On the Road with Pentax Q

Back in the day - in 2007 i think (my memory of those long gone days are faded) - I paid a princely sum for a little Ricoh GX100 point-and-shoot. With a tiny 10 megapixel sensor and a 24-70mm zoom, it was my backup camera on many motorcycle trips. It was unusual in that it had an intervalometer and was small enough to hang off a motorcycle for a cool moving shot.

Press Play

Dear Pentax, back when I owned a Ricoh GX100 one of the cool little features that the camera had (and proved to me that the camera was designed by photographers and for photographers) is the play button. If the camera was off and you wanted to show your photos to someone, you did not have to turn the camera on and wait for the lens to extend and the camera to say, "I'm ready." All you had to do was press and hold the play button and lo and behold the camera would turn on in playback mode. Simply brilliant. Please take that idea and implement it in a firmware upgrade for all of your cameras and I will be one happy camper. Ok. Thx. Bye.

Ten Tips: Motorcycle Travel Photos

Ten Tips: Motorcycle Travel Photos, originally uploaded by john m flores.

Via Flickr:
I gave a presentation last summer at RoadRUNNER's annual Touring Weekend - Ten Tips for Awesome Motorcycle Travel Photos. The presentation was very well received - the very next day people were out riding and applying some of the tips I had given! That gave me the idea to turn the contents into an ebook. This is the cover.

And here is the ebook:
Available on Amazon

Tell your friends and neighbors. And if you pick up a copy, let me know what you think!

[For the camera geeks, the book contains photos using Nikon, Pentax, Ricoh, Panasonic, and Canon cameras.]

Carousel

Carousel, originally uploaded by john m flores.

Looking through some old photos brought me to this, Newark Airport Baggage Claim captured with the Ricoh GX100. I loved this little cam, quirks and limitations wrapped up in a solid little package. Some Roman cretin relieved me of this camera in 2009, and I lived without a good small cam until I bought the Panasonic GF2 at a deep discount. The GF2 was quantitatively better, but it's flown the coop - into the hands of a very talented photographer (http://chiptilden.tumblr.com/).

I've got the Pentax K-01 of course, which I am enjoying thoroughly. I take it everywhere in a messenger bag with the DA21mm F3.2 and DA70mm F2.4 Limiteds. Yesterday I took it to the supermarket much like I did with the GF2 and enjoyed shopping with it.

Time will tell if the K-01 fills the void left by the GX-100. But I wouldn't be surprised if I end up with a little Ricoh again.

40 Winks

40 Winks, originally uploaded by john m flores.

We get so caught up in technique and technicalities sometimes that we stop looking at photos. Damn precision, inspiration does not live there.

Commuter, 15fps, h264, beats

Commuter, 15fps, h264, beats
Originally uploaded by john m flores

About this time last year I was playing around with moving time lapse photography. I don't know about you, but I see a lot of stuff when I'm driving that makes me think, "that would make a nice photo" or "the lighting is interesting" or other such things. In addition to that, time lapse shows patterns and flows in life that can surprise and delight.

RIP Ricoh GX100

Old Mission Peninsula on a Kawasaki Concours 14, originally uploaded by john m flores.

Thank you for taking some awesome photos. Thank you for expanding my photographic vision.