Sequestered with a Gimpy leg

 
    Like the frustrated sequestered fellows unable to go out and actually drive a longed-for SUV, I haven't been able to do much testing of my cameras and lenses to see which combination would be best to use with a gimpy leg.  A while back I bought a Nikon mirrorless Z-50 along with its two kit lenses.  The other day I decided to get it out and spend some time mastering its menu.  But before I did that I thought I should recharge the battery . . . only I couldn't find the Z-50 battery charger.  After looking high and low I gave up and continued with my ongoing exercise of reviewing lenses based on the evidence from various hikes.  On this occasion I went back to the very beginning: the first digital camera I took hiking was a Hewlett Packard 6MP R717.  Some of the shots I took with that seemed pretty good.  There was one shot of Trooper my nephew talked me into printing and framing.  I still have that R717, but Susan took it to Tucson with her once upon a time and left it in the trunk during a very hot day and fried the electronics.  I thought it might be good to get another R717 from eBay if I could find one in good condition because the case I have is still in good condition.  I could strap that to my belt and pretend I was back in the old days where my object was hiking and not photography, and I merely had a camera available for the odd rare shot.


I didn't find any R717s worth getting and pretty quickly gave up the idea of getting anything that old.  I turned my attention next to Ricoh.  Ricoh bought Pentax a few years ago.  They make small cameras that are advertised as being able to be carried in a pocket.  These cameras are popular in Japan.  The little cameras are only slightly larger than my old R717.  The GRii came out about 6 years ago with 16MP.  It had a lot of capability but most people use it in a point and shoot configuration.  The newest model, the GRiii, came out last year.  It had in-camera-image stabilization (which the GRii did not), but to keep the size down, they used a smaller battery which gets about 200 shots to a charge.  It has been discovered that if you leave the camera on between shots, your camera will overheat.  The GRiii struck me, therefore, as an excellent backup camera for an R5 (which overheats when shooting 8K video) owner, but I thought I could probably get by with the GRii.  The GRii gets about 300 shots on a charge, has a larger battery than the GRiii, doesn't have in-camera-image-stabilization, and so doesn't overheat.

I don't know yet what I'll feel like taking on my probably abbreviated hikes.  It is possible that I might not want to fool with a lot of adjustments until I get very confident traversing the uncertain landscapes I'll be hiking.  A GRii set to a point-and-shoot configuration seems a prudently conservative camera setup for the near future.

16MP, owners of the 16MP Pentax K5ii and the 16MP Nikon Df have argued, is the "sweet spot" of sensor size.  I don't know if that's true; however, the Pentax K5ii is APSC and the Nikon Df is full frame, and neither camera seems deficient in image quality.  Also, no one on the Ricoh forum has mentioned the GRii being deficient in image quality.  The Ricoh GRiii has a 24MP sensor and in-camera-image-stabilization which would improve one's chances of getting excellent shots.  But the possibility of overheating  caused me to take the cautious route and get the GRii instead of the GRiii.   

If I discover that I don't need to keep my GRii turned-on between shots, maybe I wouldn't encounter over-heat situations with a GRiii.  I don't remember how I used the old R717.  Also, I don't know how much I will want to use the GRii in the future.  If I discover I can get by with heavier, more complicated cameras, maybe my GRii will spend most of its time on a shelf with all my other cameras.

Hike on 1-1-19 with lots of birds

https://lawrencehelm.smugmug.com/RiverPhotography/Jan-2019/i-Lv6FnKd/A

This was my second outing with the Nikon D800e.  One person wrote me that he also had an 800e, had it for a long time and was planning to upgrade to the D850 – the most advanced Nikon full-frame camera short of the Pro D5.  Maybe one day I’ll want a D850 as well, but for now the D800e suits me.  I like the way it handles.  I’m sure I’ll like it even better once I learn what all the buttons and dials do.  A manual for the D800e was waiting for me when I got home (not the Nikon manual, but one intended to be of use to the user . . . maybe I should say “of more use,” but just barely). 

The lens I used today, the 70-300 is considered a good lightweight lens for the hiker.  It’s only flaw was (I read) soft edges at 300mm, but I discovered that only my left edges were a bit soft, and then not always. 

I took a lot of shots of birds, especially at 300mm and especially birds in flight.  I would think I should be able to do everything I did with the D800e with my full-frame Pentax K1ii, but the shots I got of birds at 300mm seem sharper than anything I’ve managed with my Pentax gear.   And the D800e isn’t supposed to be quite as good as the crop (AFSC) D500 which I have yet to take out on its second outing.  It has been sitting on a shelf for more than a week,  so long in fact that my nephew thought I might want to sell it.  No, no, no!  I will get to it shortly.  I know the D500 will do well.  I wasn’t sure about the older D800e, however, and since I had more questions about the D800e, I wanted to try it first.

Starting with shot 146, I took several shots of ducks in a rather foul-looking pond.   I would certainly not want to spend any time in one of these ponds, but the birds don’t mind.  I've seen them in these ponds every years.  My D800e shutter seemed extremely loud.  In the first two you can see the duck in the foreground watching me.  As we moved along and I took more, the ducks swam further away.  The shutter on my Pentax K1ii isn’t nearly as loud, but at least the ducks didn’t fly off.  A few years ago I was using a camera that made a sort of beep when a shot was in focus, and as soon as the birds heard it they flew up in a huge chaotic panicky-seeming cluster.  I later noticed that the beep sounded very much like the sound a red-tailed hawk makes.    But we didn’t beep today.  In shot 163 and subsequent you can see one of those very hawks.   It wasn’t ducks who flew off after hearing the hawk-sounding beep, but the small white sea-birds you can see in a pond further along.

The dogs nibbled on some of the farming leftovers on the fringes of the fields.  In shot number 173 Ben has something the seems  to be extremely bad-tasting. 

Shot number 183 is a genuine BIF (bird in flight) at 300 mm – not a great picture perhaps but it is fairly sharp, and the bird is flying.  

Shot 191 and subsequent shows three ducks in flight at 300mm.  They weren’t close enough to get great shots, but they too appear to be in focus and sharp. 

Shot 238 is the cute-shot of the day.  Why Jessica likes to rest with her tongue hanging out, I don’t know.

Shot 256 and following shows a three shot rabbit chase – although it could have been a squirrel.  I didn’t actually see what they were chasing. 

The last three shots, 275, 276 and 277, are of a tent containing a young woman and a small dog.  You can see her looking at me through her window in shot 276.  In the right edge you can see my Jeep.  We didn’t see her tent when we started our hike because we went straight down to the river from where my Jeep is.  Although now that I think of it perhaps the dogs saw her then.  I took a bit of time to get my gear on and I don’t know what they were doing while I was doing that.   The woman had a small dog that caused my dogs to run toward the tent, but she called her dog inside before mine got there --- no harm done . . . other than the fact that she is living there; which strikes me as rather harmful thing to be doing.

Hike on a windy day, 1-1-19

https://lawrencehelm.smugmug.com/RiverPhotography/Jan-2019/i-mtG37hc/A

This was the first hike with the Nikon full frame D800e camera as well as the Nikon 180mm f/2.8 lens.  Why did I get a Nikon full-frame camera when I am happy with my Pentax full frame K1ii?   I suppose curiosity would head the list.  I am still enough of an engineer to be curious about comparative technology – at least in regard to photography.  Second on the list would be that I got the 800e with an extremely low shutter count at a very good price.  According to my calculations based on the tests I read about in reviews, the image quality of the 800e is very nearly as good as the present top-in-class D850.  It also has better image quality than any Canon camera as near as I can tell.  Canon of course has a lot more features and the best one, the IDX, can do a lot of things the D800e can’t do, but I am most concerned about image quality and both my Pentax K1ii and this D800e are right up there near the top in all the tests of image quality that I’ve read. 

Jessica was the most excited by the wind and just being there today.  She even did for the first time something Duffy has done on many occasions: come up to me with a happy look and brush against me in a way I interpret as saying “thanks for this.”  Duffy did it as well.  Ben has never done it.  He is instead always on guard (or, more likely, looking for rabbits).

In shot 20 I took my first BIF (Bird in Flight) shot, and I can’t be completely sure since crows are jet black, but the D800e may be better at this than any camera I’ve tried at this thus far.  The Nikon D500 which I have yet to spend much time with is supposed to be even better.  We’ll see. 

Shot 23 of Duffy climbing up the chicken-wire covered levee is my favorite in the cuteness category.

Shot 43 and maybe a couple of others of the mountains to test clarity at infinity came out extremely well. 

Brush hasn’t had much of a chance to get started after our heat spells; so you can’t always see bent-over brush as a sign that the wind is blowing hard.  In shot 50 for example Duffy and Ben are showing the effects of the wind but the brush not so much.

In shot 54, Ben started a rabbit and began to give chase (by jumping up into the air???).  I simply pointed and shot this one and Ben is a bit of a blur.  Also I didn’t have the camera set for this sort of action.  I didn’t upload all of the other blurred shots of the chase.  Shot 58 shows Ben standing still wondering where the rabbit went.  

Beginning with shot 59 I took several shots of Jessica coming toward me to see if I could do some decent tracking if I anticipated the action, and these shots came out mostly okay.  She of course isn’t as fast as a rabbit.  Also, I had the camera set at AF-S (meaning autofocus for still shots).  I would have set it for AF-C (autofocus for continuous shooting) if I anticipated an action sequence.  In AF-C I could just hold the shutter down and presumably (and if I was lucky) get the whole chase.

Shot 104 shows Duffy in the riverbed with some of the weeds bent over by the wind.  Shot 115 shows Ben signaling a left turn thanks to the wind.  And then the last one, shot 116 shows Ben’s ears pinned back by the wind.

As for me, the wind blew my wide-brimmed hat off a couple of times and for the early part of the hike I held it on with my left hand while operating the camera with my right.  Eventually, I took my hat off and stuffed it under my windbreaker.

This was a very good New Year’s day for all of us, although Ben may have been a bit ambivalent about it at times.  I gave them all some roast chicken when we got home and then they all lay down to nap.  Ben apparently went instantly into deep sleep, for when I took his collar off a few minutes later he was startled and leaped up, something he has never done before.   

The camera and lens did pretty well, something that hasn’t been true of all my first-outings with a camera.  The dogs and I had an excellent time, and I didn’t lose my hat.  What could be better than that?  

Hike in December 2018 to the sound of gunfire

https://lawrencehelm.smugmug.com/RiverPhotography/Dec-2018/i-RCzDB8Q/A

Some time ago I went on a buying spree and acquired a number of old film-era Pentax lenses.  I used them one after the other on hikes with my full-frame K1 until I sent it in for an upgrade.  By that time I had used all the lenses I thought would become my favorites, but I still owed the rest a test.  And so this morning I used the FA* 200mm f/2.8.  This is a very good high-quality lens.  The * is Pentax’s indication that this lens is the very best.  However, it isn’t very well suited to the sort of photography I do at the river.  Also, it has a narrower depth of field at most apertures than I prefer for landscape shots. 

I chose the hike alongside the dairy in hopes of getting some shots of the seabirds that show up after a rain when there are puddles of water on the ground, and I did find them, but the puddles were too far away for me to get any good shots of the birds.

Shot 579 shows a man sitting on a tractor talking to a goose.  They seem to be friends because the goose appears to be paying attention. 

Shot 597 and the next couple show some hunters shooting at something in the trees.  I’ve looked into these trees on a number of hikes and have seen only little tiny birds.  On occasion the trees seemed filled with them.  But there were no little birds in them this morning.  I don’t know what the hunters could have been shooting at – unless they were squirrel hunting.  I suppose there could have been squirrels up there, but I have never seen any.

Normally, we would go down from the river levee and through this copse, but we couldn’t do that with these guys shooting at stuff.  Ben was quite concerned.  Jessica was prepared to go down but only if I insisted.  As the shooting went on, Ben and Jessica seemed to like it least. Duffy didn’t seem to mind it. 

In shot 608 and the next couple you can see my sea birds, but not very closely.  A lens longer than 200 mm would have been better suited to seeing them today. 

In shot 616 and the next two you can see a few of the little birds that normally live (I assume) in the bigger trees in the copse.

In shot 626 you can see a gate shot at a fairly wide-open aperture.  This sort of shot would be close, perhaps, to what people who love this lens would be looking for.

In shot 640, and you can only tell if you magnify it, but Jessica is giving me an apprehensive look.  She has something in her mouth and is probably waiting to see if I am going to make her drop it.

Shot 642 shows Ben in very good detail.  This is a very good lens.

The last shot shows someone jogging in the river bed, something I used to do when I retired here in December 1998.