Time for Mirrorless

I wasn't completely happy with the shots I got in Motegi at the Japanese MotoGP. It could have been the fact that I wasn't feeling well during the trip, plus the fact that we were perpetually living on alcohol for 4 days straight so didn't have a steady hand.

Checking the shutter count of the D500 its now up over 216,000 actuations. Nikon advise for this camera it's good for 200k, so its getting up there and still going strong. I'd been looking at mirrorless for a couple of years now waiting for a D500 replacement in mirrorless - a Z500(Z90) but Nikon don't seem to interested in making one for some reason.

I'd been watching prices of the other mirrorless models for some time(2 years). Then in Nov24 I saw that Nikon was having a Yellow day sale. I kinda scoffed as the manufacturer sales can be pretty rubbish, then forgot about it. Strangely, the night of the sale I awoke at 1am and couldn't get back to sleep, so I went on facebook and saw the sale add, clicked on it and saw that the Z8 was on sale for $1000 cheaper than any other ON sales price. It was stupidly priced and I couldn't say no, so went online right then and bought it. Still not sure why my bank didn't block a 5K transaction at 1:30am in the morning haha but glad they didn't, this time.

Next morning I looked at what else was on sale, I also got the FTZII adaptor so I could use my F mount lenses on the new Z mount camera. I also saw the Z 180-600mm F5.6-6.3 VR was on sale at stupid prices. So I was like .....

I think I payed a couple of employee's wages that week. Next day the Z8 arrived in the post. That was quick, but the lense and FTZ adaptor was going to be a few weeks wait. Damn. A brand new camera I can't even use because I don't have a lense that fits it. Plenty of time to set it up at least. It will be my first Full Frame camera, my other cameras have been crop sensor APSC with smaller sensors. I'll be interested to see what ISO this can handle in comparison to my older camera.

Whilst waiting for the lense to turn up I also ordered some screen protectors and 3M Skins from Aliexpress to cover the camera. They turned up from overseas in a few days but had to wait for the lense to turn up before I can put them on.

Finally after about 3 weeks the lense arrived and I can now put the whole package together, stickers fitted up. Did the lense friday night when the girls were at church and the body on saturday night after about 8 whiskeys, not the best idea.

Geoff told me that I need to get down to Bondi beach with that lense....

So not wanting to get arrested on my first day I decided a more conservative approach. I'll get to the beach one day. Lets' make some use of these 45 mega pixels......

A visit to Parramatta Park Australia day for the balloon glow event, it's only 10 minutes from my house so winning there.

F4.5, 1/125, ISO8000

I took my eldest daughter to the Hunter Valley airshow in February they had some magnificent World War 2 fighter planes and a F-35 Lightning. It was a surprisingly good event, well organised great food, when one display finished another was starting, transport to and from the airport was well organised with minimal waiting and the F-35 Lightning was the icing on the cake. That thing was Fast, Loud and spectacular. Lucky it was only blasting our eardrums and not dropping bombs on us.

F4 Corsair

P51D Mustang

P40 Kittyhawk

P51D Mustang

Wirraway

Spitfire

Paul Bennet's stunt show

There's been many triumphs and many failures. The setup menus on this Mirrorless camera is humungous compared to the DSLR I'm used too and especially the focusing system. There are so many settings its not funny. I kind of wish it was more simple. Sometimes pointing and shooting with a phone is more enjoyable, until you see the images that is.

The cropping ability of the 45mega pixel sensor is huge. I've cropped several images at 100% and they are still amazing. You have to be super disciplined with your technic. There are still many failed images as I wasn't using the correct focusing mode or motion blur. It's a huge learning curve again, but when you get it right it's an enjoyable one. Low light focusing the Z8 struggles more than the DSLR so that's a challenge doing the night racing events, but I shot at 6400 ISO and it was better than the DSLR at 2000 so these modern cameras have come a long way in the last few years.

I went out ot SMSP last weekend for the PCRA Festival of Speed. Rick was mechanicing for one of his racing mates, so I decided to drop in and see him and take a few more racing shots.

Ricks mate took out the 250GP class, so maybe Rick didn't have to touch much on the bike. I decided to leave him alone as me talking and distracting him, I could see he was going to forget to do something up properly.

Ironic that I got to a 45mp sensor and then downsize the images to 1mb for this blog, doesn't make sense right. Yeah, that's life, life doesn't make sense sometimes. But I can make these into 25mb jpegs which is pretty huge.

I'm pretty happy so far where I'm at with the Z8, it's a good camera and I need to learn how to use it to if full potential. At the moment I'm the weakest link for not being able to get the images I want so it's always a work in progress to try and get the best images I can. Got ASBK coming up in 2 weeks so hope I can get some good images at that.

New Shoe's & Stay Upright Adventure Training

A couple of weeks back I pulled the trigger on some rider training. The first time since the 90's and in this case long overdue. I'd realised on this ride, that I had no idea what I was doing off road and needed some proper training especially on the big Fat Africa Twin. It's a good bike but man its heavy and intimidating off road when things get technical & sketchy. My skill level off road is pretty low, so time to do something about it.

Before attending the course I had better do something about my front tyre. After the last ride in November doing the Omeo Highway twice and riding the Snowy Mountains twisty tarmac, the front tyre was chewed out on both sides due to hard cornering in the heat on the knobbies. They don't like it on a heavy bike.

Bridgestone AX-41

The Bridgestone AX-41 lasted for 9,857 kms but it was pretty well cooked for the last 2 thousand of those so probably good for 8k. It handled well on road and offroad. I've read some reviews saying its a bad off-road tyre, but I didn't find any problems with it.

On Friday I had an RDO, so I took the tyre up to Tyre for bikes and decided I'd try a Continental TKC80 tyre. I'd heard good thing about them, so let's give it a try. Yes they put the tyre on for me.

Overnight we had rain, with showers forecast for the morning and afters. Well that's just great.

I had booked rider training with Stay Upright Adventure school, which for Sydney is held at Macarthur Motorcycle Club just outside Appin. I'd got up at 6am and it was lightly sprinkling, which soon stopped before I had to get underway thankfully.

Macarthur Motorcycle Club has 4 purpose built motocross tracks and an Oval track with internal course and a couple of short adventure bike routes. We spent most of the day on the Oval track/internal course, then some down hill drills between the motocross tracks, then late in the afternoon we spent time on the motocross track as well as riding through the tree lines on the adventure course. It was a great variety.

I was the first person there at 8:30am with a 8:45am start time. I must have been keen! There were only 11 students today, but a good mix of younger and older people. It seems most people had hired the CRF250s to ride. There were a couple of Ktm790,890 a BMW F700 and a Transalp. I had the heaviest bike. I considered hiring but decided on learning the drills on my own bike because I know it well. I didn't want to be learning new skills and trying to learn a new bike at the same time. Gives' me more time to focus solely on learning the drills.

Our instructors were Steve, Matt and Wayne Clark. All very experienced ex racers and all round great blokes. They were easy going and would answer any and all questions. They started the day out with a series of drills, body position, hanging onto the bike, Clutch and brake control and turning the bike on tight technical bits using all these technics. With direct feedback of what  your doing wrong I found this was great and a lot of things fell into place for me. Constantly getting to practice each drill over and over re-enforcing the lessons I got a lot out of it.

We did braking drills, locking the back wheel, locking the front wheel. I really sucked at this as my bike has ABS on the front you can't turn off but I did manage some mad skids with the rear. I couldn't tell if the front was locking or not. The surface was really grippy as it was damp from the rain but as the day progressed it dried up and it started getting hot and steamy. It was only about 26°C but standing around and riding at low speed was hard work. We were sweating like pigs. I was glad that we stopped for lunch around 1:30pm. They supplied a subway platter and fruit which was perfect.

After Lunch, Wayne had some hill climbs and descents for us to practice. This was also really good, doing different types of hill descents brakes, no brakes, engine braking, no engine braking and clutch control sharp turns down the hill. I surprised myself with this. Definitely couldn't have done this at the start of the day. They then moved us onto the motocross track that had some pretty steep jumps we had to ride up and down. I was pretty nervous on them but it all ended up ok.

The only thing I didn't attempt was the stalling on the steep hill and then rescuing the bike. Not everyone did it, most of the people on 250s did it but I didn't want to risk that if I didn't have too. The steep hills climbs with no run up were hard enough on the big bike. We did some more drills on the jumps on the oval course including short starts and quick stops on the crest of the jumps etc. All of this was excellent as I have never really done any of this before.

Strangely enough one of the people on the course was married to a friend of ours from our High School days, who my brother was in his class at school and I was in his sisters class. What are the odds of bumping into them here? We had a catch up for about 15 minutes before going our separate ways.

I was pretty well knackered by the time 4:30pm rolled around, my legs were aching and i was pretty tired, the heat really took it out of me. I thanked all the instructors individually they did a great job and had the patience of saints those guys. I said to them "I'd learnt more in one day on the bike than I have in the last 3.5 year of ownership". That put a smile on their faces.

I'd highly recommend doing one of Stay Uprights Adventure courses if your in the same boat as me, with lots of road riding experience but very little off road experience. I learned lots and it was worth every cent. It was a great learning environment. I've no affiliation with Stay Upright, they just provided a great service.

I might try a follow up course in the next 6 months as a refresher.