Bishop Bouldering

After the hecticity of the winter OR show I decompressed for a few days in Salt Lake City to do a bit of truck work, photo and internet work, and a little bit of skiing at Alta. Then I packed up and headed towards Bishop. A flat along highway 6 in Nevada slowed things down a bit, but I made it eventually. Unfortunately the little wood staple was in the side of the tire and they couldn't patch the sidewall - so I am the not so proud owner of another new tire. On the plus side it was done in time to get a little bit of bouldering in before the sun dropped behind the Sierra. That night it was clear and cold. I took a number of pictures of the stars including one long star trail image.

Star trails ~ 2 hour exposure

High ISO image of about the same area

For the next 2 days I got a lot of bouldering in at the Happy Boulders. It felt wonderful to be able to climb on warm rock in shorts and a t-shirt. Unfortunately my muscles feel pretty weak and my skin is soft and tender. I think I am at a good place to rectify this situation. Even by the second day I felt that as I got more tired and sore I also felt I was moving a little better on the rock. I saw a few people I know and I am sure I'll see more as the days pass here. I topped off my 3rd day on with a soak in a hot spring. AHHHH.

Panorama of ephemeral water on the Bonneville Salt Flats

Cattle in the Owen's floodplain

rock climbing cowboy shadow

One of these days I'll get some decent climbing pics to post.

A long drive and the Winter OR show

I recently had the opportunity to drive across half the country and attend the Winter OR show (OR = Outdoor Retailer). The drive started later than I wanted because I am a slow packer and I couldn't find the pin to hold my bike rack up so I improvised with a tent stake. I had one really long day and a few other long days driving from Boston to Salt Lake City. It was especially interesting in western Nebraska with some snow squalls and then in Wyoming with some fierce winds and a little blowing snow. It was also pretty cold. I don't usually get ice build up on the wood paneling in the back of my truck.

making the jump to lightspeed in western Nebraska

Blowing snow obscures the road in Wyoming

Jason and Chelsey warm up for an acro yoga performance

After I got to SLC I had some not so fun truck issues - I later realized it was in the battery connection, but at the time I had some grueling uphill pushing and attempts to push start. At least that did get me out of the sloped and short term pay parking area so I could go to sleep and deal with it the next afternoon.

The OR show had a bit of work (helping set up and take down the Prana booth and rejuvenation room), some boring times, some interesting things to see at the show, seeing and sometimes catching up with friends, making some connections, etc. etc. As usual there was some interesting schwag and good deals to be had. As usual hanging with the Yogaslackers is rarely dull for long, although they were mostly gearing up to head to Patagonia for an adventure race. I was hoping to get to go along to film, but that fell through.

Paul lays down some 2 gun mojo - nerf style...

...but it didn't take long to devolve

It also appears that winter has finally come to Utah.

More pics from the K-5

I have been playing with the camera some more... here are a few shots...

Sunset over the reservoir

I messed with this sunset pic a bit - processing the raw once for the sky and once for the water. Unfortunately the sunset just petered out and I left. Then there was about a minute where the bottom of the clouds was lit up with a purple glow. DOH.  The camera has an HDR mode, but it combines the images into a .jpg and doesn't save the images it uses for further processing.

The full moon (I actually like the 3/4 moon image from a few days ago better)

I am still a little frustrated with the live view focus - the problem is that for some reason it meters the live view differently than the camera is set, so the moon is blown out and I can't see to focus. Instead I have to do a little trial and error once I get close.

New Year, New Camera

Talia inspects my new kit

That's right, I am now the owner of a new Pentax K-5 with 16-50, 100, and 55-300mm lenses.  This is a big upgrade from my old camera (a Canon 400D - aka rebel xti). Among the things I am most excited about are in camera image stabilization (or in the Pentax language, "shake reduction  (SR)") , a much more robust and better sealed camera, and better high iso performance. I am not complaining about a bigger and better sensor, better viewfinder, more handy controls, bigger and better chimping screen, video capability, and probably lots more stuff.

The things I am not so excited about is not being able to use my Canon lenses and losing some features with the accessories and needing to learn a whole lot of new stuff (some of that is good). It is a little frustrating from going from something I knew pretty well to something I am sort of blundering with - but not for long.

I haven't had a chance to figure everything out, but it is pretty exciting anyway. iso 51,200 is just a bit ridiculous, and looks worse than iso 1,600 looked on my old camera, but the images at iso 3,200 look pretty good at screen size.
The SR can work amazingly well, but not always and it doesn't do any good for fast subject motion.
A 34 minute exposure on a cold night looks pretty clean.
Now everyone in the house cringes when I walk in with the camera.

34 minute star trails on a cold night - the light of Boston is pretty pervasive

an orchid - testing out the macro

3/4 moon - testing the telephoto

I still have a ton to learn, but I am on my way, and I haven't really even started with the video side of things.