It seems that McConnells Mill and Settlers Cabin Parks brought to light “issues” with my gear. Some things are just “wonky” while other things just escaped attention. The wonky part was the GPS at McConnells Mill.

A tree canopy can greatly decrease the effectiveness of a GPS . That’s why a GPS has different modes to be able to compensate for a poor signal. But when it doesn’t matter what mode you switch to it doesn’t matter what mode you switch to. My GPS was all over the place and when I’m trying to record my hike and then run it through a topo program it shows me in places way off of where I was. If I’m going to show people where to go, or where I went the GPS has to be pretty accurate like within 20-30′ of accuracy. McConnells Mill was more like 45-55′ of accuracy, it had me in the middle of Slippery Rock Creek! Yah, I’m a little unhappy. Luckily Settlers was that far off, it averaged 20-25′ of accuracy.

Speaking of Settlers…my Olympus point and shoot threw me a hook. I’ve been using it to shoot video because it is a little tougher than the Handicam and I won’t cry as much if I drop it. It’s rated shockproof up to 5′. Well, after I shot footage at settlers and got everything back home and uploaded I decided to check the resolution in the movie mode on the Olympus. It was 320 x 240 (QVGA) when I wanted 640 x 480…Damn It! I started using the Olympus at McConnells Mills and now I need to figure out how I will be using it in my upcoming projects.

So the thing I learned: The GPS is still good and has the potential to be even better, but that’s up to the manufacturer. I’ve gotten information that the software for the modes is being worked on to make it better. This, for now, is out of my control. The Olympus should have been checked before I used it…I didn’t, that was within my sphere of control. I guess I need to double check the gear before I use it and then I would be sure. Yes, lesson learned, all the way around.

I decided that in order to make sure my gear was ready for the upcoming hiking season I had to get out and try it out. This was one of the purposes, besides getting out, for this hike. Since I didn’t finish out the trail I decided not to post this on the main site. When I do finish out this trail it will be “main site worthy”.

I had just updated my GPS and needed check on it’s accuracy. When I first got it it was, well, a little “off”. I drew a great track with no “spidering” but the accuracy fluctuated. It’s gone through quite a few updates since last season so I wanted to see how it was working. I was a little disappointed on the outbound leg of the trail with an overall average of about 25′-35′ accuracy, but on the return leg it dropped to about 20′. The elevation looked pretty good as well.

North Ridge Trail - NatGeo Topo

I ran the .GPX file through NatGeo Topo States Edition for Pennsylvania and New Jersey. I got it on sale at Sportsman’s Warehouse when they had the going out of business sale. To get the disks for all of the places I hike would be a small fortune so I got it for the state I hiked the most.

A note: I took two sets of track logs, the outbound and the inbound. The outbound was the one I had accuracy concerns with, the inbound was better, I thought. I checked out both files with the topo program and found they were pretty close. The next thing was how it worked with Google Maps. I want to thank Dave Pidgeon from Compass Points Media for the idea. I’ve seen it in his posts and thought it would be a great idea. It took me about 2 hours to figure out how to work with it but I think I have it down.

I’m not going to put it up as it was a test to see how to use it and what I needed. So, when the next hike comes up I know what to do with not only Google Maps but how to enhance my track on my topo program.

The other part of the hike…the still and video cameras went off pretty easy. First, I wanted to see what the camera and the bigger lens felt like on a little longer hike than the 3 miles at Duff Park, which is the first time I took it out on a trail. The added mile or so didn’t really make a lot of difference. The camera is definitely heavier than the Sony H7 that I’ve been using so the difference may only be felt in my longer hikes. The Sony Handicam was a “no brainer”, a super light little video camera that I barely knew was even there.

1rst Pic - "Normal" Shot

The Nikon, with the 18mm-270mm did a great job when I was shooting wide angle or close up. I was trying to replicate an effect I’ve seen on a lot of web sites as well as in some magazines where the waterfall looks sort of like silk threads loosely bundled together and flowing down to the ground. After reading my camera book and talking to a few friends I decided I wanted to try it on this outing.

I set the camera to shutter priority, set the shutter speed to the slowest available and the aperture followed automatically by adjusting to a very small opening. This would show the rocks and everything that didn’t move as clear but still show the water moving. Well, make it look “whispy”. As I’ve learned, when the aperture is small it’s used for landscape photography and add the slower shutter speed and it gives the illusion of

2nd Pic- Small Aperture, Slow Shutter Speed

the water moving. The First picture, to the left, was shot in the automatic mode and the second, to the right, was shot with “Shutter Priority”. So now I can’t wait to try this out on a few of my favorite waterfalls.

Lastly, I shot some footage with the Handicam and realized that creating a video of my hikes wasn’t going to be all that easy…at least the way I would like to do it. Just walking along the trail and shooting presents some problems…tripping over my own feet is one of them. So, I will be working on that, among other things, when I once again hit the trail.