Nikon – The ExhaustNotes Blog

Nikon’s N70 35mm Film Camera

By Joe Berk

I visited with my sister a couple of weeks ago and she gave me four 35mm film cameras. You know, the ones we used to use before everything went digital. One was a point and shoot Minolta, another was a Chinese copy of a Minolta single lens reflex non-autofocus camera, another was my Dad’s old Honeywell Pentax ES (with four Takumar lenses that were known as some of the best glass available back in the 1960s and 1970s), and a fourth was my old Nikon N70, complete with a Tamron 28-105mm zoom lens. I had given the N70 to my sister when I bought a Nikon F5, which was a huge top-of-the-line film camera when film ruled the roost. The N70 made the full circle, coming back to me again after being gone for more than 20 years. The N70 is the focus (pardon the pun) of this blog.

The N70 and it’s Tamron 28-105 zoom lens. I can use some of my other Nikon digital camera lenses on the N70, too.

The N70 was the second camera I ever purchased. The first was a 35mm Minolta X700 that I bought a week before my first daughter was born because my wife told me I needed a camera to record the occasion. I bought the Minolta because it was what the store (a large Fedco, which is no more) sold and everything was automatic (except for focusing, which no one offered at the time). And, it was what my brother-in-law shot (he was a photography enthusiast, so I figured it had to be good). The Minolta was a far better camera than I was a photographer, but I really wasn’t getting the eye-popping photos I saw in the photography magazines (and I did a lot of my learning through magazines; there was no internet in those days).

The N70 had what Nikon called a command dial. It wasn’t well received in the market back then. I’ll have to relearn how to use it. It was one of the first film cameras to have an LCD screen interface, a common feature on today’s digital cameras.

Nope, in those days, my Minolta was a manual focus camera, and I figured what I really needed was autofocus. The ticket in for me was the Nikon N70 (the very one you see here) sold to me by a very competent young salesman at our local Ritz camera store. It used to be that every major shopping mall had a Ritz camera store; with the advent of the internet, they’ve all disappeared, too.

I didn’t know very much about photography back then, but autofocus really made things better. My pictures (all print, of course) were turning out great. I liked the reaction my little 4×6 prints were getting at family dinners, and I started reading more and more about the art of photography. You know, all the stuff the camera did automatically. Apertures. Shutter speeds. Different ISOs. How to use the flash, even in daylight. And then I learned more. Composition. The rule of thirds. Lighting. The more I learned, the more I shot, and the more I shot, the better my photos became. Then a funny thing happened. I went back to my old Minolta (without autofocus) and my photos with it were way better, too. Who would have thought?

The world continued to change. Ebay became a thing, and so did digital photography. I resisted digital photography, partly because I am a cheap SOB and partly because I thought I was a purist. Until I tried digital. The difference was incredible. I sold all of my film cameras and the lenses that went with them.

With my sister’s generosity and my newly-rehomed collection of four film cameras, though, I am regressing and I hope to soon be rediscovering the wonders of film photography. Or going back to my roots. Or becoming more traditional. You can choose the words you like.

Nikon didn’t do an adequate job selecting the rear camera door rubberized covering. As it aged, it turned to a sticky, gooey mess.

Where the film goes. The N70 didn’t require threading the film in. Simply plop the film in the camera with about three inches pulled out of the canister, close the camera back, press the shutter button, and the film feeds in automatically. It advances automatically after each shot (a cool feature 30+ years ago).

Anyway, the topic du jour is my N70. I just ordered a few rolls of Fuji ISO 200 film for it from Amazon, and I’ll put the old Nikon through its paces when the film gets here. When I picked up the N70 from my sister, I thought she had spilled something gooey on the back cover because it was all sticky. But it wasn’t her doing. I did a Google search and it was a common complaint. Apparently Nikon had applied a rubber-like material on the cover, which degraded over time. I had that happen on a Bell motorcycle helmet one time (a shame, really; I loved the artwork on that helmet). One of the guys who wrote about the Nikon N70’s gooification issue said that the rubber goo came off with alcohol, so I’ll try that on mine.

The Nikon feels good in my hands (the gooey cover notwithstanding). I packed it on a lot of motorcycle rides, including the Three Flags Classic nearly 20 years ago. Handling it is like coming home to an old friend. Watch for my photos with the N70; I’ll post them in a future blog (if I can find a place that still develops 35mm film).

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Bangkok Part 2: The Wat Pho Temple

By Joe Berk

On our next day in Bangkok, Sue and I visited the Wat Pho Buddhist Temple. There are numerous Buddhist temples in this fine city, and on this (my third trip to Bangkok), the nod went to Wat Pho. The colors and the views were stunning, and my 8mm inexpensive Rokinon wide angle manual everything lens earned its pay yet again. I think it would be hard to find a Buddhist temple in Bangkok that was not impressive.

Wat Pho is one of Bangkok’s oldest temples, and it is one of six temples considered to be of the highest grade Buddhist temples in Bangkok. It is a royal temple.

Wat Pho has the famous reclining Buddha, which is 15 meters high and 46 meters long. It is one of the largest statues of Buddha in Thailand.

Colors abound at Wat Pho. It is a photographer’s delight.

A colorful tapestry inside the Wat Pho temple.

We later walked around town a bit, including a visit to the infamous Soi Cowboy area (it’s right around the corner from our hotel). I will post a few evening Soi Cowboy photos in a later blog.

Thailand is two-wheeler territory. Motorcycles and scooters are everywhere. There’s more to come on this topic, so stay tuned.

I said I would try to get something motorcycle-related in each of these blogs, and here’s the photo for this one: A Sukhumvit Street stoplight at night, with all the motorcycles and scooters filtered to the head of the line.

Later, folks. Ride safe.

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Cayucos, Hearst Castle, and the Wine Country

California’s Pacific Coast Highway is one of the best motorcycle roads on the planet, and I never miss an opportunity to travel it. One of my favorite destinations on the Pacific Coast Highway is Hearst Castle. We’ve written about it previously here on ExNotes.

As the title of this blog implies, base camp was in Cayucos, California, instead of Cambria (more on that below). And from a photography perspective, instead of lugging around my boat-anchor, full-frame Nikon D810, I took the smaller and lighter Nikon D3300 with a “walking around” 18-55mm lens and a Rokinon 8mm (a super wide angle). I’ve been using that combination more and more lately.

The Rokinon 8mm super wide angle lens. Manual everything, it’s fun to use and it does a surprisingly good job.

There’s not much in San Simeon, so people who visit Hearst Castle usually stay in Cambria. We stayed a stone’s throw away from Cambria in Cayucos, which is just north of Morro Bay.

Most folks who visit Hearst Castle stay in Cambria, a touristy, kitschy spot just down the road from San Simeon (the Hearst Castle location). This time we tried Cayucos, a tiny town that’s a bit further south down the Pacific Coast Highway. It’s friendlier, less expensive, and for my money, a lot nicer and more enjoyable than Cambria. Sue and I stayed in the Sunset Inn, a bed and breakfast in Cayucos. If you’re in Cayucos, the Ludano restaurant is the place for dinner (William Randolph Hearst was a regular here while building Hearst Castle). For a more casual Cayucos dining experience, Duckie’s (near the Cayucos Pier) is an awesome walkup seafood restaurant (try the fish and chips; they were great).

Hearst Castle, as seen through the Rokinon 8mm super wide.

The Neptune swimming pool at Hearst Castle.

One of the Hearst Castle’s guest bedrooms.

The Rokinon lens is strictly a manual affair. It doesn’t autofocus and it doesn’t work with the camera’s automatic metering features. It’s manual everything…focus, f stop, ISO, and shutter speed. The focus part was easy…I simply cranked the focus ring all the way over to infinity (with a wide-angle lens, that works). For ISO, shutter speed, and f stop, I used the camera’s histogram. Shoot, check the histogram, adjust, shoot again, check the histogram, adjust, and keep going until things are just right. Too dark, and I adjusted the shutter speed, the f stop, and the ISO until the histogram showed everything between the histogram upper and lower limits. Too light, and I made adjustments in the opposite direction. For the money, the Rokinon lens is a lot of fun, and I like the effects I get with a wide -angle lens. Some folks don’t. That’s okay. It’s my gear and these are my photos.

As mentioned earlier, I also used the Nikon 18-55mm lens on this trip. It’s not the sharpest lens but that’s okay. I’m not the sharpest matzoh in the box, either, and a matching lens fits me well. When I shoot in RAW (the camera’s capture everything, sort-it-out-later-in-Photoshop mode), the 18-55mm lens works surprisingly well, like in the photo at the top of this blog. It’s a shot of the Cayucos Pier, in which I did a little bit of post-processing to darken the sky and the water. I’m pleased with the results.

While we walked the pier, we talked to folks who were fishing from it. The fishing was good: Halibut, perch, and one fellow had landed a 4-foot shark earlier in the day (I wish I had been there when that happened; that would have been a hell of a picture).

The Nikon D3300 digital single lens reflex camera and the 18-55mm zoom lens that comes with the camera. It’s not a super sharp lens, but it’s not super expensive, either.

I took the photo below with the 18-55mm lens just a few miles up the Pacific Coast Highway. These are elephant seals and I liked how this photo turned out, too.

One of several elephant seal vista points along California’s magnificent Pacific Coast Highway. The two in the water was grunting loudly at each other in a domination contest. These seals can weigh up to 5,000 pounds.

You know, the discussions about lenses, cameras, and photography can go on endlessly. Sometimes all you need is a cell phone. I was blown away by the photos Joe Gresh grabbed when he recently visited Laguna Seca after riding his Kawasaki ZRX from New Mexico. Joe shot all of those with his iPhone, which is a much easier way to go on a motorcycle. When I travel with a digital single lens reflex camera on a motorcycle, the camera and a couple of lenses steal a lot of saddlebag space. There’s advantages and disadvantages to everything, I guess.

Old Creek Road out of Cayucos is a fun ride.

Riding the Pacific Coast Highway is a bucket list ride, and if you get an opportunity to do so, you should grab it. The area I’m describing in this blog is roughly halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles. The Pacific Coast Highway is currently closed around Gordo (well north of San Simeon), but that still leaves a lot of nice riding on the table. One of the best rides is Old Creek Road northeast out of Cayucos. It’s a lightly traveled and grand road, full of twisties, and it cuts through the California wine country to link up with State Route 46 (another fine road through the wine country). A few miles further east, 46 intersects Highway 41, and that’s where James Dean lost his life in a car accident (there’s a sign marking the spot). There are a lot of interesting things and a lot of interesting roads in California.

More Epic Rides are here!

Phavorite Photos: Odonata Porn

By Joe Berk

You might be wondering if we are switching to an x-rated site. We are not. I just happened to be out and about with my camera when the above photo op emerged and I grabbed it. I think it is probably one of the best nature shots I ever grabbed, although I have similar one with a couple of raccoons but that’s a photo for another Phavorite Photos blog.

We were out servicing a water treatment site in California’s Yucca Valley. In those days I was lugging around a real tank of a camera: The Nikon F5. It was Nikon’s top of the line film camera when film still ruled. The camera was huge and it weighed a ton, and I compounded the felony by mounting a 180mm Sigma macro lens on it. I had ridden my Suzuki TL 1000S there (I could fit the camera and it’s lens into my tail bag). The best thing about that job was that I could combine a lot of extra-curricular into my work, like motorcycle rides and photography.

Back to the Odanata story. Odonata is the entomological classification for three groups of insects. One of those groups includes dragonflies, and the dragonflies were out in force that fine California day. And I was lucky to have brought that 180mm Sigma macro lens with me. It was perfect for the photo ops that presented themselves that day. I tried pictures in flight, but I had no luck. When the painted ladies stopped on a twig or a weed or a branch, though, I was in Fat City. I dropped the film off at our local Costco (they still sold and processed film in those days), I did a little shopping (I love Costco), and an hour later, they were ready. The photo guy told me it was very unusual to see photos this “perfect.” I took the compliment. The pictures looked good on the 4×6 prints; they looked even better on my computer.

Both the F5 and the 180mm Sigma lens have gone down the road. Digital took over from film, I went full bore into the digital world, and I found the 180mm Sigma macro lens wasn’t good for much else besides fornicating dragonflies. Today I use a Sigma 50mm macro for all my closeup work (it’s about as perfect a lens as I’ve ever used for macrophotography), and my cameras are either Nikon’s D810, the D3300, or my cell phone.

Earlier Phavorite Photos? You bet! Click on each to get their story.

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The Sportster of Seville

By Joe Berk

When I was a kid, I used to watch a weekly television comedy show called The Little Rascals. In one of the episodes, one of the rascals named Alfalfa sang a song from Gioachino Rossini’s opera, The Barber of Seville. Until very recently, Alfalfa’s rendition and a Cadillac made in the 1970s (the Seville) were all I knew of Seville. That changed with our recent trip to Spain.

Cards on the table: I didn’t know anything about Gioachino Rossini’s opera until I Googled the Little Rascals and the Barber of Seville. In so doing, I found out that Warner Brothers also had a Bugs Bunny cartoon with the same song. I know…I digress. Indulge me for 56 seconds more. Here’s Alfalfa belting it out. Told ya…

You might be wondering: What’s with the Sportster in the cover photo up top? I saw it my first afternoon in Seville. Believe it or not, in Spain, the land that brought us Bultaco (the motorcycle, not the Mexican bullfight snack bar delicacy), Ossa, and Montesa (or, as some might say, Montessa), the ultimate motorcycle status symbol is a used Sportster. Hence the title of this blog: The Sportster of Seville. We’ve had a lot of fun with Sportster blogs here on ExNotes, but let’s get to the main topic of this discussion: Seville.

One of our first stops in Seville was the Plaza de España, which is a magnificent building and park area built in 1929 when Seville hosted the Ibero-American Exposition World’s Fair. The Plaza de España is impressive. Today, the building has been renovated and it is used for Spanish government agencies. It’s beautiful.

Photo opportunities abound. This shot of the tower through one of the many arches almost took itself.

Any time there’s water or a mirror, I’m there. You can do a lot with reflections when you shoot a photo.

We saw a bunch of touristy chotchkas in the Plaza de España courtyard that made for good photos (I would never buy this sort of stuff…if I need to generate a breeze, I’ll hop on my motorcycle…you know, to get my knees in the breeze). But it was fun to photograph.

Fans for sale in the Plaza de España courtyard.

My attention then turned to the tilework along the Plaza de España courtyard wall that stretched for half a mile. Each tile-based mural depicts a Spanish province. The work was impressive, but what was even more impressive was what happened next.

One of many tile murals in the Plaza de España courtyard.

Another Plaza de España courtyard tile mural.

Two Spanish motor officers rolled into the Plaza de España courtyard on (get this) police motor scooters. I always thought small motorcycles and motor scooters made a lot of sense in urban areas (I’ll say more on that in a second). I asked the motor officer in the photo below if I could grab a picture and he was cool with it.

A Seville motor officer. If I was 50 years younger and spoke Spanish, I might try out for a job like this. It looked like a great gig, and I like the colors.

I didn’t realize why the motor officers had appeared out of nowhere. All those tourist chotchkas like the fans you see in the photo above? The folks selling their wares there (I’m told they were Gypsies, if you can even say that anymore) weren’t supposed to be there. When I looked up after grabbing the photo above, all the chotchkas (and the chotchka merchants) were gone. They just went poof and vanished. Wiped clean from the face of the Earth (as they said in that Indiana Jones movie). I guess you don’t want to mess with a Spanish motor officer.

On the motor scooter/small motorcycle thing for police motorcycles: When Gresh and I were at the Zongshen factory in Chongqing, one of the many very cool things we saw there were RX3 police motorcycles. Imagine that: A 250cc police motorcycle. I talked Zongshen into giving us (“us” being CSC Motorcycles) three or four of the things so we could market them to police departments in America. Imagine that, too…one short email and poof: Three free motorcycles.

The CSC RX3 250cc police motorcycle. I had a lot of fun on these.

The obligatory blog commercial: The Complete Book of Police and Military Motorcycles. Did I mention these make great gifts?

I thought I knew the police motorcycle market a little bit because I had written a book about police motors. Man, I tried, but it was a bust. The Sacramento Fairgrounds Police were interested, but I couldn’t close the deal. We shipped one to the New York City Police Department (I knew they used Vespas for police work), Andy Sipowicz and crew kept the bike for about two months without ever taking it out of the crate, and then they shipped it back. I took one to a couple of local police departments, but the only thing to come of that was one of the cops told me I wasn’t allowed to ride it around with the red and blue lights and the siren still attached. I told him not to worry; I only used that stuff if people wouldn’t get out of my way. Zongshen, on the other hand, has done fabulously well with their police bikes. They are selling RX1s, RX3s, RX4s, and other bikes as police motors literally all over the world. Just not in America. I’ll do a blog about Zongshen police bikes someday.

I know, I’m digressing again. Back to the main attraction: Seville. We walked around quite a bit (I did 17,000 steps one day) and there were tons of photo ops. Doors, tiles, alleys, and more.

A door in Seville. Spain and Portugal are an artist’s palette. Both were awesome.

A Seville sidewalk. The sidewalks were awesome everywhere we went. Think of the labor that went into this. Joe Gresh, this is your new concrete standard. I’ll take a photo when you finish and put it on the blog.

As we walked around Seville and took in the sights, Jose (our awesome guide) told us we were in the Jewish quarter. I asked if Jewish people still lived there. Very few, he said. You know: The Spanish Inquisition. Oh, yeah. I remember reading about that in James Michener’s The Source (a great story and a great read).

In Seville’s Jewish Quarter. Note the sign on the wall on the right.

Our walk through Seville presented one photo op after another. I had my old Nikon D3300 (the current version is the Nikon D3500), an entry-level consumer grade digital SLR, and the relatively inexpensive (but vibration-reduction-equipped) 18-55mm zoom lens. It was great. The D3300 is a light camera. My other Nikon (the D810) has more capability, but it is much heavier. For this kind of tourism, the D3300 (or the current D3500) is a better deal.

A fountain in the exterior corner of a Seville structure.

I saw this and had to ask: Is Antonio here? Which one, they answered…we have lots of Antonios. Sometimes, my humor is an acquired taste.

We continued our walking tour, and it was on to the Catedral de Sevilla, a massive cathedral built between 1434 and 1517 over what used to be the city’s main mosque (when the Moors occupied the Iberian peninsula). It rivals the Vatican’s Saint Peter’s cathedral (it’s that big).

The 18-55mm lens wasn’t wide enough to take in the entire Catedral de Sevilla. It is a massive church, the largest in Spain.

Susie, my traveling buddy for 40 years, with the Catedral de Sevilla in the background.

The Catedral de Sevilla interior is impressive, but it is dimly lit and flash photography is strictly verboten (I wouldn’t have used flash, anyway), so I relied on finding something to brace my camera against and the lens’ vibration reduction technology (which did a great job). I could do a photobook with just interior shots, including the Catedral de Sevilla’s beyond impressive stained glass windows.

This was but one of many stained glass windows in the Catedral de Sevilla.

Shooting in the camera’s RAW mode and allowing PhotoShop’s Auto adjustment to work its magic brings up features that can’t be captured with jpeg alone.

Incredible sights, incredible detail, and lots of photography fun.

You may not know this (I certainly didn’t) but one of Christopher Columbus’s crypts is in the Catedral de Sevilla (folks apparently spread his remains around a bit). The photo below shows one of his crypts in the Catedral de Sevilla. Columbus was an Italian from Genoa, but his expeditions were funded by Spain’s Queen Isabella.

So there you have it: Seville. There’s more to come from our Spanish adventure, so sign up for your free subscription (don’t forget to tell your email program we’re not spam) or check back often. Or maybe do both. And if you have comments, we’d love to hear them.

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Bangkok’s Soi Cowboy

I miss a lot of things about our pre-COVID days, and one is the foreign travel. I love heading to exotic cities all over the world, and one at the top of my list is Bangkok. I’ve been there a few times on assorted secret missions. These photos are from a blog I wrote for CSC Motorcycles a few years ago, and I thought I would share them here.

Soi Cowboy (“soi” sort of means street) is a famous Bangkok road that played a role in the movie Hangover II and another movie named, well, Soi Cowboy (a movie I haven’t seen, although I’ll look for it). It’s sort of an entertainment district with a lot of clubs. There were a lot of photo ops centered on two of my interests – food and two-wheeled transportation. With that as an intro, here we go.

These guys in orange vests are motorcycle taxi dudes. They carve paths through traffic as if it wasn’t there. It’s an amazing thing to see.

One of the many food carts and clubs on Soi Cowboy.

Another food cart. I had my Nikon D3300 (a relatively small but incredibly capable DSLR) on its “auto ISO” setting, which basically means it runs the ISO up as high as it thinks it needs to be to get a good shot. Some of these photos were at ISO 12,800.

Scooters and small-displacement motorcycles dominate Bangkok. Here are a few scooters lined up on Soi Cowboy.

A look down Asoke (that’s the street name) from a pedestrian overpass. Soi Cowboy is just off of Asoke.

Good buddy Kevin and friend. Rain? Not a problem!

A Thai taxi scooter in action. Scenes like this are common throughout Bangkok.

One more thing, and that’s a video I shot just off Soi Cowboy showing the scooter action in vibrant downtown Bangkok. It sure was fun.

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Phavorite Photos: Alone in China

We were somewhere in China approaching Aba after leaving the Tibetan Plateau, and somehow it was just Gresh, Sergeant Zuo, and me. I can’t remember why we were separated from the rest of our group. Honking along at a brisk pace and blitzing through one area after another, the photo ops were flying by and I wanted to capture at least some of them with my Nikon.

I finally caught up with Zuo and Gresh and flagged them over. I asked if I could go back a mile or two and they said they would wait. We had passed a Buddhist temple with a gold roof. The overcast skies, the green mountains, the asphalt, my orange and muddy RX3…all the colors clicked. I needed to commit that memory to the SD card.

When I turned around, I was surprised at how long it took to return to the spot you see above (I think we were on China’s G317 highway, but it might have been the G213). Then I felt fear: What if Gresh and Zuo didn’t wait for me? I don’t speak the language, I had no cell coverage, and I wouldn’t be able to find my way back to wherever. It was like being in outer space. It was just one of those crazy psycho unreasonable moments that sometimes hits when you realize you’re not in control of the situation. I snapped a few photos, they looked good enough on the camera’s display, and I wound out the RX3 to get back to my compañeros as quickly as possible. They had waited. I was in clover.

About a month later as we approached Beijing some of the street signs were in both Chinese and English, and it was obvious Beijing was directly ahead. Gresh told me he felt better because if we had to we could find our way home. I guess I wasn’t the only one having those “out in the boonies” feelings. It happens.

Earlier Phavorite Photos? You bet! Click on each to get their story.

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Shoot and Scoot!

I should have won. It was politics, I tell ya…that’s the only reason the Axis prevailed. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

That photo above? Like I said, I should have won. That’s my photo. I watched the two judges, stooges of the Axis powers, deliberate for several minutes, even delaying announcement of the winner while they looked for a plausible reason to deny what was rightfully mine.

Okay, back to the beginning. Me and the boys used to hang out at Bob Brown’s BMW dealership on Saturday mornings, and back in the day, Bob and crew were always coming up with great ideas…you know, things to do. They outdid themselves on the Shoot and Scoot deal. You see, one of Bob’s BMW customers owned a camera store down in Chino Hills. Between Bob and the camera guy, they had this idea: Combine a day-ride to the Chino Planes of Fame Museum and a photo contest. It worked for me. I ride (my ride was a Triumph Tiger in those days) and Lord knows I’m a photography phreak. I was in.

The day started with photo ops and donuts at Bob’s dealership, with a very attractive young model. Attractive, yes. Creative or unusual? Hardly. But I grabbed the obligatory fashion shot…

From there, it was a quick ride to the Chino Airport’s Planes of Fame Museum. I’ve always loved that place. The idea was to grab an interesting photo or twenty in a place jam packed full of interesting photo ops. Trust me on this, boys and girls…if you’ve never been to the Planes of Fame Museum, you need to go.

Anyway, these are a few of my favorite shots from that day…I was working the Nikon for all it was worth and I was having a good time. I could win this, I thought.

My last few photos of the day were of my reflection in that big radial engine you see above, and then it hit me. Like a politician who knows never to let a good crisis go to waste, when I have a camera that’s how I feel about reflective surfaces. I was getting some good shots of myself in the polished prop hub, and then it hit me.

“Hey Marty,” I said. Marty is my riding buddy. You’ve seen him here in the ExNotes blog in many places. Mexico. Canada. All over the US. “Get in the picture right here.”

And he did. That’s when I grabbed the photo you see at the top of this blog, and as I saw the image through the viewfinder, I knew I had a winner. It captured what the day had been about. Great photography. Air cooling and internal combustion. Riding. Friendship.

So we rode from the Planes of Fame Museum over to the photo shop and uploaded all our shots. We returned that evening when the winners would be announced. I wasn’t interested in placing. I wanted to win. And I knew I would. Or at least I knew I should. The funny thing was, the two judges were the camera store owner and the local Canon sales rep. I could see they were having a tough time. They were down to two photos, mine was one of them, and they were struggling with the decision. I think my photo was the clear winner. But alas, I shot it with a Nikon. This was a Canon contest being at least partly sponsored by a BMW dealer (and I rode a Triumph). The Germans and the Japanese. The Axis powers. Still trying to make up for World War II. Not that it bothers me. Much. But I should have won.

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Telenova Review: Bolivar

You probably don’t see me as a TV junkie who could spend 60 hours in maybe three weeks watching all 60 episodes of a telenova, yet here I sit after doing exactly that. And I’m not ashamed to admit I enjoyed it immensely. The series is Bolivar, it is currently running on Netflix, and both Sue and I were hooked on it 10 minutes into the first episode.

Three different actors played Simon Bolivar at different stages in his life. It was confusing when they changed from one to another, but we caught on quickly.

I think what made it special for me were my two trips to Colombia, one about 15 years ago for work, and the other 5 years ago (Good Lord, has it been that long already?) for our Zongshen-mounted circumnavigation of the Andes Mountains. Bolivar was filmed entirely on location in Colombia, and having been there myself, I recognized many of the places in the series.

When we stayed at Villa de Leyva in Colombia, Juan and Carlos explained that it was often used as a filming location. While we we were there, a crew was filming a scene one evening. Juan told me that one of the actors was well known in South America. I didn’t know who she was at the time, but in watching Bolivar, I realized the woman I had seen that evening in Villa de Leyva was, in fact, the famous Colombian actress Andrea Gomez.

Andrea Gomez, who I saw in person in Villa de Leyva without realizing who she was.

On a movie set in Villa de Leyva. Andrea Gomez would emerge seconds later, but I did not get a photo of her.

An evening scene in Villa de Leyva. The Colombia ride was one of the great ones. I had a fabulous time.

The Colombia ride, as mentioned above, was not my first trip to Colombia. I had been there about 10 years before on a business trip and we spent a day in Cartagena. It was a fun trip, too. Here are a few photos from my 2006 trip.

A street scene in Cartagena. The photos almost take themselves.

Colombia is known for its emeralds. The place is a photographer’s paradise.

One more street scene in Cartagena. One of the amazing things about this city was the parrots. You see them like you see pigeons in a US city. They were everywhere. Cartegena is a city that explodes with color.

So there you have it. Bolivar, Colombia, and more. The Netflix series hit home for me, probably because I had visited Colombia, but even if you haven’t I think you’ll enjoy it. I’m lucky because I’ve been there, and because I always travel with a Nikon, I captured a bunch of digital memories on both trips.

Want to see more of Colombia from the seat of a motorcycle? Check out the Colombia adventure on our Epic Rides page!

Motorcycle Travel Photo Gear

Photography is a big part of a motorcycle trip for me. I’ve been riding motorcycles on long rides for a long time, and capturing the memories adds immensely to the enjoyment. I relive and remember each of my adventures though the photos. The photo quality standards for online stuff are not that high (it’s all 72 dpi and small photos); the requirements for print publication are significantly more stringent (that’s all 300 dpi and big picture stuff). The gear I carry meets both standards well. From time to time people ask me about the camera gear I use on my motorcycle adventures, so I thought I would take a few minutes to describe the toys I bring along.

Motorcycle Travel Photography Gear

Here’s the photo gear I bring on a motorcycle trip:

Nikon D3300 digital single lens reflex (DSLR) camera.
Nikon 18-55mm VR general duty lens.
Nikon 70-300mm VR telephoto lens.
Tokina 12-24mm wide angle lens.
Circular polarizers for all of the above lenses.
Extra camera battery.
Battery charger.
Extra SD card.
Tamrac Velocity 7X camera bag.

I know that sounds like a lot, but it’s really not that much, it gives great capability on the road, and it all fits into my CSC RX3 motorcycle’s topcase.

My camera gear, including the Nikon D3300 DSLR, the 18-55mm lens (mounted on the camera in this photo), the 12-24mm Tokina wide-angle lens, the 70-300mm Nikon telephoto lens, and polarizers for all three lenses. It all fits in the Tamrac Velocity 7X camera bag.

I’m a Nikon guy, but any of the current crop of DSLR cameras has capabilities way beyond the abilities of most photographers (including me). Gresh prefers Canon. Here’s your shovel, take you pick. Six to one, half a dozen to the other. All the manufacturers offer good cameras. My D3300 is a 24-megapixel camera, which means I can crop the photo significantly and still have sufficient resolution. It’s a good size for a digital image.

DSLR Advantages

I use a DSLR camera because when I press the shutter button, I want the shutter to trip instantly. The point-and-shoot cameras usually have ½-second or so lag after depressing the shutter button, and that’s unnerving if you’re shooting anything other than landscapes. Maybe the technology has advanced to where that’s no longer a point-and-shoot issue, but I’ll still stick with my DSLR because a DSLR gives me creative control. I usually shoot in the Program Mode, but if I’m not happy with that, or I want greater depth of field, I can make the camera do pretty much anything I want it to.

One of the things that is so appealing to me about the D3300 is its light weight. I often ride with the camera hanging from my neck so I can snap shots from the saddle while on the move, and the D3300’s light weight makes this easy. Several of the photographs I’ve had published were taken while I was riding the motorcycle. It’s way better than the standard motorcycle-parked-by-the-side-of-the-road stuff you see most of the time. I think shots from the saddle bring readers into the ride. One thought I want to interject about this shooting-from-the-saddle business: When I take photos while riding my motorcycle, I never use the camera’s viewfinder or rear LCD screen. Trying to look at the camera (or worse, trying to look through the viewfinder) while riding is dangerous and I don’t do it. I use the camera’s 18-55mm lens and I leave it at about the 24mm mark. I’ll point the camera in the general direction of what I want to photograph, and I take a lot of photos knowing that one or more of them will be good. Digital film is cheap.

The last thing I’ll mention is the histogram. It’s the display you can see on the camera back that tells you instantly if the exposure is correct. All DSLRs have a histogram capability. This x-y plot lets you know if the photo is under or over exposed, allowing you to dial in exposure compensation to adjust for it.

The D3300’s histogram. The histogram, to me, is one of digital photography’s major advantages.

DSLR Cost

The D3300 used to be Nikon’s lowest-cost DSLR camera. I think they’re up to the D3500 now. I like the D3300 for the motorcycle and overseas trips because it’s light, it’s small, it’s capabilities are amazing, and it’s inexpensive. I think I paid $499 for my D3300 a few years ago; I’ve recently seen the current D3500 on sale for something like $399, including the 18-55mm lens. Sometimes Costco has a package deal on the camera, two lenses, a carrying case, the SD card, and more. It’s a phenomenal deal.

Making Movies

The D3300 also has a video mode. I thought that was kind of silly at first, but I changed my mind the first time I used the video feature. The video is superb, and Nikon’s vibration reduction (VR) feature makes the video rock steady. On our second day in Mexico on the first CSC Baja ride, I rode ahead of the group and filmed all of the riders as they came around a bend. When I viewed the video on my laptop later that night, I was blown away by how good it was. The video looked as if the camera had been tripod mounted. When I saw the video, I knew I had purchased the right camera.

Moto Photography Travel Lenses

Moving on to the lenses for the D3300, I travel with three. I use the camera’s 18-55mm lens for the majority of my photos, I use the Tokina 12-24mm lens for the wide-angle panoramic shots, and I use the Nikon 70-300mm telephoto for the long-distance stuff. The 18-55mm is my default lens, and it stays on the camera most of the time. It used to be that the standard low-cost zoom lenses that camera manufacturers provided with their low-end cameras were mediocre. That’s not the case with Nikon’s 18-55mm lens. It does an excellent job, returning high contrast and sharp images. The other thing I like about the 18-55mm Nikon lens is that it has Nikon’s VR feature. It works and I like it. It delivers significantly sharper hand-held photos.

Sometimes you see something that screams out for a wide angle lens, and on the Colombia trip I brought my Tokina 12-24mm lens with me for those occasions. I like that lens a lot because of its sharpness, high contrast, and overall construction quality. The photo magazines rated the Tokina 12-24mm as sharper than Nikon’s 12-24mm lens, which costs more than twice the Tokina lens. I’ve had a lot of photos published using this lens in the “Destinations” pieces I write for Motorcycle Classics.

Two RS3 motorcycles (the carbureted version of the CSC RX3) at the edge of a Colombian cliff. I used a manually-focused Tokina 12-24 lens, a circular polarizer, and the Nikon D3300 camera.

I shot the photo on the cover of Moto Colombia with the Tokina wide angle lens at the edge of a cliff in Barichara. It was great place and a great moment, and I preserved it with a great photo.

I brought my 70-300mm Nikon lens with me on the Colombia trip, too. It’s a big, heavy, and clunky lens and it goes against what I always tell people, and that is to travel light. I only used the 70-300mm on the camera twice while I was in Colombia, and on one of those two occasions, my subject got away before I could get a good photo. That was when I tried to photograph an iguana while having lunch in Magangué. On the other occasion, though, I was quicker (actually, my subjects were slower). That’s when I photographed the vultures outside of Guane. I captured some amazing shots of those big old Colombian vultures.

Hey, you talking to me? A shot of a Colombian vulture with the Nikon 70-300mm telephoto lens, handheld, showcasing Nikon’s vibration reduction technology.

I had circular polarizers with me for all three lenses. A circular polarizer filters out the white light and that makes the colors much more vibrant in outdoor shots. I left the polarizers on the lens, and I would remove them when I shot indoors, or at night, or when I used flash. They don’t take up much room, and they make a real difference on outdoor shots.

A Good Camera Bag

I carried all of the above in a Tamrac Velocity 7X camera bag. The Tamrac bag has a sling that makes it easy to carry, but I didn’t carry the bag much. I’d just throw the whole enchilada (the Tamrac bag with the camera, the lenses, a spare battery, and the battery charger) in the topcase.

And folks, that’s it. If you have any thoughts on moto photography travel gear, we’d love to hear them. Just leave a comment below and share your thoughts with us.

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