Wow!  It's been a long time since my last posted blog.  I've had a lot of family things going on and really haven't had the time or the motivation to do a blog.  It's been kind of a ho-hum year, but I did just get back a couple of weeks ago from a trip to Washington DC where my wife and I spent the week. I took a little point and shoot with me, a Canon G7X Mark II, a 20 megapixel one-inch sensor camera that did well for most of my snapshots, and I only missed my Sony a couple of times.  This coming weekend I'm going to the mountains with my camera club and am really looking forward to shooting again.  Really the DC trip got me out of my funk and got me motivated to shoot again.  I did add a camera to my photography kit, a Sony A6500 that I bought used from a club member that upgraded to the full sensor Sony. I have been shooting the Sony A6300 which has the same sensor as the A6500, but the newer camera has a couple of other features that I was looking for.  The first was the in-body stabilization (IBS).  I have been wanting this for a while.  Also, it has a touch screen, but it's only used for moving the focus point around.  I got spoiled using the Canon point and shoot because the touch screen is very nice and versatile on it, unlike the Sony.  It also has bluetooth, something I didn't know I wanted.  Seems I can use this feature to pair to my phone and send the GPS coordinates to my camera so they can be recorded in the metadata of the photo.  Very cool.  The newer Sony can
also buffer more shots than the 6300 can that could be helpful.  So anyway back to the trip to the mountains.  Here are some of the things that I will be trying out while there.

The GPS function that I mentioned before I will try, and hopefully it will work seamlessly.  On my test today it worked well.  So I hope to have GPS on all of my photos in the future to help me figure out where I took that shot.  My lens selection is a little strange this year.  I'm taking four lenses, and all of them are by different manufactures. Here is a list of them, from smallest to largest focal length:  The Rokinon 12mm - This is a very sharp lens with a 2.8 maximum aperture. It is an inexpensive lens but very sharp when in focus, and it is a manual-focus lens.  The Sony 35mm - This is
the equivalent to a 50mm lens in full frame and is very sharp.  I'll use this when I really need a wide aperture.  The next is my favorite lens.  The Sony-Zeiss 16-70mm lens with an 4.0 maximum aperture - Probably 80-90 percent of all of my photos fall in this 24-105mm full-frame range.  This is a very sharp lens, small and compact.  My longest lens is the Canon 70-200f4 L lens.  This is the only Canon lens with the "L" markings that is not f2.8 or wider.  This is an excellent lens and gives me a full-frame focal length of 100-300.  I got this lens on a sale, but it's awesome.  I use the Metabones adapter with this lens.  It's not as fast as the Sony, but I don't shoot a lot at these longer focal lengths. Which brings me to the next thing.  I'll have a true backup camera in the A6300 and may shoot both of them while out with a telephoto on one and my 16-70 on the other.

Another thing I'll be doing different this year is that I'm not going to take a laptop with me.  That's right, no laptop on a photography trip.  This year I'll be taking an iPad pro with Lightroom CC Mobile on it to make edits.  I'll be using a Western Digital SSD drive that has WiFi to back up all of my photos from my SD cards.  I can view them on my iPad and transfer and edit the ones I want in Lightroom CC for Instagram and such.  Then when I get home I can Import all of the photos into my Lightroom Classic Catalog and go through them.  This will be a big change for me this year and is still just a trial.  I have a MacBook Air where I can do the same thing with Lightroom CC Mobile, but I wanted to try the iPad this year and see how it works. 

Other than photography news, I have been doing some hiking and camping this year and have taken a couple of backpacking trips.  I took a couple of solo trips, one with my dog Forrest to Raven Rock State Park and one to Uwharrie National Forest.  I took a couple of other backpacking trips with my son Mark, one to South Mountain State Park and one to Uwharrie National Forest.  I have lost 30 pounds this year so far, and my knee has been doing well.  I have been making a lot of our camping equipment like hammocks, bags, stuff sacks, and even made a tent for Forrest to sleep in, so I have been busy sewing. Yes, I know it sounds funny, a 50ish-year-old man sewing, but I'm pretty good at doing this kind of sewing.  I have some more projects for this year.  I plan on making a winter tarp for my hammock and maybe a hiking fanny pack.  Yep, I said it, fanny pack.  I had six trips planned and places reserved to take my little teardrop trailer camping, but we only got to take it on one trip to Cedar Point National Recreation Area down on the coast.  All of our other trips either got rained out or something else got in the way of us going.  I need to start planning for next year's trips.