I like rotten Jack ‘o Lanterns. There, I said it. It gives them real character, and the more they rot the better I like them.

Last year’s was a fair piece of work as it had really good mold working all throughout that gave it a “Spotted Death” kinda feel that worked rather nicely. Unfortunately, it also got cold real fast last year, so it froze up pretty quick and never became nice ‘n squishy, which can be real interesting. This year though, the weather’s been fairly warm, and as such our Jack’s have gotten not only supremely moldy, but good and squishy too. As you can see, the wife’s just about caved it and looks like a toothless granny now, and the Ape’s has a somewhat rough and tumble prize fighter thing going for it with the bruises and blemishes in full effect. Mine looks down right evil as the entire inside’s pure black and the face is collapsing in on itself. And this is all not even a full month after they were carved. Next year I think we’ll carve them early, so they’re good and evil by Halloween for that extra bit of effort.

Oh, and these photo’s were taken with my new Olympus E-420 today on the way to meeting the family for dinner. It’s shaping up to be a decent little camera so far. Compared to the G10, the dynamic range is quite a bit better I feel and the noise at higher ISO’s is much, much improved, to the point that I actually have no fear going over 400 ISO anymore. Even 800 and 1600 are still quite usable, which wasn’t the case on the G10. The flash seems tolerable for fill use, and the lens is OK, but not really sharp, with really soft edges and a lot of CA. A better lens will improve things immensely, but anything decent for it is twice the cost of the camera itself, so not sure if it’s worth the investment for what really is just a P&S replacement for my purposes. Still, I’d recommend it over most any P&S, if just for the noise and DR improvements.