Am I camera Crazy?

Mid February isn't supposed to be quite this cold.  Wow! This morning it was -12 F.
Yesterday it did warm up to about 10 degrees and if you could get out of the wind, it actually was pleasant.

I had put off my errands in town most of the week so yesterday I grabbed my list and went.

I really don't like going to town.  I especially dislike going on Saturdays.
But there you go, I really just ended up putting it off until I had no other choice.

However, I put my Olympus E 420 in a camera bag and brought it along.  Sometimes an opportunity will present itself and ... well, you never know.

Olympus E 420 kit lens

And it did!  I love this curve in the gravel road.  I wanted to explore some more, but there were chores to do when I got home.

Point and Shoot Fujifilm

And the road conditions on the ridge were getting a bit nasty.

Regarding my Olympus camera.  I do love it and it is generally my go to camera for hiking because it is a lightweight DSLR.  It isn't the tanks that the Nikons are.
Don't get me wrong, I love my Nikon and the Nikkor lenses.  But the Nikon D5200 is sort of a primadonna.

Apparently it doesn't like cold or damp ... or humid weather.

However it really loves doing Still Life photography!

Nikon D5200 with Nikkor 40mm micro lens

And I love doing this work with it.

So.
Naughty me.  I began to look into mirrorless cameras.

A few years ago I saw an ad for an Olympus OMD-D E-M5 Mirrorless camera.  A man sets the camera on a tripod and watches as a storm approaches.  Rain slashes the window he is standing by.  The camera is shown, water droplets are covering it.
Zoom into the back of the camera and live view. Lightening flashes and the man in the house uses his smart phone to remotely take a photo.

In 2012 this camera was $1,499.  Ouch, way beyond my reach.
Now the camera is being discontinued.  A new and improved model will take its place. The price was affordable even to me.

Kudos for Olympus.  Their mirrorless line will take all lenses from the previous DSLR's.  Nikon and other companies have all gone with special lenses.

The nice thing about the Oly lenses is that they are lightweight enough to work with a mirrorless camera.

Olympus E 420 kit lens

My Nikon weighs approximately 44 oz with a 'kit' lens. Generally I carry an extra lens with me while hiking.

The Olympus OMD-D E-M5 weighs 22 oz. with the M. Zuiko ED 12-50mm lens I ordered. 

Well there, the cat is out of the bag.

I am looking forward to hiking with the Oly.  I won't have to drag around a heavy weight tripod with it either, I can go for a lightweight one! 

I won't have to worry about snowfall getting the camera damp as it is weather sealed as is the lens.

Just color me happy.

My Nikon D40 is being retired.  I sent out an email to a friend who has kids who are interested in photography.

Nikon D40 free to good home.  It will get a good home and lots of use also.

Olympus E 420 kit zoom lens

I am looking forward to all sorts of great adventures and hiking with a lighter camera.

Now to figure out how to make these cameras earn their keep.

That is the hard one!

Oh and for those of you reading?  Happy Valentines Day...one day early!

Nikon D5200 50mm lens

Enjoy your Saturday.  It looks like mostly indoor work for me today.  

Windswept Afternoon

I thought that Sunday would be the perfect day to go back to the 'ice' cave and see what formations had come about from the recent melts and freezes.

I wore my slightly longer and newer snow shoes and was very happy that I did.  
The fact that they are slightly longer helped me stay ON TOP of the snow!
 
The snow has an ice crust on top of it.  Unfortunately, the icy crust and the snow shoes made quite a bit of noise so I didn't see any deer or other wildlife.

I also did not take Morris.  The coyotes are 'in season' which means they are very aggressive to domestic dogs if they get in coyote territory.  Morris can blend in with the scenery this time of year and I would rather not take any chances.  
Morris was not happy with that decision.

The ice cave wasn't very spectacular and the lighting wasn't very good for a photo.  I didn't have a long lens and in order to do the cave justice I would have had to do some pretty tricky climbing.
I decided against it and followed the steep trail to the creek in the 'back' valley instead.

The slightly red arrow points to my shadow waving!  
I ended up stashing my snow shoes and climbing down into the creek bottom itself.

There was no wind down there and the sun was nice and warm.

In the shade however it was quite cold, but the ice formations were pretty cool.

I looked further upstream and really wished that I had time to walk the entire valley.  It was very tempting.
Instead I sat down and had some snacks, took some more shots and then packed up and headed up the long hill towards the open corn field.

After spending so much time in the valley and the woods I enjoyed the walk across the ridge top and the cold breeze in my face.  
The corn stubble created a bit of an issue with my snow shoes.  I had a malfunction at one point. 
But no one was there to see me trip up and so everything went just fine.

I however was more careful and chose a 'trail' that the animals had been using.

I did use my Garmin to measure the distance and the altitude change.  I hiked 2.1 miles by the time I arrived close to home.  I'd been gone a bit over 2 hours with a lot of 'stop' time of course.

The altitude changes really surprised me when I looked at them in a graph form.  

I spent most of my time looking at tracks on the ridge in the windswept snow.
I could see where coyotes had been walking.
Rabbits trails, deer trails, tracks of mice, raccoon, turkey, and 'possum.
There were places that the hard crusted snow had been dug up to get at either corn or grass.

Winter is a great time to be in the woods.  The landscape is not hidden by foliage and everything seems bare boned.  Perfect in some aspects for photography in black and white.
It was a nearly perfect day.

Dixie's Solo Walk With Me

Dixie has graduated to hiking solo.
She has learned, 'Come' and she runs hard when I call.
She has learned 'NO!' and stops whatever she is doing immediately.

Yesterday I decided that I'd take her by herself on a walk so that I could see if she has developed some independence...and 
not
always
just chasing Morris for fun.

And, well, I had to do some more experimenting with the 50mm lens, of course.

I took the short cut across the meadow and went down the steep hillside into the valley with the creek.
Across the meadow and down the steep hill, Dixie followed me at 'heel' position, every once in a while she reached up and nudged my hand as if to assure herself that I was fine.

When I started taking shots of interesting ice formations, she hovered close.  She did not bowl me over.
I shooed her away a few times.
Gradually she realized that I was not doing something that was very interesting to her hound dog nose.
And she began to explore a bit.

She discovered that she enjoyed walking in the creek.
I don't know if she saw some brown trout or not, but suddenly she wouldn't get out and kept wandering back into the water as if to search.

[this shot not taken with the 50mm, taken with the Fuji Camera]

This was good because a month ago she avoided water like the plague and was tentative about it.

We followed the creek towards my fence line and I looked for photos, Dixie checked out the deep pools of water, I'm thinking of the trout I've seen flit around there...
and
we began to ignore each other, both of us busy, yet both of us checking in on each other.

Soon enough we came to the huge dry run that is filled with mossy boulders.  I'd been there a couple of weeks ago when the temps had reached 49 degrees and it had rained hard.  I'd taken photos of the mini water falls.

The boulders were covered mostly in snow, but there were ice formations.

What a good dog Dixie was to go first and find out that the snow would slide out from under neath her!

She was good and only hovered at my shoulder [of course to make sure I was okay!] as I tried to get a shot of where the water falls had been.

It made scooting around the boulders a bit more interesting.

So I decided to walk a bit further up the creek bottom.  In one spot the creek was running clear.  So clear in fact that I was able to catch bubbles from one of the springs coming up through the rocks.

This creek has many springs.
Then I turned around and saw the iced creek bottom.  It was wall to wall ice, like a glacier and it was evident where the run off had cut through it.

No adventure is complete without a shot of Dixie and her flapping ears as she runs to me.

Lastly.
Dixie is learning independence.
She is venturing out away from me and investigating.
She is even leading the way.

On our way home up the 'ridge' road .. she ran ahead of me and would wait.  If I didn't come fast enough, she'd come back and investigate.

Soon my training with her will be done.  Oh I'll still work on her leash behavior and her manners.

Last shot.

Where's Dixie?
Can You see her??

All of these shots were taken with the 50mm lens.  There is no zooming in and out with this lens, you have to work at composing your shots.
All the more reason to practice.

The AF-S Nikkor 50mm f/1.8G lens

It came on Monday late in the afternoon ... after the town truck dribbled sand on the 'brown' ice. 

So I gleefully attached it to my Nikon D3100 and decided to take some test shots inside the house with Morris as my model.

What I've learned from this, is that I need to move around for the best shots.  I can't just zoom in and forget it.

This shot was taken with a flash [dark in the house].  But it clearly gives me a fairly crisp shot of Morris's face and gives me a nice 'bokeh' for the rest of the photo.

In the above shot, I wanted more items in focus.  I simply moved back and focused on the dog.  I read the f stop ~~ f5, which gave me a slightly larger field of focus.
The first shot was done at f1.8, so you can see the change in the depth of focus.

Next test was outside.  How would it do?  Since it is labeled by some as a great portrait lens, I wanted to try it out and see what it would do...

So I set the f stop to 5.6 and got this of the road:

 The image looks nice and crisp to me.

Next Morris and Dixie started to play and run along side the road.
I put the camera in program mode and pointed and shot quickly hoping to get something I could use.

The camera chose f 6.3 and I got this photo.

These shots were done in RAW format, edited in CorelAfterShot Pro [30 day trail] and I used Topaz Adjust 5 to enhance the shot of the dogs for just a bit of exaggerated detail.

I'm pretty sure this lens is going to serve me well.  I need to practice of course to see what its limitations are.
But I'm thinking that this lens could prove to be a handy one to have when photographing wildflowers in the woods and fungi.

It is a fast lens.