Maine Travel Day - Let the Adventure Begin

Posted from Big Al's Adventures: http://www.bigalsadventures.com/maine-travel-day/

Heading Out

Today we started our trek to Maine for a nine-day vacation. Now granted when I go on vacation I am looking to do some photography on top of relaxing.

Maine at this time of year can be even more amazing with the changing of the season. I have already seen tons of beautiful red and yellow leaves on the trees along the road.

We were planning to leave around 7:00am, but as normal, we did not leave till around 8:00am.

It was pretty smooth sailing till we hit Connecticut. There we hit some major traffic due to some construction. They had two lanes go down to one for about a mile.

The best part was the construction zone was only a tiny section of a bridge. The backup was many, many miles long. Though it is funny since last time we went through the same area we had traffic without construction.

Maine Reststop

We did pretty well on gas while heading up here. We made it almost to the hotel but decided to stop to fill up on gas before arriving so in the morning we could just go.

The rest stop we went to was one that we have visited before. They have this big Moose statue by the building that has the restrooms and food services.

I decided that since we were going to be a few minutes I would go take a few pictures of the Moose statue. Again another snag. There was a maintenance guy cleaning the mulch around the Moose statue.

He did say if we wanted to take a picture with the Moose that we could. Since I just wanted to get a picture of it I did. I took three shots, but one had a tanker truck in it so I did closeups of the Moose's head.

We will probably go back at some point to get a better shot of it later this week.

Moose Statue

Moose Statue

Moose Statue

Moose Statue

Moose Statue

Arrival

We finally arrived at our hotel around 4:30pm. By the time we moved everything into the room and got settled it was around 6:00pm.

We decided to head out to get something to eat. We ended up going to Longhorn Steakhouse that was maybe 10 minutes down the road.

I got the Bison Meatballs for an appetizer and the Chicken Parmesan for my meal. Overall not bad at all. The 30-minute wait did drag out to about 45-mintues. Other than that I would give my experience a 4 out of 5 stars.

Bison Meatball

This Week

Here are some of my ideas for this week.

  • Try to make some small video blogs for my YouTube Channel
  • Look for and photograph some Moose and other wildlife
  • Write a post for every day that we are in Maine
  • When we go to Acadia try to get some good astrophotography
  • Take pictures of the changing leaves
  • Have fun

We are on a nine-day trip. Half in one section of Maine the other half in another.

What I Brought

The Gear I Brought

This is some of the gear I have brought along to take photographs.

  • Nikon D800 (Amazon)
  • Nikkor 24-70mm F/2.8 (Amazon)
  • Nikkor 300mm F/4 (Amazon)
  • Rokinon 14mm f/2.8 (Amazon)
  • Sony A7R (Amazon)
  • Sony 50mm f/1.8 (Amazon)
  • Canon 28mm f/2.8
  • GoPro Hero 4 Silver (Amazon)
  • Marrex Geotagger GPS for Nikon (Amazon)
  • K&F Concept Lens Mount Adapter FD-NEX For Canon FD FL Lens to Sony (Amazon)
  • Lens Mount Adapter, K&F Concept Nikon G Mount Lens to Sony E-mount (Amazon)
  • Waterproof Nylon Camera Backpack Bag Case Rucksack Daypack (Amazon)
  • Formatt-Hitech 100mm Resin Travel Filter Kit Elia Locardi Signature Edition (Amazon)
  • MeFoto Roadtrip Travel Tripod Kit commemorative Limited Edition (Red White Blue) (Amazon)
  • Luxebell C200 Aluminium Alloy Skeleton Thick Solid Protective Case Shell with 52mm Uv Filter for GoPro Hero 4 (Amazon)
  • Neewer Shoot Digital Intervalometer Timer Remote Control (Amazon)

  • Think Tank Photo Retrospective 30 Shoulder Bag (Blue Slate) (Amazon)

Plus I have other things like lens cloths, extra batteries, and camera straps.

End

Make sure to check back for the tomorrows adventures!

Source: http://www.bigalsadventures.com/maine-trav...

Blue Moon Photo

Ok so lastnight I took some pictures of the "blue moon". Nothing blue about it, but it was a full moon anyway. I used both my D800 and D5200 along with my 300mm f/4. I think the D5200 beat out the D800. Might be due to the crop factor, so it gave me a bit more reach. Either way I had to crop the photos to get them to look like this. So here they are.

Nikon D5200

Nikon D800


Time-Lapse Tutorial with Nikon D5200

In this video I show you how to do Time-Lapse on a Nikon D5200. 

Check out my previous tutorial on Time_lapse here and see how I do post processing and combining the files to make the TL video. https://youtu.be/rcC0fpQ4wRA

Gear Used:
Nikon D5200: http://amzn.to/1SNEreD
Nikon 24-70mm F2.8: http://amzn.to/1JEnVbS
Sony A5000: http://amzn.to/1Kqj57L
Sony ECM-AW4: http://amzn.to/1SGTV40

Nikon D5200 Time-Lapse Test Decision

I just got my Nikon D5200 back from a friend that was borrowing it. I decided to take it out and shoot some time-lapse to see what the quality was like. I am trying to decide if I want to make this my time-lapse work horse to keep the shutter actuations down on my D800.

Take a look and let me know what you think. Thumbs Up to keep going with the D5200 or Thumbs Down to go with the D800. If you want to see a time-lapse from the D800 to compare let me know in the comments below.

Nikon D5200: Amazon - Rent

Nikon D800 : Amazon - Rent

186th PHS Philadelphia Flower Show 2015

These were taken at the 186th PHS Philadelphia Flower Show on Sunday March 8th, 2015. I went to the flower show not knowing what to expect and boy do I know what not to do next year. Never go on the weekend especially when its the last day of the show. There was some serious crowds there. Other then that and getting shoved all around it was a nice day.
These shots were all taken with my Nikon D800 and my new lens Nikon 24-70mm. So far I like how the lens handles. Though I should have tried it out more before going there. It preformed fine, but I still wasn't use to it.

Nikon 24-70mm: Amazon - Rent

Nikon D800: Amazon - Rent