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Adventures in the USA - part 2 of 1 2 3

by Tom Lee Published 01/04/2012

Tuesday evening dinner was a real treat at the Tower Restaurant in the Stratosphere, hosted by Phil and Juliet along with some other exiles from the UK. Michael and Janet Turner, Andrea Barret, Mark Jordan, Adelle and James (who got engaged whilst in the States), Howard Butterfield from The Image File, Sue and Nancy Altenburg and my wife Karen. Great fun was had watching people diving off the tower past our dining window to the strip below.

A heavy dose of tradeshow fever took over day five which had all the usual suspects from the camera and album markets. What did strike me, however, was the abundance of backdrop and prop suppliers. In the UK we seem to have one or two, but there were at least 10 in one arena! This was by far the most relaxing day of the convention so far and I was determined not to burn out. A hearty meal and a good night's sleep (at last), left us fresh for stage two of the USA adventure.

The Nikon V1

The Valley of Fire is one of America's many national parks, about an hour outside of Las Vegas. Now that the main convention was over my wife, Karen and I hooked up with some serious photographic petrol heads (about 24 of them) to go on a biker ride and shoot some frames. The outing was organised by my good friend Ken Sklute and Brian Kraft from onOne Software.

This was an epic event for me as I'd not been on a bike for about 20 years, let alone on a $28K Harley Davidson Trike! After an initial 10 minutes in the car park, it all came flooding back, and the Las Vegas Chapter was on it's way. This was to be a fun day out but I'd just bought a new toy before I left for America - the Nikon V1 mirrorless compact with interchangeable lenses. This was a great opportunity to give it a proper shakedown. There are times when convenience over quality is a better option due to the nature of travel or events you are attending.

Although being on a trike didn't present a problem to carrying my big gear with me (it has a trunk!) the smaller camera was of much more use and could be stowed in a jacket pocket. The camera captures full 1080 HD movies and has the ability to capture still frames in JPEG mode whilst actually recording. Examination of the files afterwards showed no fluctuation in the movie as the still image was captured. The JPEG image capture produces 23.7MB files during video shooting and is more than adequate for producing high quality A3 print sizes. The native RAW file size is 57.4MB, for comparison.

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1st Published 01/04/2012
last update 09/12/2022 14:50:57

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