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Topics:
MINI
Hostel
Camera
Cell phone
How the MINI
performed in long distance driving
-
No sore butts after 3000km in 5
days
-
No mechanical malfunctions of any
sort
-
Alignment was absolutely perfect,
able to go straight hands-free for over 500 meters
at a time
-
Sports Suspension with 15" tires
made the ride quite comfortable
-
175/65/15 tires provided about
0.84g of cornering force, adequate if not racing
against others
-
Tire sidewall flexes too much,
making high speed cornering (above 130km/h) a bit
unstable
-
Brakes didn't fade other than on
long downhill twisty sections that required constant
braking
-
Passing on 2 lane roads required
downshifts so the engine revs above 4500rpm,
otherwise the car was too slow. More power would
have been nice, but never really got stuck behind
another car for long with lack of power being the
reason
-
A/C worked fine in 30C weather,
gives much colder air above 130km/h for some reason
-
The Cooper did not seem to have
any noticeable performance difference between using 87 and
91 octane
-
At no times were the suspension
cause for any complaints, soft enough to be
comfortable but more than enough control to make the
car feel like a go cart in the extremely twisty bits
-
MINIs are a little loud on the
highway
-
Wish there was a higher cruising
gear, 4000rpm at 130km/h is a bit too loud
-
Bottled water in the front cup
holders obscures the window switches and make
rattling noises sometimes
-
There are way more than enough
spaces to store stuff for 2 people on a long trip
-
Rear panels rattled like crazy
over certain pavement frequencies
-
High speed driving results in fuel
economy lower than normal city driving (averaged US
32MPG for the trip)
-
Lack of torque below 2000 rpm
makes hill starts quite difficult
-
If you see deer on the side of
the road ahead, honk, instead of staring at you they
run away instantly.
-
Drew a lot of stares from
everyone, especially hitch hikers who looked very
disappointed when I pass by them
What I would
do differently next time for the MINI
-
Bring the spare tire
-
Wash the car during the trip,
dead bugs and other stuff stick really good
-
Thats about it
How was life in cheap dormitory
hostels?
-
Reserve early, many hostels
aren't very big and gets full quickly.
-
Bring ear plugs and preferably
ear plug headphones, unless you're not bothered by
snoring people
-
Bring your own lock, most places
offer lockers in the room
-
Bring a pillow of your own if you
have room, most pillows are too small to support
your head
-
Check in a little early if you
could, maybe you could pick a bed closer to the
window or something
-
Most places provide clean linen
and towels, no need to bring those with you
-
Might want to bring eye shades if
you want to sleep and leave early, some people don't
come in until 2-3 am.
-
Research your destination online
or through books so you could avoid the truly bad
hostels
-
Bring a pair of sandals, some
showers might be a little gross for bare foot
-
If you want to chat and make new
friends there are ample opportunities out in common
areas, but if you just want to sleep no one will
bother you either.
-
Cell phones are great alarm
clocks, since they could vibrate and not wake
everyone else up
-
If you don't mind sleeping with
others in the same room on a strange bed its hard to
do better than hostels.
What about the camera equipment?
First off I have to say that I'm not a professional
photographer (I want to be one some day) and I have lots
to learn still. Although I can say that I
understand most of the technical side of photography
(which function does what, how each setting affects the
final image...) but the most important thing about
photography in my opinion is having the eye for good
composition and just being there at the right time in
the right place.
My Camera equipment consists of a Canon Digital SLR
D60, Sigma 17-35mm 2.8-4.5 wide angle lens, Canon
28-135mm F3.5-5.6 Image stabilizer lens, Canon 70-300mm
F4-5.6 Image stabilizer lens, remote cable release, and
a 8 lb Bausch & Lomb tripod with quick release plate.
I also used my point and shoot Canon S30 camera
exclusively inside the car for quick shots of the road
and also videos.
Generally I use Aperture Priority mode (Av) on both
cameras. I use the aperture setting to control the
depth of field in the pictures. For example, for
the picture
of my MINI at the Penticton beach I shot that wide
open (widest aperture available on the lens, F5.0 for
that focal length, which was 135mm) so the MINI would be
in focus, but since the depth of field is shallow, the
background becomes blurry.
With the aperture open wide, more light is admitted
through the lens and onto the camera sensor, which means
the shutter speed is faster (thus lenses with big
aperture like F1.4 are called "Fast" lens) Faster
shutter speed means there is less risk of the picture
becoming blurry due to your hands shaking, also you can
stop motion better with faster shutter speeds. For
example, the
picture of the pigeons over the lake was shot at
1/1600 of a second, which made them appear to "freeze"
in mid air.
For
shots where I want everything in the picture to be in
generally good focus, I would use smaller
aperture setting (like F9-16) depending on how far
everything is in the picture. Like the
picture of
the flowers in front of the mountain at Alta Lake, I
used F10 to get the mountain in the background to be in
focus (actually, this wasn't very well done, should have
used an even smaller aperture)
When using smaller aperture less light gets onto
the camera sensor and shutter time will be increased.
If possible I would use a tripod in a slow shutter
situation, however, if the shot required me to hand hold
the camera I would switch to a higher ISO setting.
Higher ISO means the sensor is more sensitive to light,
so you the shutter speed required is faster. The
trade off is digital noise in the picture. If you
use a digital SLR, usually the noise is negligible at
ISO 400 or lower anyway, and I think its better to have
a grainy/noisy shot that is blur free than a really
clean but blurry shot.
Difficult light conditions such as
fireworks
will fool the camera's light meter into giving the wrong
exposures. In those situations I will set the
camera to manual mode to manually adjust the exposure
needed. For fireworks, the firework brightness is
generally dictated by the aperture size and ISO setting,
while the shutter speed will determine how much of the
firework will be captured on film. If you leave
the shutter long enough you could capture more than one
firework. In fact people use that technique and
capture multiple firework on the same piece of film, but
that technique cannot be done with digital camera, you
could always put 2 or more pictures together in
Photoshop of course :)
As for composition, I'm still a student myself.
There are way too many people with more talent and skill
than I have, so I won't say much about that here.
Generally I try to include as little as possible in the
picture so the main subject stands out. Sometimes
too many things in a picture will become distracting.
I also look for interesting contrast, lighting and
patterns as well. This comes with practice, just
like everything else in life. I try to practice as
much as I could, I've shot over 8000 pictures in the 3
1/2 months I've had the SLR, hehe (thank God I don't
need to pay for film!)
As
for the camera equipment's performance during the
trip:
-
No problems at all generally, no
failures of any kind
-
Very useful to have lenses
covering wide angle to long tele photo (28-500mm in
35mm terms), the subject matter is diverse and you
won't know exactly what you would see
-
Look at the histogram for every
shot, you won't get a second chance to go back to
the same place for a while, so you must make sure
you get the exposure right
-
Bring a tripod for night
exposures, but unless you're doing is critical work
(why are you reading this if you're a real pro
anyway), you're better off bringing a monopod and
use lenses or cameras with image stabilization
technology out in the field. This way you
carry less weight, get more done, and won't get into
the way of other travelers as much.
-
Buy a portable picture storage
hard drive, or an ipod with card reader. That
way you could reuse your memory cards and shoot as
much as you like
-
Bring lens hoods and use them
-
Only charged the battery twice,
once in the car and once in the place where I
stayed. I only took about 800 pictures in 5
days so battery power wasn't a problem
-
Get familiar with all your camera
equipment before you go, you won't want to be
learning how to use anything while you're out in the
field
-
High speed memory cards did
nothing for me, I guess if I shot sports it would
help, otherwise, my slow speed Compact flash cards
were capable of about 20 pictures in 30 seconds,
more than enough for what I used the camera for
-
Bring some business cards and ask
people if they want pictures taken, its a good way
to make contacts
How was the cell phone coverage by
Telus in BC?
-
Lousy, most places in the
mountains were not covered
-
When it does work in the bigger
towns the reception was very clear though
-
If your car does break down out
in the mountains you're probably going to need to
flag down others for help anyway
11/07/06
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