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So I still remember my sister and brother-in-law dragging me down to the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk when I was a kid and so those memories were there when Lisa and I headed down there with our own kids this week.

Ryan, just like on our adventures in Disneyland, couldn’t wait to go on the log ride and it didn’t matter that it was still 60 degrees and foggy the first thing in the morning.

Katie, as it turned out, was pretty much open to any ride she could go on. She especially liked the rides for kids her size that she could go on by herself. It was quite a hoot to watch her riding rides all by herself.

Curiously, the Amazing Chinese Acrobats were there which is weird because they were in Reno when we were there last year. Reno, however, had fewer butt cracks in attendance, which by and large was a good thing.

We also got up to the Mystery Spot which was mildly entertaining. The engineer in me was not overly impressed, but it made for some fun and now I can say I’ve been there.

Also cool on this trip was the use I got out of my new iPhone. We used the GPS and maps application pretty extensively when navigating around Santa Cruz and it did pretty good for what we asked of it. It found the afore mentioned Mystery Spot for us and even found us lunch on the way home. Yes, the 3G coverage was crap and the phone refused to downshift into EDGE (where the coverage was excellent) and therefore battery life on the first day sucked pretty bad. Manually switching it to EDGE solved all that and from there on out the phone behaved great. I do hope Apple gets its 3G act together on the iPhones.

The camera on the iPhone isn’t all that bad for what it is and I got some decent shots off it (like the shot of Katie to the left).

Finally, I’ve come to the conclusion that there are “family outings” and there are “photo outings” and they are not necessarily the same thing. Lugging multiple lenses, strobes and other photo knick-nacks off to new locales is great for “photo outings” but sometimes even a “plain” D300 and an 18-200 bouncing off your hip while herding kids in a crowded amusement park can be a bit much. I’m thinking that something along the lines of the Canon G9 might make a good surrogate for when kid herding is more the order of the day.

Anyway, a good time was had by all.

More photos from Santa Cruz 2008…

It’s father’s day so I could think of nothing better to do than to go stomping through dry weeds, broken glass and owl poop while carrying thousands of dollars in camera gear. Yep, that’s right, I headed back out to Mather Field to have a look at the those old nuke bunkers once again.

Yep, they’re still there. Yep, still abandoned.

The biggest difference this time around, besides the graffiti and paintball marks on everything, was the owls. Bloody hell, there were lots of owls. Every building out there had at least one owl in it. Like a freaking Harry Potter convention. And the damn things kept waiting for me to walk right up close before they flew off, screeching, and scaring the bejesus out of me every freakin’ time.

This time I did screw up enough courage to actually go into some of the bunkers, far enough to lay some strobes for lighting effects. It’s hard to explain, but the dark, cavernous nature of the things just makes them creepy to me. And the weird echos… and the damn owls. Brrrr.

And no, I never got into that room in the far back of some of big bunkers. It’s some kind of ventalation room or something. One had an owl nest in it and that seemed like a good way to piss off mama-owl. Owls have talons.

So after an hour and a half of tromping around out there I was suitably hot and sweaty and ready to leave. I strongly recommend a good set of boots if you head out there as aside from the usual suite of valley stickers there’s all manner of nasties that can seriously mess up your day — and it’s a long way from help. Make sure your tetanus is up-to-date (mine isn’t).

More photos…

So I’ve been looking for new camera bag. I’ve had a Domke F-3X for, um, 20 years and it’s still great as a “day bag” but I’ve been wanting something else for a while now. Something that can store the bulk of my gear when I’m not using it but still serve as a carry-on in the event of a plane trip. Oh and I want it to be able to hold my laptop as well.

Basically here’s what I’m after:

• It has to be carry-on compatible (i.e.: 10″ x 16″ x 24″ in the case of Southwest)
• It has to carry a goodly amount of gear if possible (2 bodies, 4-6 lenses, 2 strobes and other photo-y nicknacks)
• It has to be able to hold a 15″ Mac Book Pro
• It has to be rolling

Now I thought I had the answer with the Tamrac CyberPack 6 backpack but one thing not mentioned in my Dinseyland post was that I managed to tweak my back with it in the airport which royally sucked. At that point rolling became a must have.

Then I discovered Tenba’s “Roadie” line. I got all sucked in by the slick YouTube video but the video overlooked one important titbit about the large Roadie case - it’s freakin’ huge. This is very cool and all, but no amount of “carry-on compatible” labels and tags would make it fit into the the little box at the Southwest ticket counter.

Even the “small” Roadie has printed dimensions that are larger than most carry-on limitations. They’re nice cases, but how they can say “carry-on compatible” with a straight face is beyond me.

So, I fear my next step in this hunt is to accept the fact that a rolling case and separate laptop case is the only realistic way to go. By eliminating the laptop requirement my options increase quite a bit so we’ll see.

Ok, I think new year’s resolutions are dorky, but this is more of a challenge. I purchased my first DSLR, a Nikon D80, on January 5th of last year. Since then it says I shot 6545 pictures (I’ve only kept 4343 of them).

So, lets aim for 10,000 “shutter actuations” in 2008 with a commensurate keep rate. Should be fun.

I need to keep my camera at the ready more.

Yesterday while leaving one of our remote offices I came across one of those guys that plasters his car with signs. Usually its just some extreme political viewpoint or other, but as I read this guy’s high art I just started laughing — then I frantically grabbed for my camera.

Let me get this straight, the judge ate your kids for breakfast… whaaaa?

Sadly I was on the slow side and there was traffic to deal with, so it’s not the best shot, but you get the point.

Then a few offramps up the freeway there was the kid in a toga on a Segway advertising pizza.

You heard me.

Where yer spurs? — Reno Nevada to New Jersey, in Buckaroo Banzai

Just got home from Reno, Nevada. We were wanting to take Ryan on a vacation and he’d been wanting to go to another state. Seemed like a cool idea so we decided to go to Reno… Reno, Nevada.

Well more specifically we went to Circus Circus in Reno, because with the exception of a foray out to see Ratatouille (not one of Pixar’s best) we pretty much stayed under the Circus Circus tent.

Let me just say, those damn quarter sucking midway games, well, suck quarters. You think you’re in the protective kid-safe zone, but noooo, you’re wrong. Like little kid-safe harpies the machines call to you. Ooooh, drop a quarter in me and you’ll get some tickets! Get more tickets and you can redeem them for cool stuff! It’s only later you realize that you’re missing $100 and have a mountain of tickets and you can redeem them for… a cheap, Chinese, probably lead paint lined, knockoff toy.

At least with a slot machine you can have fleeting dreams: C’mon, Papa needs a new camera lens *shtick tick tick tick tick* Damn!

The other thing I noticed about Reno, and I know of no delicate way to put this, was an odd prevalence of fat people. I mean, damn! I’m a little over weight, but I fit in the freakin’ scrawny category up there. Ya know, I never bought into that obesity epidemic BS you read about. I few pounds of lazy does not equal “obese”. Then I went to Reno!

As if feeding the problem (*snicker*) Circus Circus ran this tram between their two buildings. A… very… slow… tram. It was quicker to walk, seriously, I timed it.

WALK PEOPLE!

Anyway, we have a few more stuffed animals now and Ryan can say he’s been to another state. Me? I think I’m gonna go for a run.

More photos…

A while back I found an old Kodak PhotoCD with some shots from my tour of Kuwait in 1991 (“…in support of Operation Desert Shield/Storm”). I uploaded a few (the ones that didn’t suck) to Flickr.

It’s interesting to look at them now. The images show some light leakage on the edges and scratching from the film plane. I remember carting around the camera (an F3 that I still own) and film (what’s film, Dad?) through the dust and s*** for 4 months. I don’t remember seeing the damage before.

In the spirit of Memorial Day, I thought I’d share.

So I was out looking for something to contribute to the 24 Hours of Flickr project and I swung by Cameron Park Airpark. Nothing like airplanes in the garage to fill a frame… but I digress…

I swung up to the fence along the runway just for the hell of it and I just happened to look up and there was an airplane on approach… but it looked funny. There was something sticking out the plane’s nose!

This other guy there yelled over to me, “Did you see that?!?!”. Uh, I thought I did. “He’s too low, he’s not gonna make it!”. Right there my brain went into photojournalism mode.

Of course I haven’t shot news in 20 years.

20 years ago, there were two knobs on your camera and you just knew they were set to 1/500th @ f/11 and you were shooting Tri-X. You focused yourself.

Today, you have a small computer in your hands that makes decisions you might not make. As the plane was coming in I discovered the difference between “single-mode” and “continuous-mode” autofocus, I was set for “single-mode” (actually “auto” but it it didn’t seem to care) and I’d get the little *beep* telling me it was all focused and then I’d pause to compose the frame and by the time I actually shot, the damn plane would be out-of-focus. Funny how that works.

I figured it out and the later frames are better, but damnit, that was annoying. I think next time, if things start happening fast, the best idea might be to spin the little knob to the idiot icon for “sports-mode” and just go with that.

For what it’s worth, the pilot did just fine. He came in low, somewhat slow and touched down nicely at the very end of the runway. He certainly had more of a handle on his equipement than I did :).

Well, I went out to another out-of-the-way place to take a look around. This time I chose the antenna complex south of Highway 50 near the El Dorado county line. I’ve only driven by it a million times on my commute, and I’ve always wondered what was there. Much like the Mather forays I used Google Maps to figure out how to get there.

After bouncing along a mile or so of what can only loosely be called a “road” I finally reached the the antennas. It was late and the sun was setting (always the case) and even though you command an impressive view from up there, it was too smoky for any good panoramic shots (and like an idiot I left before the beautiful smoke-reddened sunset).

Much to my dismay I discovered two shortcommings of the D80 and the new lens:

First, the lense vignettes when wide open at long focal lengths. That was a little surprising. It may freak you out if you shoot blank skies at 200mm at f/5.6. Uh, ya think?! You can see just a hint of this in the upper right of the main image above.

Second, I shot some in black and white mode and I turned on the D80’s B&W “filter effects” to mimmic a red filter — to darken the sky and bump the contrast. Ok, this feature just sucks. One, it doesn’t seem to be a very RED red filter (i.e.: it doesn’t darken the blue sky very much at all - but it WILL exacerbate the vignetting mentioned above) and two, even tones (hello! like the sky!) in the resulting image are mottled, like it tries to add Tri-X grain or something. All it accomplishes is making your images turn to shit.

I don’t know if it’s just the “filter effects” mode that does it or if the whole B&W mode is jacked up. I’ll probably test that more tommorrow.

Anyway, I’d like to head back up on a clear day, like the day after a good rain. It might be neat to shoot at night from there too. Or maybe even a decent sunset (d’oh!).

Ok, so my birthday was a few days ago and I’m just now getting time to pontificate about it. I got some very cool swag this time around thanks to the wonderful B&H wishlist feature.

From the wife and kids I got a Nikon SB-600 Speedlight (a “flash” to most people) and an MB-D80 battery pack.

The strobe (er “flash”) is just way cool. It has this wireless mode that lets you just set it somewhere off camera and it knows what to do. Back in the day I hardly ever used a strobe on-camera if I could avoid it. Now not only are there no cables, but through the magic of god knows what, all the automatic gobledy-gook works too. Simply amazing.

The battery back was kinda frivolus, but kinda not. I have big hands and the D80 alone never felt quite right. The battery pack adds enough to make the camera feel right, and it makes you feel like it’s an F-series behemoth to boot :).

But wait, that’s not all….

Today I bought my gift for myself. I got the Nikon 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G ED-IF AF-S VR DX Zoom-Nikkor (man what a name). It turns out that good old Action Camera got two of these insanly hard to find beasts in last night and I got the second of the two.

I haven’t had the chance to shoot much with it yet, but I’m thrilled to note that it visually appears sharper than the 18-55 kit lens that came with the D80.

All this has made the little D80 into a wrist snapping monster that interestingly just barely wedges into my old Domke F3 bag.

Niiiice.