffles now and then but, fortunately, they do not fight all the time.

Siam is missing some fur on one side but there was no skin damage.

Shadow has a pea sized wound healing, even if it is well hidden within her fur.

Shadow liked my old plant stand so I made it into a nest for her. Shadow has always likes high places and wants to explore them all, if I pile boxes, she will hop right on up every time.

Siam likes lower places, she is not so crazy about heights or open spaces. An unusual cat. Given a choice, Siam is more often found in a box than on it. She loves plastic sacks too. For a while she thought the toilet seat-cover was a nice place to nap but she soon tired of having to move.

I used the 5.0 Mega Pixel Kodak EasyShare CX7530 digital camera to take all but one of the pictures on this page.

I have digitally re-mastered all pictures one this page to improve quality or to alter the original photograph in unusual ways.

The CX7530 downsides are that the camera default, and only, file format is jpeg. I would much prefer a camera, of similar capabilities and price range, with the option of saving the original files at a higher quality image format, such as PNG or even the memory hog BMP. Yes, this would take up more memory card space faster but for an artist, storage space is not as important as image quality.

Also, the EasyShare program that comes with the EasyShare CX7530 is not well designed. The software has too many flaws to list here. I find it much easier to use Paint Shop Pro 8.1 directly with the images on the camera. For people without a program like Paint Shop Pro that can directly interface with the camera, the EasyShare software may be used but with plenty of aggravations.

The big plus about the Kodak EasyShare CX7530 digital camera is that it is possible to shoot excellent pictures with it. However, image-editing skills are handy because many pictures do need adjustments to reach their best potential.

Overall, I feel that with the many cool features and abilities of the Kodak EasyShare CX7530 digital camera, it is worth the price, even considering the aggravations of its software and its choice of image format.

Michael A. Crane, Jr.

February 2, 2005
Updated: January 1, 2006

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by Michael A. Crane, Jr. - All rights reserved.