Oh, Go Fly A Kite!

    • Anonymous
      February 17, 2007 at 3:58 pm

      “Judi Z” mentioned flying a kite in the “Tavern” thread…..and as a coincidence a neighbor kid was out trying to do that!

      So, I grabbed my camera and took a few before he got too tired and sweaty to continue…..there wasn’t enough steady wind……

      [I]Oh, how I wish I was young enough, agile enough, and well enough to do this again!![/I]

      [IMG]http://farm1.static.flickr.com/148/392728446_c7ef6ea26c_o.jpg[/IMG]

      [IMG]http://farm1.static.flickr.com/148/392728476_2045da0088_o.jpg[/IMG]

      [IMG]http://farm1.static.flickr.com/163/392728415_b81e2da50a_o.jpg[/IMG]

    • Anonymous
      February 17, 2007 at 9:02 pm

      awesome pics ken. nice ship kite she has. i have soo many kites that i haven’t been able to fly yet. we use to belong to the Black Swamp Air Force Club, a kite flying club. talk about some awesome kites, when they get together for rallies there are hundreds of kites and they have all kinds of contests with them. even some that take you for a ride. i miss running on the beach trying to fly my stunt kites…:(

    • Anonymous
      February 17, 2007 at 9:33 pm

      Ken,
      What type of camera and lens set up did you use to get the pictures of the cats and the ones at the zoo? They are excellent. Actually all the pictures are excellent.

    • Anonymous
      February 18, 2007 at 1:41 am

      [QUOTE=angel2ndclass22699]awesome pics ken. nice ship kite she has. i have soo many kites that i haven’t been able to fly yet. we use to belong to the Black Swamp Air Force Club, a kite flying club. talk about some awesome kites, when they get together for rallies there are hundreds of kites and they have all kinds of contests with them. even some that take you for a ride. i miss running on the beach trying to fly my stunt kites…:([/QUOTE]
      Thanks Cheryl!

      The kite flyer is Cody, his golden tresses might look better on a female :confused: (IMHO), but he’s not a bad kid!

    • Anonymous
      February 18, 2007 at 2:04 am

      [QUOTE=Jim C]Ken,
      What type of camera and lens set up did you use to get the pictures of the cats and the ones at the zoo? They are excellent. Actually all the pictures are excellent.[/QUOTE]
      Thanks Jim! My camera body is a Nikon D200. Some of the older zoo and cat shots were taken with a Nikon D70.

      One set of zoo shots were taken with a Nikon 18-200VR lens, as were many cats photos, lately I’ve been using a Nikon 70-300VR lens. There are several other lenses I have used over the past couple of years for many of my shots.

      The designation of the focal length of a lens is stated based on it’s use on a “film” camera (a fast dying breed). However, on a digital camera, like mine, the focal length is multiplied by 1.5 because of the difference in size of the digital sensor compared to a frame of 35mm film.

      So, for instance, the 70-300 zoom lens on a digital camera provides a 105mm to 105mm (105-450) focal length.

      The “VR” designation means Vibration Control. Nikon builds micro gyroscopes and mini electric motors into the lenses themselves. The gyroscopes sense vertical and horizontal movement and the motors keep the lens elements compensated for that movement – typical camera shake. This allows one to hand hold such a long telephoto lens and still get tack sharp photos.

      It also allows hand-holding at some ridiculously low shutter speeds (as for dark areas). I have hand-held the D200/70-300VR at 300mm and a 1/6th of a second exposure. Normally 1/60th is the lowest you should use for any shot, but the rule of thumb is that the shutter speed be at least equal to the focal length.

      Therefore, with 300mm the shutter speed hand-held should be 1/300th of a second, and the VR allows the shutter speed to be 1/6th instead!! (But that’s not easy to do……)

      For my “serious” work I use a very good tripod…… I have a Gitzo 1325 Tripod with a ReallyRightStuff BH-55 Ball-head.

      There is a also a lot of other really very good camera equipment at decent prices available that will do an excellent job.