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.

I’ve spent the past few days “testing” out the Nikon D5000 and the Sony Handicam SR68 and I have finally decided on whether to keep or dump the gear…well, not so much the D5000, but the Handicam was in question.

Actually I have to “up my game” on the D5000 because it has more than enough features for my needs. I was a little disappointed with the 55-200 telephoto (VR), well, to be more accurate, I was expecting more from it than what I got. But this was because I’m not used to the lenses and how they function. So, to say the lens sucked would be wrong, it did what it was supposed to do. I may need to get another, more powerful, lens next year but I have this year to do more learning about it’s limitations. All in all the D5000 surpassed my expectations on ease of use, picture quality, and how fun it is to use.

The Handicam started out to be questionable, that is, until I read the manual and found out the features that it has. The night I picked it up I charged the battery for about an hour and a half to two hours and then started shooting my dimly lit bedroom. This was before I looked at the manual in more detail. I wasn’t happy with the way the video turned out. The more I shot with it, the deeper the disappointment. So, I started thinking about taking it back.

My niece’s indoor soccer game was coming up, and I hadn’t shot any daylight/bright light videos up to this point so I decided to hold off and wait to see how it would go. I had someone take the videos while I shot stills of my niece on the field. When I got home I hit the hay, I had to work that night, and when I got home the next day I shot more daylight footage with the handicam. Between the soccer video and the daylight shooting I truly have to say the videos were great!! The clarity was excellent, the motion in the video wasn’t sloppy and overall, I was excited about using the camera this season.

I sat down and thought about how the Handicam would be used…on the trail and 99% of the time in daylight conditions. I should’ve thought about this first before I went on my “downward spiral of negativity”. It truly wasn’t all that bad when it came to low light conditions with the features it has plus the scene selections. It has a still photo feature but I didn’t try that out. I bought the Nikon for the stills and the Handicam for the video, I don’t need my stills camera to do video and vice versa for the video camera.

I will have video on the main site, and maybe this one, in the future, but for now I gotta get the plans finished out and the reservations made and soon.