[Francis]

That's quite a nice one!

[Immunogirl]

Cmohr,


What is that oily stuff in the water then? Just to make sure I don't swim in it if I ever go back. I do have some pics of the eyes on the front of boats - but I only had a 1.1 megapixel digital camera back then, and the only other pics I took were with my olympus pen ft half frame, I'll have to go look at my negatives from that.

Kayaking, especially with a full moon's gorgeous... or when there's phospholuminescent jelly fish in the water (or bacteria... saw that once in Costa Rica). Or when you go over a school of sleeping fish and they freak out and start slapping against the bottom of the boat. Most of DC's monuments/etc can be seen from the water and are lit up at night, so it's a great night or 4th of july fireworks or cherry blossom paddle and you avoid the hordes of tourists walking about.

Check out the watershed aleutian deck bag - it looks like it would be lower profile, since it's essentially a flat bag unless something's in it. The closure looks better than any of the dome shaped deck bags I've tried with the zippers. I've been meaning to check those out, but have never actually seen anywhere that carries them in person. Try out the dipacac bag - I could just be picky.
Watershed Aleutian Deck Bag - FREE SHIPPING at Altrec.com

I stick my pelican case forward of the cockpit to try to get it out of harms way. You may be able to just mount a deck bag more forward and avoid hitting it. (Although, I dunno whether I'm more likely to shatter a carbon fiber paddle hitting a pelican case or what). I keep my waterproof video camera on a suction cup monopod in front of the front hatch - I can't reach it, but I can't knock it with my paddle like I used to when I kept it on my front deck... and then figured out that the stupid threading in the bottom of that camera was into plastic, so knock it enough with your paddle and you break the plastic threadings. I have to ask someone else to turn off/on the video camera if I use it.

[Immunogirl]

That's quite a nice one!

Thanks! I was hoping it would be. The only other lens I had with me was my 80-320. It wasn't wide enough angle to get everything in one shot.

[cmohr]

Cmohr,


What is that oily stuff in the water then? .

OOOooo.... you don't really want to know


Thats a good shot, was it with the 18-135????? You should be happy with that? I love refections on water, and how main focus point and depth of feild is strangely affected by it.

I like the look of that deck bag, might see if theres an Aussie supplier for them. I'm still a noob in the kayak world, so still learning, Nice looking Yak you have, your very adventurious doing barrel rolls with all that stuff on deck. Heres a little pic from the bridge of the "Belafonte" not from my Pentax tho, from my Nokia phone..

Attached Images

 

[Immunogirl]

reflections in the water pic of the boat was actually with my panasonic dmc-fz20k.The moon shot was with the 18-135.

I headed down to the everglades at christmas just after killing my k20, so I bought batteries for my old fz20 to have something to take pics with. They have "chickee" platforms in the middle of the water for people to camp on... there's not much dry land while in the mangroves or grasses, so you just paddle from platform to platform. So the kayak in that shot had about a week's worth of camping gear, water, and food inside it. so all the stuff on deck either couldn't really go inside or needed to be accessible. I've probably seen the most incredible sunsets & rises I've ever seen in the Everglades from those chickee platforms with the reflections. This is the previous year in the everglades with my k20d:



And yeah, after I went under at little falls the other night (we were paddling up this as far as possible), someone said - yeah, you really need to get all that crap off your front deck. It was flopping around when you were rolling back up.

[Immunogirl]

Your nokia phone does a pretty good job - I'm hard on my cell phones (all the water),so I never get very nice ones.

Are those mangroves? What type of kayak is the belefonte? That looks like the perception logo up front. That one's my p&h vela. Great small person's boat.

[cmohr]

Wow, Thats a Beautiful sunset shot....Almost as good as the ones down here .

So the moon shot was with the 18-135 eh, nice, Might be redeeming itself??

Well spotted the Perception Logo, It is a Perception Sea Lion, bought second hand off the internets, That pic was taken on the Noosa river, unstream from a little camping area called Harry's Hut. North of Brisbane in Queensland. They are not mangroves, mostly paperbarks, gum trees ect ect, all fresh water up that far and no engine driven boats allowed, so quite, and not overcrowded.

[Immunogirl]

I haven't paddled a sea lion but I see them pop up every so often for sale. Way back when I had a perception catalina and then a perception avatar - the latter was a great playboat in the surf & I probably shouldn't have sold it on Now I tend towards low volume british built boats (I'm a fairly destructive force on a kayak).

I need to kayak in Australia, apparently.

The 18-135's doing a bit better. I think turning off highlight correction made a huge difference on noise.

I did this the other night while out on the water with the 18-135:



That's not bad with how much movement there was with the kayak & how dark it was.

Unfortunately, with trying not to use picasa, it's taking me forever to process images. Pentax photo browser hates me for some reason, when I try to modify a photo with it, it just turns the photo all black and won't show me the changes I made. so now I'm going through comparing what adobe lightroom shows vs. what picasa shows... For the most part, things look pretty similar, although in one shot I took of the moon, picasa brightened up & took out all details of the moon from the shot, while in adobe, i can see all the shadows, etc. on the moons surface. So I'm still experimenting with lightroom and learning all the controls.

I think the focus/sharpness is still soft when zoomed all the way out on landscapes, but I'm going to take the camera out in an hour or two and try to do some more diligent tests comparing it to the 16-45. I guess it's just mean comparing it to the 21 mm limited.

[rfortson]

Did you ever check the focusing? Since you've got AF adjustment it can make a big difference to adjust any focus errors and rule them out. Then you can move on to other settings.

I don't have the 18-135, but I've got a variety of lenses, and I'm of the opinion that pretty much any lens can take a decent shot with the right combination of settings. You just need to keep experimenting to find it (and it shouldn't be hard). Just take a walk for an hour or two and shoot with the lens, anything and everything. Then go back and look at your shots, and see what worked and what didn't. It should be fun.

Good luck?

[Immunogirl]

Thanks everyone for all your help.

I've played with the autofocus and done manual focus.

I'm just not feeling the love for this lens. It has moments of greatness, but in general, I get a lot more inconsistent results with it then I do my other lenses and I have other lenses that cover the same focal lengths (just not all in one lens). Which may be how I'm using it, but my limitations for what I'm willing to do in a kayak have been mentioned previously. Mostly, I feel like I'm trying to force myself to like the lens, and I don't think I should have to do that.

It & the 16-45 went out today, basically I just ran through each pic with each lens going through all the shutter speeds on P & Tv mode - I like the 16-45 for landscapes better. Yeah, maybe I could photoshop and play with the sharpness till I get the 18-135 to look how the 16-45 does, but I'd rather not have to do so. The 18-135 mm tends to focus sharply when zoomed in and to do well in bright sunlight, but in general 135 isn't great for taking pics of wildlife, it's not long enough to get close enough without scaring them - which would be the advantage of the 18-135 instead of the 16-45 since the WR is probably not going to protect after dunking.

The 18-135 is also significantly heavier than the 16-45 or my 80-320 or any of my other lenses... This is painful when I'm holding the camera strap by my teeth. It's also painful if I have the camera sitting on the top of my life jacket at my neck which I did for a while today...

Since most of my kayaking pics that I really like end up being landscapes or wide angle pics, I'm just gonna send this lens back. I think I'd be happier either getting a newer waterproof point & shoot or a faster 80-320/70-300 lens.

[dgaies]

The 18-135 is also significantly heavier than the 16-45 or my 80-320 or any of my other lenses

While there are valid reasons to dislike the 18-135, it's not significantly heavier than the 16-45 and is actually 25% lighter than the 80-320.

The 18-135 weighs 14oz (405g)
The 16-45 weighs 13oz (365g)
The 80-320 weighs 1lb, 3oz (550g)

[Immunogirl]

Now I am weighing all my lenses for you guys.

My 18-135 weighs 15 ounces, 16-45 weighs 13 ounces. I just used the 16-45 today to have a closer comparison than the fixed lenses I normally paddle with.

I most often paddle with my 21 mm fixed or my 35 mm macro which weigh 5 ounces & 8 ounces respectively.

Typically, I like a solid heavy lens. But perhaps my teeth are wimps, they really didn't like the extra 2-10 ounces that the 18-135mm weighs compared to the others.

You are correct, the 80-320 is heavier. It generally isn't in my teeth though.

[cmohr]

You are correct, the 80-320 is heavier. It generally isn't in my teeth though.

Well there's a statement you don't hear often, but makes seemingly makes a lot of sense.

If you really aren't happy, I say send it back whilst you still can, no use having a lens you just don't want to use, and sticking with what you prefer, everybodys primary lens choice is different depending on their needs, only other thing you could do is get hold of an old second camera body with WR and put a long FL on that, then keep the wideangle on the main body???

There's lots more to do in Australia than just Paddle abboot I can tell you. What exactly do you do to destroy so many Yaks??? With the software stuff, I have CS4 on my big puter, but, must admit I prefer the CS2 version for doing Photo work, has everything I need, processes the pics well, and is simpler to use.

[Immunogirl]

Well there's a statement you don't hear often, but makes seemingly makes a lot of sense.

If you really aren't happy, I say send it back whilst you still can, no use having a lens you just don't want to use, and sticking with what you prefer, everybodys primary lens choice is different depending on their needs, only other thing you could do is get hold of an old second camera body with WR and put a long FL on that, then keep the wideangle on the main body???

There's lots more to do in Australia than just Paddle abboot I can tell you. What exactly do you do to destroy so many Yaks??? With the software stuff, I have CS4 on my big puter, but, must admit I prefer the CS2 version for doing Photo work, has everything I need, processes the pics well, and is simpler to use.

What? The rest of you guys don't just a lens based on how much the camera weighs when you're holding the camera strap by your teeth? If any of you care to try it, I will say 2 ounces does actually seem to make a huge difference in weight. But it may be a difference in weight distribution/balance of the lens that makes it feel significantly heavier than the 16-45 on the k7.

All in all, the lens just isn't quite what I wanted when I bought it . If it's unlikely to protect at all against a brief submersion, then... I don't actually need it.

I haven't completely destroyed any kayaks, I just tend to use my boats. Alot... I have 3 that need various levels of fiberglass gel coat repairs currently. One has split seams and that's probably more related to age. The 2nd pretty much just needs to be completely refinished on the bottom. and maybe the top. and maybe the inside, I've had enough sand inside it that my feet are wearing through the resin & fiberglass weave in there... It went through a lot of rock gardening, sea caves, and oyster shells over the last year or so, so basically it's a network of scratches some of which are pretty deep and there's a bit too much exposed fiberglass. The third's got a few small chunks of gel coat missing from some sea caves that I could probably get away with just patching, the rest of its scratches aren't too deep. I have managed to not destroy my kevlar one, but I've only had it a month & I'm trying to be very careful of it... It'll give me something to paddle when my other boats are out of commission getting repaired. I need to fix some seats and skeg cables as well.

To some extent, I probably spend too much time taking pics of things and protecting the camera, and the boats pay the price of that sometimes, getting a bit more impact than they should.

I wasn't actually paddling the boat that broke - but the only time I've been present for the destruction of a kayak was in costa rica:

[ecoronin]

you guys should look at the competition for this lens, 18-200 DX VR Nikon is like 700$ and it has some really bad reviews, no weather sealing.