A Nothing Day Today

Nothing too exciting today here in 'the tropics'. The day started slower than slow and didn't end much faster as the photos will show.

There were a few minor changes today ... some to this blog, some additions to my Feedly account, some more ideas of traveling with Stella and general day dreaming.

The biggest and most enjoyable change today was the "heat index". That dropped around 15° and made a huge difference in the comfort level inside and out. Less air conditioning was ran today and the afternoon hound walk was more enjoyable ... even at a leisure pace.

Sadie was giving me that "stare" to walk this morning but at the time I took this photo I had not had my first cup of coffee ... so we weren't walking anywhere, except back inside to pour that first cup.

I saw a lot of blue skies today but it had a feel of being overcast most of the day. The rain is unpredictable but that doesn't really matter while all of us hide out inside to escape the afternoon heat.

Not sure where he was head but he had highway traffic backed up longer than the traffic laws allow and really nowhere to pull off to the side if he passed the intersection just in front of him. He passed that turnoff and the line of traffic slowly passed by the house.

After the hounds had lunch we did the normal trip outside. Heidi wasn't out longer than 5 minutes before she headed back to the door for me to let her inside. Stella decided she would sleep there because she was sleeping right before lunch ... she likes sleeping anywhere.

Sometime a little before 4pm I decided to do the afternoon walk. The weather seemed okay temperature wise outside, I needed something to do and the hounds are willing to walk anytime I grab the camera and say "lets go".

It might be just me but it seems that since the field has been cut and baled, the hounds spend more time with their noses in the ground than anywhere else.

Stella wasn't happy that I called her before she could walk into those woods. She started my direction but took her sweet ass time doing it. She has been pretty stubborn this week for some reason.

I did one more look at this last roll of hay they had here and there is not a string to bind it with anywhere. Just a roll of hay that is slowly falling apart.

Stella made one last attempt to sneak off into her "no fly zone" but once again slowly walked in my direction when I called her. When I say slow, I mean slower than slow. I've never seen a hound that walks as slow as she does.

They brought the red trailer last night right after we finished our walk. Probably a good thing because Stella would have been real interested in meeting their springer spaniel they had in back of their truck. Something seems to be wrong with the tractor but didn't see anyone today working on it, the few times I looked in that direction.

I've been thinking today of going back to a vegetarian diet. Last year I started Paleo Diet and lost a little over 20 pounds but never felt comfortable eating as much bacon and red meat as they recommended. I've been adding brown rice back to my diet which the past 6 months has had more chicken and salmon and less red meat.

As you see I started playing with the blog template today. From the choices of Blogger templates there isn't one that gives me everything I want in design but the one I changed to gave me more things I wanted than the one I have been using since January. Let me know of the fonts are too small for you to read, since I did decrease the page font one size smaller.

I am not finding any ticks on Sadie or Stella after our walks since giving them NexGard in April. They still love me though, as I pull off 4-5 after every walk. With the record heat out west, my friend in Phoenix says the scorpions are out in full force ... I think I'd rather have the war against ticks here in Southern Indiana.

It's that same time of year where I think of making some travel plans. I always wait too late and by this time it is really hot in the majority of the western states. That puts my choices up towards Montana, the Dakotas or the Pacific Northwest. I was planning to head that direction last July but Heidi became sick a few days before our departure. The vet needed for her to stay here 30 days before she could travel.

Of course last summer I had different hounds and a different combo. I handled the one bloodhound and two basset hounds with no problems in Rest Areas or off in a grassy area when refueling. All liked the tent, they slept most of the time I was on the highway.

This year Stella makes it a little different situation. One is because she is a large hound and I've gone to two bloodhounds and one basset hound. Here at home even two bloodhounds at times are hard to handle when they were both leashed when walking last fall. Plus the few times I have taken Stella with me to buy dog food in Bloomington I've let her out on a leash before we head back home.

With that store being on a busy four lane street and new surroundings, I found Stella to be a little skittish when I had her out on a leash. The traffic noise spooked her and she had the urge to take off running if I did not have her on that leash. She couldn't wait to get back inside the FJ.

Most likely a lot of her anxiety is from the times she had moved in her first six years. So if I am serious about traveling this summer, I need to load the hounds up in the FJ, with my standard 6' leashes and drive about 70 miles to the freeway and head to the nearest Rest Area to see how Stella would handle that. I know Sadie and Heidi would do okay in a Rest Area stop.

I think I'll go study cameras and see if it would be worth buying the Nikon D3300 at a discount price since they are discontinuing that model this summer.

Overall it was slow but a good day here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

Cameras

A few months ago on my way to recycling, which our center is located out in the middle of some corn fields, I passed a field of horses. It was a great opportunity to take a neat photograph but all I had with me was my iPhone 5s, I had no way to zoom in on the horses themselves. I took a couple of photos, one of them when they took off running but I was too far away. That was when I had a short mental bolt of wanting a different camera.

Sometime last month I was going through some older boxes of stuff when I had a sudden urge to downsize a little more. I found an old Kodak 8x11.5" box I had forgot I had, full of photographs I had taken close to 30 years ago with my Nikon (can't remember the model) and 70-200mm zoom lens. Some of those were black and white 8x10's, some where 5x8's in color.

A few of the photographs I took as a series on the beach in Hawaii as the sun was setting, not knowing my zoom lens was picking up a kyaker moving in front of the sun. What stood out to me was how sharp they were, even after 25-30 years old. Of course most of my photos were on 35mm slides. There must have been 1,000's of them, too many to look through and the thought of scanning them was overwhelming. I glanced through a lot of them, holding them up to the light and instantly going back in time and could almost feel like I was there.

Once again ... quality was sharp and clear.

In the mid-90's I sold all of my lenses, filters, the bag, tripod and camera body to a neighbor in high school wanting to pursue photography. I am not sure why I decided to sell that stuff, except a few years prior to that for some reason I had stopped using the equipment completely. I may have started taking photos with a smaller camera with a built-in zoom lens. I don't remember the name or model of that camera, but I do have a few photos from that time period.

Maybe the convenience of not carrying a bag of equipment with me? Maybe it was having just one camera and a multiple size lens that made me change my direction in photography? I don't know but I do remember after 1994 I started taking photos a lot less. Hardly at all. My bag of equipment sat in the closet never used until I sold it.

Last month I kept going back to those older photos and looking at how sharp they were. Then I would look at all my digital photos on my blog and in iPhoto on my iMac, trying to compare the difference. I thought my iPhone took pretty good photographs but one thing I noticed was when I would crop the photo and it would zoom into a closer view, the sharpness disappeared. You can see that in yesterday's post with Heidi at the top of the page. The other two photos were not cropped but for some reason were not as sharp as normal. Could it have been my hands, the light ... don't know.

When I mentioned I was looking at different camera equipment on my blog, a few made comments, a couple answered my questions by replying in emails and other's I found out what kind of camera they were using from their websites. All of them have great photography of their travels posted on their blogs. All of them were high quality and reminded me of my older photos that I shot with my 35mm camera years ago.

I knew then I wanted a different camera than my iPhone and the palm sized Nikon Coolpix 3100. I had bought the smaller camera in 2005 to take photos of items I was selling on eBay and my other websites. I've rarely been able to take good photos with that camera without using the tripod ... too small to hold steady.

So the past few weeks I've been spending more time looking at different cameras online, reading suggestions as I get them and just like my rv decisions ... hadn't come up with one.  Still I am much closer today on what to buy than I was a few days ago.

I've looked through all the specs, customer reviews, and even wrote down a list of camera models and lenses used by people that had commented, emailed or blogs I follow. NO ... I have not put that information into a spreadsheet like I have done on everything else, so I am pretty proud of myself that my camera analysis has not gone to that depth.

I was close to buying a Nikon D3200 last week. Since it was an older model, it was on sale. It came with the bag, battery, charger, strap and an 18-55mm lens. I didn't buy it, I wanted to research some more.

Albireo uses a Nikon D3300 and is considering moving up to a heavier, larger camera, the Nikon D810. That is some great equipment but might be more camera than what I am looking for. I don't know how far I want to take this reborn hobby, so I am almost starting over with a camera that a beginner would buy .. maybe 'intermediate' would be a more accurate level.

Al over at The Bayfield Bunch takes fantastic photographs daily. That is his hobby and although he claims he is not a professional photographer, the quality of his photos and the way they are taken are every bit professional. He has different cameras with different size lenses mounted for different shots. They range from a Nikon D3100, a Nikon D-90 and his older camera for backup, a Nikon D-40. He has a Canon SX210iS on his belt at times for the unexpected shot and a Canon A730iS near his chair inside to shoot the Phebe's. I do those kind of inside shots with my iPhone 5s, although Sadie is not a fan of being a photo model.

Chinle at Spotted Dog Ranch takes her landscape photographs of her travels with a Canon EOS Rebel T1i. A lot of her photos are using a larger zoom lens, one that I would need. I would have to buy the new version, a T3i if I went that route, unless I could find a used T1i on Amazon or Craig's list. Yet, there is just something about buying used equipment from those two sites that I don't like. I would buy used equipment from a 'old school' camera store or a friend though. From her photographs from Canada this past summer, I see that I would need 200mm or 300mm zoom capability for what I want to shoot.

Gary Ramsey has some fantastic photography at Travel Small With Ramsey. He uses a Sony NEX 5n. Those cameras are a little out of my price range, although the price for a used Sony NEX 5n is reasonable on Amazon, but you know how I feel about buying used equipment.

Basically I had been looking at different cameras that had interchangeable lenses. I was favoring the Nikon D3200 due to the customer reviews, the price and it was within a short distance from my house. I haven't bought it because I didn't know if I wanted to go back to carrying one camera and then a bag with different sized lenses. I had done that before many years ago when cameras that had multiple range lenses built into the camera were not available.

I kept reading and looking.

Then yesterday I get a comment on my blog post from Lloyd over at Enjoy The Journey. His older blog name was Wanderin Lloyd for those that follow blogs. Either way his photography is also fantastic with different cameras used over his 13 years of traveling. You will see in his comment yesterday that he uses a Canon SX40 for his trips to zoos, museums, etc and uses a Canon SX700 30x lens when hiking.

Those two cameras kind of hit home with me. Great photographs, great consumer reviews and I noticed all the photos taken from a distance were sharp. Just like the cameras I mentioned above but these had just one built in lens with a wide range of different distance. Was the Canon SX40 the camera I had been looking for?

I spent a lot of time last night looking at those types of Canon and Nikon cameras. I am thinking that might be the type of camera I need. 

What I want is one camera, ability to shoot macro shots, landscape, shots of my hounds even in "action", zooming in on the eagle that shows up in back on rare occasions. Then at times I'd like to zoom in on the 10-15 deer that surprise us at times just in back of the house. I also wanted to be able to catch action shots that requires high speed, at sport events, especially when I go to the Indy 500 to watch practice or the times I am sitting on row 53 at a football game wanting to take a shot down at the line of scrimmage or sidelines.

After reading about the Canon SX40 and SX50, I am beginning to think that is the camera I've been looking for. I would have to buy the SX40 on Amazon, everyone locally is selling only the SX50 model with the SX60 coming out in October.

So I will let those thoughts brew for a while, maybe a day, maybe hours ... before I decide what to buy. The Nikon 3100, 3200 and 3300 are available locally as well as the Canon SX50.

In the meantime, the hounds will continue to "sleep on it" before the decision is made.