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August 13, 2009, a Thursday
Wasilla (D&RA), Alaska, USA
— Rainy day, office work, and purchased a Canon EOS 1Ds Mk III
The weather forecast for today was for showers, and it was raining lightly when we awoke. I didn't hear back from the NY seller of the Canon EOS 1Ds Mk III, so I looked for some on eBay, and there are several of them available now, including a nice one with a decent Buy-It-Now price. I put together an order at B&H for HiTech 2-, 3-, and 4-stop ND (neutral density) filters in time for them to ship out today. Had my normal breakfast before showering because I start to get headachy if I don't eat soon enough in the morning. I worked up a blog entry while having my coffee, then showered. Processed images for a stock submission. (You may read more about stock submissions on August 7, 2009.)
Had lunch around 12:45. Because I still hadn't heard anything from the NY seller of the 1Ds Mk III, I did the Buy-It-Now of the Canon EOS 1Ds Mk III on eBay. I had been wanting a 1Ds Mk III to replace my 1Ds Mk II, but I couldn't justify the approximately $7500 for it when they first came out. The price of the new cameras has come down to about $6300, but that's still too much. I've been highly motivated lately to get a 1Ds Mk III because we'll be heading to Denali National Park next week where we'll camp for five days at Wonder lake. Because we'll have to schlep all of our gear onto the bus and then to the campground, I'm only going to bring one camera body, and I want that to be a "landscape body" with lots of pixels for my award-winning image(s) of Mt. McKinley reflected in Wonder Lake. :) The batteries for my 1Ds Mk II have only been lasting a day or two lately, so I thought it would be time to buy a new camera with much better batteries (The batteries for my 1D Mk III, which are the same as for the 1Ds Mk III, can last for a week of heavy shooting.) J has two batteries that will fit the 1Ds Mk II, so I could borrow them, but I've been having extreme pixel envy because J has a 5D Mk II that has 21.1MP and my 1D Mk II only has 16MP. :) Now with the 1Ds Mk III, I'll also have 21.1MP. :) Plus, I'll also have only one kind of battery for both of my camera bodies. (I'll keep my 1D Mk III and sell the 1Ds Mk II.)
I processed more images for a stock submission and tested my Epson P-4000, a small image downloader and viewer, with an 8GB CF card. J thought that the Epson might not be able to handle the large card, so I wanted to test it before going to Denali where I won't have my laptop to download images at the end of the day. The Epson could read the 8GB card, but it took bout 45 minutes to download the 7.6GB of data that was on it. If I remember correctly, that's about half the battery life of the unit, so using that in Denali isn't really an option. :( So, I started looking for alternative field storage devices
We went inside at 5:20 for dinner with D & RA of RA's pork chops, baked beans, cooked zucchini, and garlic bread. The pock chops were very moist and tender. We continued visiting, and Tootie got lots of loving from me. We had some very tasty pecan tarts with cool-whip for dessert — mmm.
We returned to the RV around 8:30, and I continued looking for a new image field storage device. The Nexto Extreme ND2700 has a very fast download but a really tiny screen with no image display and only one button to control all functions. The Hyperdrive Colorspace UDMA can display images and is as fast as the Nexto, but it's much more expensive. However, they do offer a model with no hard drive, so maybe I'll take this opportunity to remove the 320GB hard drive from my laptop to use in the Hyperdrive and then install a 500GB hard drive in the laptop. I've been thinking about getting a 7200RPM 500GB hard drive for the laptop since they've become available so that I can have all of my non-image files with me instead of having some archived on an external drive. I checked eBay, and used Epson P-4000's are selling for much more than I thought they would. :)
Had lunch around 12:45. Because I still hadn't heard anything from the NY seller of the 1Ds Mk III, I did the Buy-It-Now of the Canon EOS 1Ds Mk III on eBay. I had been wanting a 1Ds Mk III to replace my 1Ds Mk II, but I couldn't justify the approximately $7500 for it when they first came out. The price of the new cameras has come down to about $6300, but that's still too much. I've been highly motivated lately to get a 1Ds Mk III because we'll be heading to Denali National Park next week where we'll camp for five days at Wonder lake. Because we'll have to schlep all of our gear onto the bus and then to the campground, I'm only going to bring one camera body, and I want that to be a "landscape body" with lots of pixels for my award-winning image(s) of Mt. McKinley reflected in Wonder Lake. :) The batteries for my 1Ds Mk II have only been lasting a day or two lately, so I thought it would be time to buy a new camera with much better batteries (The batteries for my 1D Mk III, which are the same as for the 1Ds Mk III, can last for a week of heavy shooting.) J has two batteries that will fit the 1Ds Mk II, so I could borrow them, but I've been having extreme pixel envy because J has a 5D Mk II that has 21.1MP and my 1D Mk II only has 16MP. :) Now with the 1Ds Mk III, I'll also have 21.1MP. :) Plus, I'll also have only one kind of battery for both of my camera bodies. (I'll keep my 1D Mk III and sell the 1Ds Mk II.)
I processed more images for a stock submission and tested my Epson P-4000, a small image downloader and viewer, with an 8GB CF card. J thought that the Epson might not be able to handle the large card, so I wanted to test it before going to Denali where I won't have my laptop to download images at the end of the day. The Epson could read the 8GB card, but it took bout 45 minutes to download the 7.6GB of data that was on it. If I remember correctly, that's about half the battery life of the unit, so using that in Denali isn't really an option. :( So, I started looking for alternative field storage devices
We went inside at 5:20 for dinner with D & RA of RA's pork chops, baked beans, cooked zucchini, and garlic bread. The pock chops were very moist and tender. We continued visiting, and Tootie got lots of loving from me. We had some very tasty pecan tarts with cool-whip for dessert — mmm.
We returned to the RV around 8:30, and I continued looking for a new image field storage device. The Nexto Extreme ND2700 has a very fast download but a really tiny screen with no image display and only one button to control all functions. The Hyperdrive Colorspace UDMA can display images and is as fast as the Nexto, but it's much more expensive. However, they do offer a model with no hard drive, so maybe I'll take this opportunity to remove the 320GB hard drive from my laptop to use in the Hyperdrive and then install a 500GB hard drive in the laptop. I've been thinking about getting a 7200RPM 500GB hard drive for the laptop since they've become available so that I can have all of my non-image files with me instead of having some archived on an external drive. I checked eBay, and used Epson P-4000's are selling for much more than I thought they would. :)