[Spartan302]

That last pic is amazing. Awesome pics!

[jonster]

Definately great pictures! I'll have to make up there sometime.

[grogie]

Very nice photos! Thanks. Looked like a good time!

[PhilipJ]

Great pics; looks like you guys had a good time. I've still yet to make it up to Reiter but now that ski season's finally over I have my weekends back! Working two jobs kind of sucks, even if one of them is paying you to have fun.

Awesome aerial pic of the train BTW. Hopefully my 3.07'd butt can come out and play with you guys soon.

[Thump85]

Awesome Pics, that one of the FJ crossing the log bridge is my new desktop. Whoever photographs does a great job.

[hutchmanhd]

Very nice camera work! Looks like you had fun.

Hutch

[lupinsea]

Hey, thanks for the compliments everyone.

James! Good to hear from you. So, that's what you've been doing all winter!? The 3.07s would do juuuust fine . . . in 4Lo. I'm not much better with the 3.73 but they work for me.

To answer BlueJ's question: The camera is digital. No film. But there are enough features on the camera that you could set it either a point-n-shot mode or switch to some of the manual modes to give you more control over shutter speed, "film" speed, aperture settings, etc. The manual controls don't help much for taking pictures Jeep'n since (even in 4Lo) things are happening too fast to futz with settings. Still, at it's price point it does a good job balancing between a good point-n-shoot and offering more user control.

What I do try, though, is to keep the flash off. Other wise you get, well, flash darkened pictures. I really hate using the flash. It messes up the color and lighting settings on the camera and creates weird shadows. Unfortunately, this means that in the dark NW forest you have to keep VERY still and try not to move the camera at all. On this trip I had so many blurry and fuzzy images because I didn't keep still enough.

Overall, i'm pleased with the camera. There as a Panasonic I would have prefered with a manual focus ring but it was $100 more than I wanted to spend. And I didnn't want to invest too much in a camera that I might drop in the mud (again). All-in-all I'm very pleased with the camera. Here is a sample of other pictures I've taken with it:

Seattle's Space Needle. Used a wadded up sweatshirt as a "tripod".
1.5-2 sec shutter speed and cranked down the exposure value a lot.




Again using the sweater tripod technique. Out of 10 moon pictures
this one turned out the best. Full optical zoom. Can't remember the
settings but again the exposure value was cranked way down (to
darken the image)




As you might guess, I find that lowering the exposure value (making the image darker in the camera
view finder) helps a lot in out door settings to pick up subtle details in lighter parts of the picture.
It does require post-processing touch up in photoshop.




Picture I took on my road trip to California with my sports car. Again, lowered EV setting
to pick up the fine details in the sky.




Seaguls overlooking stinky sealions at Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco. I liked the colors
and lighting in this picture.




Tooks a break from bombing along the Angeles Crest Highway and discovered some of the neighbors
along that wonderful road. Used the macro setting on the camera and the soom lense a bit. Again, kept off the flash.




Took our dog to play in the lake and brought my camera along to experiment with
the settings that day. Just testing it out. The batch capture feature worked great.




I think I actually set the camera on the "action" setting which drops the shutter speed
to capture fast action shots.

[articulate]

Hell yeah Jay. You're coming along with your photography, buddy! The run-of-the-mill digi cams these days automatically overexpose shots in my opinion. You've got some good command over your controls. Looking SWEET.

I loved that first picture of the dog. Superb.

-M

[trw]

those are some of the MOST amazing photos I have ever seen.


I love looking at your pictures.

only thing that dissapoints me is I cant use any of them as backgrounds because I use 1024x768 as a resolution.

[MT3Geiger]

Man, those pics are amazing. Just beautiful scenery.

[GlennH]

what size do you take your photos at? 800x600 or do you re-size for your webspace as I was lookin for some 1600x1200 res photos from your collection.

[lupinsea]

Let me know what photos you're interested in and I can post the full res images to my file-sharing site.

When I post to the web the photo album software automatically re-sizes them for a more web friendly 800x600 (roughtly). Otherwise at 2576x1932 the images are 1.1 - 1.8 MB each. Some of the images don't have that resolution because I will crop to different aspect ratios depending on the scene composition, such as in the "haystack" rock photo or the clowdy coastal susnset photo above. Or this one below:

It's all a judgement call on what I find as the most interesting way to present the image. And it's not just a matter of having the latest, greatest equipment either. The picture below was taken with a 7+ year old 2 mega-pixel, ancient Olympus digital camera that my boss let me borrow from work (after I dropped mine in the mud):

Spend time with your camera, play with all the different controls and settings when you take pictures (I often take 2 or 3 shots of the same thing but with different settings). And also pay attention to the lighting conditions (helps to have sun at your back) and understand what's happening and what the camera can do well and what it can't.

With all the great scenery we wheel'n it's fun to have a "side" hobby while you're on the trail.