Some thoughts on photography

[nighthawk]

Many of you have been bitten by the shutter bug so to speak. I got bitten a long time ago. Photography really does go hand in hand with our sport. The environment of our sport exposes us to some of the most beautiful wonders of the natural world.

As I said, almost all of you do some type of photography while afield. Whether you are using film, digital, point and shoot or SLR cameras there are products that help you get the best shots out of your gear.

A tool I find indispensable for my DSLR is the Magic Lantern Guide from lark Books:

http://www.larkbooks.com/mlg

the guide for my Pentax K10D is not listed on their site but a quick google search reveals several copies to be bought. If your dslr is not listed on the Lark Books site do a google search for it.

A good magazine for all is the Digital Photography Magazine:

http://www.dpmag.com/

At last there is the Post Processing software. There are many of these programs available and I have used several of them. My two favorites are ACD SEE Photo Manager as a basic quick processing program:

http://www.acdsee.com/

and my absolute favorite is Corel Paint Shop Pro Ultimate Photo X2:

http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satelli...1&tabview=tab0

I have used some of the high end Adobe products and while they have some really nice features I found the Corel program more to my liking. The Corel program does everything I want it to do, has tons of features I have yet to even use, has a more intuitive user friendly interface than Adobe and at that price you probably won/t be able to beat it! I.M.H.O. Adobe makes a very good product but it is way overpriced.

I prefer the Digital Single Lens Reflex cameras but my next purchase will be the Pentax Optio W80. However, no matter the make, the advances in the point and shoot categories have been awesome. I am truly impressed by some of the results posted here by those of you using these cameras. These cameras fill a nice niche in our sport where the size and weight of our gear is critical.

One more thought. Before you think that the most expensive of every piece of gear is the best consider these shots from my K10D:







The lenses used were a Richo and a Pentax totaling 60 dollars. I used the above mentioned Corel program to do the Post Processing.

Camera Body Pentax K10D $399.99
Lenses Richo and Pentax $60 dollars for both
PP Software Corel PS Photo Ultimate $54.99

total $514.99 and I have hundreds more photos better than those.