The * button (it’s on the back of the camera, behind the shutter release) is something I’ve mentioned to others before, but it’s still a really useful tip to impart. When faced with an image with a high dynamic range, but only wanting to take one properly exposed photo I would use the * button while moving the camera around the image to see where the bright and dark parts of the image would be.

For instance, I moved the camera to a dark part and pressed the button while moving around a few times and then repeated but while looking at a bright part of the image.

Knowing what the extents of the exposure were, I would then continue pressing the button part way between the dark and bright parts (usually closer to the bright parts) until my guesstimate of the exposure felt right.

It didn’t always work, but many times it was very close and only needed a small tweak.

It’s funny, every fourth year everyone suddenly seems to become a sports fan. OK, maybe not everyone, but certainly people seem to discuss sport a great deal more than usual during this time.

I rarely watch Olympic events but do make an exception for sports I might watch anyway. The exception to my exception so far has been brief but has included the table tennis final (mostly because it’s the Chinese Olympics, and China was in it, and it was on after something I was already watching) as well as the tennis final.

Other sports I’ve watched, and watch every now and then include boxing and cycling. Track and field, gymnastics and the even more obscure “sports” (dressage, I’m looking at you) are right out.

For me, though, the Olympics has really been another football (futbol, soccer, whatever) World Cup. The aforementioned viewing comes to maybe a couple of hours but I’ve watched at least three or four football matches. Mens, womens, whatever.

This evening, Argentina and Brazil play in a semi-final with the winner playing one of Nigeria and Belgium (who are playing this very moment; I suspect Nigeria will win). The Argentina/Brazil match will be, I expect, the highlight of tournament and probably more interesting than the likely Argentina/Nigeria final which will probably result in Argentina winning (again).

So, bring on the 2012 British Olympics World Cup!

At least I think it is La Saone, it’s hard to tell just from Google Maps.

Lyon is around two thirds from the top of France (with Paris being one third from the top), so a great place to stop. It’s famous for being a centre of great food as well as (and I only just found this on Wikipedia now) being the home of Interpol.

The three French cities we visited are, ironically, the three largest. Our stay in Lyon was short, but it was quite a lovely place.