Green Acres CX

Couldn't go to the Sat. race at Afton Alps. But raw bee did. He's created a couple of cool special-effect photos from that race: a "tilt-shift" image that makes the race look like a miniature model, and a "bicycle planet".

Saturday's weather was gorgeous. Sunday, though, was classic cyclocross weather. Now I don't mind 40mph wind gusts, and I can handle temps in the mid-30s, and I don't even mind a little rain/snow mix. But all three at the same time? That was pretty challenging for someone who's just standing around taking pictures. I was dressed properly to keep my core temperature up, and had wool socks to keep my wet feet warm, but my fingers really got cold, making it hard to operate my camera sometimes. Thank goodness the chalet was open and I could warm up in there — and dry off my equipment — between races.

Whenever I was facing upwind, rain and snow-melt would accumulate on the front of my lens, slowly making the resulting photos look foggier and foggier, and lowering the contrast. Had to delete a bunch of these photos — it took me a while to realize what was going on. A lens hood for my 80-200 would've helped. Should have taken plastic bags or some other protection for my gear.

Camster had borrowed a Digital Rebel from the WHS yearbook staff for me, so I was able to rent a Canon 10-22mm lens this weekend from West Photo ($20). I've been wanting to play around with a superwide lens, especially at a cyclocross race, so this was my chance. People may have wondered what that crazy dude was doing, taking pictures just inches away from them. Got some intriguing results; now I definitely want one of these lenses for my very own, for my Pentax camera.

Was glad to see that AlanS added a little color to his kit this weekend, so he made the slideshow! I had been kidding him about wearing all black.

Got home and plugged the Canon's CF card into my PC's built-in card reader. Failure — every card reader stopped working. Tried logout/login, no good. Tried rebooting, same result. Finally looked carefully at the card reader — bent pin! Panic starting to set in. Tried to straighten the pin with tweezers, then with a paper clip. Removed the card reader from the chassis to get better access, still couldn't get to that bent pin. In desperation, took it to a neighbor to see if he had special tools to get to that pin.

Meanwhile I remembered that another neighbor had a Nikon DSLR, so I ran down to their house to see if I could borrow their PC for downloading the pics and burning a DVD or CD. Couldn't get their burner to work! But they offered to drive over to their parents' house to get a USB card reader that I could use. Saved the day!