Gyro

Riding on a bike path, dreary gray day. Saw this ahead, stopped and got my FZ out of the hostler for this shot. Look close at his talons.

dannwilliams

I never remember to search you tube, thanks for the reminders! Found all the info I need to get me going. New lens should be here Monday.

GeneO 

Thanks. I have many shots of Hawks shredding their catches but that is the only one horsing a mouse down whole

GeneO 

That is quite nice and dreamy.

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GeneO 

Nice catch!

Gyro

Thanks! I took 20 or so of him posing his head in different ways. I didn't see the squirrel until I looked through them at home.

rumrunn6

when I walk / hike with family I'm always falling behind cuz I'm taking a photo. sometimes kinda interferes w the social experience of the group. similarly that's why I stopped fishing while going to the beach w the family. but even cycling alone, while I love taking pics during a ride, the constant stopping somewhat interferes w the "ride" meaning: stopping is not riding. but I know, if I don't stop for that picture, I will regret it. ugh

rumrunn6

I've seen those & always wanted to experiment with them. but now w so much digital control combined w camera control I kinda sorta manage. if I raise or lower the camera angle so that the auto iris responds, I can settle on a compromise knowing what I can adjust later. like slide film, it's easier to bring up details in shadows than bring them back from being a blown out highlight. learning how to lock in an exposure & focus, by 1/2 depressing the shutter release, then recomposing quickly, before snapping, is really helpful

Doug64

I never regret stopping for pictures. On a 2 month bike tour in Europe, I calculated that we stopped the equivalent of 2 weeks riding time just for pictures. That is assuming 6 hour riding per day.

Even with 10,000 pictures (unedited) from that trip there are still shots I wish I had taken to tell the story better.

I'm with you, I don't want to regret not taking the photo.



I read that documenting your travels with photographs allows a person to really view your surroundings more intimately. I really believe this; and no, I did not read it in a photo-magazine.

CrankyOne

Yep, amazing how far camera's have come. And yet we still yearn for more dynamic range, color depth, low light performance, etc.

BTW, You can also shoot a bracket and do an HDR stitch in Lightroom or similar. Early stitchers were kind of rough but they've gotten quite good now.

CrankyOne

Your wife is a photo widow? :-)

Doug64

No, not really; about half of those 10,000 shots were hers

CrankyOne

That works well for you guys then. I don't shoot a ton during family times but my son does. His wife figures that she needs to add about 50% time to just about everything to account for it. And she always has a phone along to read while he's shooting. He's an amateur but is quite good and in many ways much better than I.

BTW, had an interesting discussion about HDR stuff yesterday. Kind of determined that Photomatix & Affinity Photo are likely the two best stitchers (and many of us have switched from Photoshop to Affinity anyway so that works), Aurora is next, then Adobe, then Nik. All of these are fairly good though with the differences quite minor. Nik btw is free and does a quite good job in many instances where there is no movement requiring removal of ghosting.

rickbuddy_72

I'll go with the folks recommending the mirrorless cameras. There are plenty of good ones there. Most use the M3/4 sensor. I picked up a Nikon 1 with a kit 10-30 lens at fire sale prices. I think it was $260. I'd never take my D810 and expensive lenses on the bicycle -- road rash is one thing, but losing 5-grand on a crash is not something my insurance agent and I would like to do.

As for image quality and lenses. Most modern cheap lenses have sweet spots where they perform just fine. Just get to know what they can do. If you head over to Thom Hogan's site and ramble around his archived articles you'll see some stuff regarding Galen Rowell using cheap lenses simply because they were lighter. I believe his iconic "Firefall" shot at Yosemite was shot with a cheap lens.

If you must go DSLR, Nikon's new line of f 1.8 primes and f 4 zooms are a great bargain, and very light, too.

Doug64

The best lens I've ever owned is a Nikon 100/2.8, Series E lens; relatively inexpensive, but it is a superb lens. Unfortunately, with its AI lens mount it became less useful when autofocus appeared (D90), and almost unusable in the digital world. However, my wife was cleaning out the freezer the other day, and found a half a brick of Ilford PanF 50! I might just put that 100 mm on my old F3 and do a walk about BTW, Galen Rowell was one of my photographic heroes.

treebound 

Oh, dangerous thread, dangerous in a good way. Subscribed. A couple years ago I picked up a handlebar bag (Ibera or Iberia I think). I haven't used it yet with the DSLR but I fully plan to this year.

Doc_Wui

I shoot M43 mirrorless. This being my smallest with the Panasonic GM1, Equivalent of an FF 24mm -300mm with the two cheap zooms. They both fit with the zoom in a triangle bag on my downtube. Tradeoff is the GM1 has no viewfinder, so I often take a larger Olympus body with EVF.

For the larger cameras, a small Lowepro or Tamrac off the handlebars is pretty secure and offers enough [padding.