New Camera

 

My old Leica pretty much wore out so I got a new one. The last one was over 6 years old and I tried to trade it in at the camera store and get credit for my new one. The camera store looked at my old one and said they had never seen such a hard-used camera. The camera store guy termed it 'exceptional wear', and would not take it. So they are sending it back and I will continue to use it until it does not work anymore. 

The old camera has a 28mm fixed lens and the new one a fixed 43mm - so they will serve different purposes. And with the old one I do not mind taking it kayaking in the rain or skiing. It has already paid for itself. Since I bought the old Leica I have worn out 3 different Fujifilm cameras. Leicas are impressively durable, and I am hard on cameras.

But hey, there is no point in babying a camera. If you don't have the camera with you - then you can't get the picture, and there was no point in getting the camera in the first place. I take my cameras elk hunting in the rain. 

Modern digital cameras are expensive, but if you think of it in terms of cost per picture they are FAR, FAR cheaper than the cameras we used to use back in the days of film. Back then I'd keep a camera for years (I used my Pentax from 1979 to 2006), but you had to buy the film and pay to process every roll. It cost something like 20 dollars for every 36 pictures. And that's in 1990s dollars. Basically back in the days of film you paid for the pictures as you went along. These days you pay up front for all the pictures to come.

I really like the new Leica. It is a little slow to start up, but I think it takes better pictures than the old one. I prefer the longer lens too. The old 28mm was just too wide - I like a lens that is more focused in on things. And if I want a wide angle landscape I'll just stitch a bunch of pictures together. I've found that 35-50mm pictures stitch together better than wider angle pictures do - less distortion. 

Anyway, here is to another 6-8 years of Leica abuse and hard use! In the end I bet I pay less than 50 cents for every good picture that I take with the new Leica camera. And that's totally worth it.

Patrick

More Star-burst sunsets and my new favorite lens

 

cropped 27mm lens image

I like compact cameras with small lenses, and on my Fujifilm camera my favorite lens has always been their pancake 27 lens (41 in full frame). It's tiny! But it also has never been quite wide enough.  I always had to back up a bit much to get things to fit in the picture. So when Fuji came out with a new pancake lens in 23 mm (35 in full frame) I jumped on it and got the new lens.

In the 2 pictures below - one with the 23 and the other with the 27 - you can see that the 23 does capture more of the view. It's perfect for me, and I actually do not like a wider lens. I do have a full frame 28 lens and it is too wide.  I have to get too close to people! But best of all the new lens is just as small as the old one.  Whooo hoooo new favorite lens.

Below are some sunstar sunset pictures from recent skis with the dogs - all taken with my new lens.

Patrick

New 23 (35mm) lens

Old 27 (41 mm) lens

another with the 27

23 lens

23 lens

23 lens

23 lens image cropped

Cooking for an empty nest

 

Gyro donair leftovers (click here for recipe)

Stuey and Nora are both off to college and it is just the doggies and I here on Cliffside Road. These days I am cooking meals just for me. Initially, at the end of summer, I thought this was just great. This Summer and Fall I did all the cooking in my hunting and archaeology field camps, and I was tired of preparing meals for other people. So I was happily heating up 'TV dinners' and frozen pizzas in the oven for my own consumption. I particularly like Marie Collender pot pies.

But this is not very healthy, and it's also expensive.  Then consider that I have something like 200 pounds of prime game meat in the freezer in addition to all the carrots, garlic and potatoes from my garden.  I also like to cook. But with no one to cook for I have discovered an immediate problem - leftovers. I'll cook up a recipe that Stuey and Nora would finish in a sitting, and I'd be eating it every meal for 3 days.

So I've been thinking of new ways to cook. I talked to a friend of mine who also cooks for just himself and he says he cooks lots of soups, and sort of mixes and matches. I've tried cooking things that I can eat in different ways.  Like the gyros shown above.  I made gyro wraps for the first meal, and then put the meat on a greek salad for another meal.  I could have also frozen the gyro 'meatloaf' and saved it for another day.

I am also thinking of making smaller meals.  Maybe thaw a big deer roast and have half as a stir fry and then use the other half for steak and eggs for breakfast and another steak the next night? The last 2 days I ate deer chili because I do not mind eating that multiple times. Anyway, I don't have the answer yet, but I am bound and determined to not go the lazy TV dinner route!

Patrick

Pretty Pictures from Shuyak

 

I took 3 cameras to Shuyak - my Olympus TG6, Leica Q2, and Fujifilm XT5.  But I pretty much only used the Leica and Fujifilm cameras.  I only used the waterproof Olympus when it was pouring and I just needed a camera for documenting the sites. At the start of the trip I mostly used the Leica, and for the end of the trip, after I ran out of batteries for the Leica, the Fujifilm.

Looking at the pictures I think they both did well (top photos in this post from Fujifilm and bottom ones from the Leica).  I tended to like the colors and exposures and just general 'snap' of the Leica photos, but the Fujifilm did have a zoom (18-135 or really 28-220). And I found it useful at times to zoom in on things or to foreshorten the distance.

But really both cameras did well.

Patrick

Above here all the pictures taken with my XT5 Fujifilm camera, and the ones below were all taken with my Leica Q2.

The size of the Kodiak Archipelago

 

The Kodiak Archipelago superimposed onto a map of New England - from Chirikof Island on the lower left to the Barren Islands on the upper center (basically New Jersey to Vermont).

Pretty soon I am off on my first archaeological survey of the year (fingers crossed). Over the last 25 years or so the Alutiiq Museum working with various landowners has systematically surveyed about two thirds of the whole Kodiak Archipelago (by my guesstimate).  This includes Chirikof Island - the pear-shaped island shown down near Trenton, NJ on the map above. The map below shows what has been surveyed through 2023. Everything in red has been well surveyed while everything in purple needs survey.  The green areas have been partially surveyed. On my next survey I hope to turn the top island (Shuyak) on the map below from purple to red.

Anyway, I got to thinking that this is a pretty HUGE area for such a systematic archaeological survey. In terms of Alaska 'scale' Kodiak is not such a big place, but when you put Kodiak over a map of New England you realize the true scale of Kodiak and of our survey work. In terms of New England over the last 25 years we have basically surveyed the State of Connecticut.  Of course we have mostly just surveyed coastlines, river and lake banks because that's mostly where Alutiiq people lived or harvested resources.  But I also think in New England the archaeological sites are mostly on the coast or river and lake banks too.

Kodiak is a big place and I am lucky to work here!

Patrick

Kodiak survey coverage - this is NOT exact but a rough tally

Carrots from the garden before the garden is planted

 

Today I finally harvested the last of my carrots from last year.  Early last November we had a couple of hard freezes and I harvested a bunch of carrots, but I left a bunch more in the garden.  Then it froze hard and that was that until today when I harvested 5 gallons of carrots.

After the garden froze hard I covered the carrot patch in leaves and then put a couple of tarps over it all.  My hope was to insulate the carrots and keep them from a freeze and thaw cycle. I have done this before and it has worked in the past.  But leaving them in the ground all winter still seemed like a risk.

So I was very happy this morning when I uncovered the carrot patch, scraped off the leaves, and found crunchy sweet carrots underneath. And they do taste amazing - way sweeter than they did in the fall.  But after past experimentation I also know that I have to eat them up quick.  

Some of the carrots have black spots and I now know that this is a 'carrot mold' and will spread to the other carrots.  Also, last time I did a spring harvest after a couple of months the carrots lost their flavor.  

So this year the plan is to discard the ones with black spots, eat them fast, and savor the moment of eating garden fresh carrots in the spring!

Patrick

Shishaldin 2005 - My Film Swan Song

 

Slide film - stitched into panoramic

I've been looking through old photos lately and have been thinking about the film to digital transition. I stuck with film longer than most people.  I remember that the museum got a digital camera in 1998 and it was terrible - like the pictures it took were less than 1 mega pixel in size. By 2003 a lot of people I knew were using digital cameras, and, at the time, the pictures seemed pretty good.  I think the pictures were generally 3 mega pixels in size.  But looking back I am still glad that I did not switch because I think my film images were still better.

In 2005 I got a digital video camera that also took 2 megapixel still images.  It was my first digital camera, but I mostly still stuck with slides.  But I did take digital stills.  And I often created panoramic images stitching the digital files together. Then in 2006 I got a 6 mega pixel digital camera (the Pentax Optio WP10), and, for me, that was pretty much it for slide film. 

I think 6 megapixels is actually pretty close in quality to digitized slide film.  When I have scanned slides I've found that much over 12 megapixels all you gain extra is more grain in the film (I usually scan slide film at around 19 MB).  However, the 6MB digital cameras were better with colors and exposure than the film camera I was using at the time.  So at about 6 mega pixels I think digital had finally caught up with film, or at least for me it had.

But for a couple of years there I did use both digital and film.  Some major projects from that time period are archaeological surveys to Chirikof Island and Olga Lakes, the Salonie Mound excavation, and the pictures shown here from our ski trip to Shishaldin Volcano in the Aleutians.  I think the 2005 trip to Shishaldin might just be the last trip I ever did where I mostly used slide film.  It is not a coincidence that I started to blog in 2006.  Blogs are easier when you do not have to wait a couple of weeks for the pictures to come back.

Anyway, here are the pictures from my days of film swan song - the 2005 ski expedition to Shishaldin Volcano in the Aleutians.  We hiked and skied 20 miles or so to the base of the volcano and then waited for a weather window to climb to the top. The volcano is over 9000 feet high and is the tallest in the Aleutians.  We got to the top and skied down - at around 7000 vertical to our base camp it is the longest vertical ski run I've ever done in my life. Quite the expedition, and it is mostly documented in film!

Patrick

Digital - this is about 3 mega pixels in size

Digital - these are the 2 mega pixel pictures stitched into a panoramic - that's 7000 vertical to the top

Slide film - leaving False Pass on the long hike and ski to the volcano

slide film - the smoking caldera at the top of the volcano 

slide film - skiing from near the top of the volcano

slide film - Shishaldin is in the distance on the left

slide film - that's more than 5000 vertical ahead of us!

slide film - our camp at the base of the volcano where we waited for a weather window

slide film - navigating through a white out to get to the base of the volcano