jedimaster

ALgonquin ice is all broken up but still not passable..... looks like its going to be a matter of days.

Just broke down and bought a home phone. I was already paying for the service for 3 months came free as part of my package. So weird I had to phone someone to find out my number. I wonder if it has voicemail. haha. And a pencil I still have those. They are what I use to tighten up my cassettes.

First time I have been without a cell phone in about 18 years, outside of going to the hunt camp where there is no cell signal and when camping. Its very odd to try and live a normal life without any contact to the world. lol I think I am starting to enjoy no cell phone though. outside of everyone that's mad at me for not getting in touch with them. rofl

So I quit my job a while ago and took a week off in between. I had to give up my cell phone on my last day and don't get my new one til Monday. Some interesting things happened. 1) I drove from Toronto to a small town south of grand bend without getting lost with no gps only an old school map and directions. 2) When I got there they weren't home so I walked around and someone offered me there phone and a beer while I waited. 3) Its hard to sell stuff when people can't call you or text you. lol 4) It's really hard to meet up with indecisive people using only email, my gf I think is pissed at me. I read her email as she has lots to do see you next week. I said have a good weekend, she emailed me back saying now I am sad. what the hell. of course I said sorry, we will see how that goes. I think I am gonna go fishing. They don't seem to care I have no contact with humans P.S. caught a great limit of crappie over the last few days from an oldschool sportspal and a 1960's 3hp motor that ran out of gas about 3 km's from the launch location. yah a nice paddle into the wind and rain yesterday.... We were tempted to rope the crappie and use them like dog sled dogs. 60 crappie powered canoe.... yeeehaaa just my random rant of the day... I MISS MY PHONE!!!!

The GF has offered her garage to me for the kayak... we will see.... maybe a 12 footer is in order.

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Works in all three.

At 2.5 feet the fangs come out and it leaps for your jugular!!!!

Looks cool, will be checking reviews. I am always a bit leary of anything collapsable. Fishing rods, umbrellas, tent poles... they all seem to collapse when you don't want them to... haha

If I had a balcony I would.... I just measured my windows... no dice. haha

I am doubting that a 10 footer will make it up the stairs now that I got home... Gonna have to get out the tape measure. They had a nice looking inflatable kayak that looked very well made covered in canvas type. I wonder what that thing is like?

Yah the more I look at it the more I don't think a 12 will fit. A real man can make due with a 10. Haha

Just not too sure if I will be able to get a 12 footer up the stairwell into my apt... a 10 footer should make it. A 12 is cutting it close.

haha, I will be starting all over in the yak. I live on Lake O and there is a fairly sheltered bay that I will dip into first. I am looking at the Old Town Vapor Angler 12xt. Its on sale at Sail for 399 on the 1rst. The lady said I can just buy it now and bring the receipt in for a price adjustment. I am going to go look at it now.

Just wondering if there are any kayak anglers on here that want to get together for some crappie/perch maybe some trout on Lake O this week/weekend. I am probably going to be picking up the new kayak tonight.

The glow on the horizon is barrie.

Ok, here is the shot I got last night. 40 images, 12 second exposure, F4.0, iso 800, 50mm F1.8 lense and Rebel T2i, Used the camera hooked up to laptop and used the canon software to interval the shots every 30 seconds. Here is the first of the 40 images. They all look like this but just the stars move ever so slightly in each frame. This is a raw image sample. This was used as the base frame, each frame after the stars move slightly. Here is the base frame edited. Here is the 40 frames merged for the trails. This is the final stacked, trailed, and touched up image.

We got some good shots, but was pretty cold and we weren't really dressed for it. I was able to get 40 or so images of the horizon and a few random longer exposure shots. I am going to stack them up this evening and see how it goes.

Supposed to be up at 3am when sagitarious comes up... Just getting ready to head out shortly, going to get a few shots then have a nap outside and wake up again when the milky way rises. I am going to set the laptop and camera up to timelapse record the milky way rising. I noticed the coma effect a fair bit on my kit lense last fall. I haven't used the 50 f1.8 at night yet, but from what I read as long as you keep at 2.8 or less its not so bad. When its wide open then you get it around the edges apparently. Who knows, only one way to find out. I'll be playing around a bit tonight I have three batteries ready to go and a fair bit of time with no kids and a girl friend that wants to be outside so its a nice change.

Trying to take shots at max exposure while eliminating the star trails, and setting the F to as low as possible to elimante the coma effect. I think I am going to start at about F2.8 to start eliminating coma, I was reading that f4 is the sweet spot. For exposure length I want to avoid star trails and according to a few calculators I need to stay below 12 seconds exposure. From this I just need to set the ISO as low as I can to get the stars in the shot without getting too grainy. Will be trying out a number of setting through but I think my starting point will be. F2.8, @10sec, 400iso and go up in ISO from there The foreground shot I will play around a bit with the flash and see what I can figure out on the fly. I think I may try and do a panorama and shoot a series of shots verticle in portrait and stack and stich them together. not too sure yet. The Milky way isn't really going to up until 2-5am and I doubt I will make it that far into the night. haha.

This is an article I am going to try and follow tonite. http://www.photographyblogger.net/how-to-photograph-the-milky-way/

I am going out otnight to try and get some shots. I have the followin gear to play with. t2i - Nifty 50, kit lense, 55-250is, two flashes with remote wireless triggers, several trip pods etc... My GF just got a new car so I want to try and get a picture of her with the car with the stars behind her. What sort of things should I try as far as lense combinations? I was going to start with a remote flash about halfway in on a 45 from the camera with a diffuser, For the lense I want to try and start with the 50 set between f2.8 and f4 as this seems to be the spot people talk about for astrophotography. I was thinking of setting up with the flash for a foreground shot then taking a few longer exposure shots to fill in the sky and stack them later. Any thoughts on settings for the actual stacked star shots? Would you guys say lower. From what I understand I need to use the 500 rule to avoid star trails to set the exposure time. then I guess I just adjust the iso to get as much detail as I can. I have the camera setup with to use the noise reduction feature, shoot in raw and mirror lock up. Any other tips?

On muskoka they used to drag the huts to the beach and if you didn't claim it within a week you got a fine. That was a long time ago though.

Meanwhile back in Canada.... nicely done

I would relocate the batteries as a start. The way to check it without doing the work is to just add a weight to the front like I mentioned. This will give you a rough idea of the amount of weight you need to move forward without changing anything. Keep in mind though you only want to move just enough weight forward as is required. The more weight you move tot he front the more prop slip you will encounter as the lever effect will force you to run extra trim to keep the bow up at wot. Moving weigh forward gets you out to the water faster and at slower speeds but decrease your top end. If you have two or three batteries moving just those to the bow will make a huge difference. Especially if you are already able to get on plane. I had a boat that wouldn't plane out at all. as in no way. I moved one battery forward and bingo problem solved. I would setup the boat as properly as I could before I started adding things like trim tabs. jmho.