Night Hike - Spiders

Just got back from a late night hike.  Very sticky and buggy tonight.  I was hoping to see some other species of snakes, other than fox, but I'm not complaining.  No snakes tonight, so I focused my camera on some smaller critters whose eyes show bright in the light....wolf spiders.  They are absolutely everywhere!  I was hoping to find some large Dolemedes tenebrosus fishing spiders, but no luck.  I did find a couple of other species with little surprises.

The wolf spider below is, I believe, a part of the genus Hogna.  I have a difficult time narrowing down wolf spiders.  However, the tank-like build of Hogna fits this example pretty well.  It looks big, but in reality, it is only about an inch long.  I guess that might be big to some folks.

The other species I found was the rabid wolf spider, genus rabidosa.  I already posted a photo of this spider the other night, but this one had some nice little surprises along with it.....

Rabid Wolf Spider with Babies

Babies a Little Closer

It's been really nice getting out this week.  I hope I can keep up with the frequency of hiking that I have.  One more day off!

Nikon 100AW

A year ago July, I had typed up a post on the Kodak PlaySport waterproof camera on my other blog, The Rural Path.  The post is found here.  I had anticipated using this camera while we were on vacation in Florida, and I did get to use it, however, I never got to keep the photos.  I never wrote about this camera again, because it is still floating at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico:)  I had put it in the pocket of my cargo shorts, and of course, it floated out.  I should have known better, but I am one who has to learn the hard way sometimes.

I have to say though, that I am happy that I lost it.  It dented my pride quite a bit, but I have replaced it with the Nikon 100AW.

Nikon 100AW

I'm not great at reviewing products, so I'll spare you all tiny technical details.  To keep things short, this is a 16 megapixel point and shoot camera that is waterproof, shockproof, and freeze-proof.  I don't intend on testing the latter 2, but have tested the waterproofness in rain and while kayaking.  It's still working, so that's good news:)  All of the pictures on the site so far (except for the 1st one -dragonfly), have been taken with this camera.   I bought it for two main reasons:  1. It's waterproof, and 2. Its macro capability.  I don't have a dedicated macro lens setup, so I wanted something that I could use for virtually anything, but had good macro abilities.  It turns out that this little camera does very will with macro shots and it is easy to pull out of my pocket when I need it.

I have also found that this little camera does very well with night shots, as you can see in the past couple of posts.  The flash is not too bright when the camera is close to the subject.  I could actually be a bit brighter, but I'm not complaining.  It retains the colors of the subjects very well without harsh brightness.

The only downside that I have found so far, and which is the same with most point and shoots, is the tiny zoom range.  This has a 5x optical zoom, with a 4x digital zoom.  I NEVER use digital zoom, as it terribly affects the image quality.  This could be the reason why every Bigfoot sighting photo has turned out crappy.  They used full digital zoom:)

All in all, excellent camera for what I use it for.  I hope it will come in handy in more situation once I figure out all of its capabilities.  It's a bit costly, but I found this one on sale and was happy with the price point.