I'm ostensibly spending the summer here in The States for Anthony's English development, but the real reason is to load up on camera toys. I do get things in Japan, but I prefer to buy some things here because of price, availability, ease, or just mental comfort.
It's been a while since I treated myself to some nice camera toys, so I've developed quite a list of fun toys to procure on this trip.
This post is about the GPS unit I got a few days ago, a Garmin eTrex Legend HCx, as a replacement for my Garmin GPSmap 60CS (which I wrote about when I got it last year). I consider it a camera toy because I geoencode most of my photos (as mentioned here).
Here they are together, sitting on an old birdhouse in the back yard, the small new one on the left....
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 55mm — 1/320 sec, f/5.6, ISO 100 — map & image data — nearby photos
eTrex HCx and GPSmap 60CS
Garmin's eTrex line are conveniently smaller than what I had, but that also means a smaller screen and smaller antenna. Because of the latter, I shouldn't have been surprised to find the old one was more accurate. Compare the accuracy of ±1 meter for the old one, to ±3 meters for the eTrex....
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 55mm — 1/320 sec, f/5.6, ISO 100 — map & image data — nearby photos
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 17mm — 1/160 sec, f/8, ISO 100 — map & image data — nearby photos
Wide Open Area
Garmin packs a lot of meaning into its names. In the name “eTrex Legend HCx”, the “H” indicates that it has the latest generation high-sensitivity antenna, the “C” indicates a color screen, and the “x” indicates that it accepts removable media (in this case, a MicroSD card).
The high-sensitivity antenna is a huge win when you don't have a clear view of a wide area of sky (under trees, near buildings, inside houses), which is the primary reason I bought the new one. Even though it's less accurate in the situation above, look how it compares under the trees near the front door of the house:
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 45mm — 1/90 sec, f/2.8, ISO 400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Outside the Front Door, Under Trees
Even better, the new one gets a signal inside the house, while the other one has no chance....
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 44mm — 1/40 sec, f/2.8, ISO 400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Inside the House
Garmin just released two new eTrex HCx units, the Legend that I'm writing about today, and the Vista, which adds an electronic compass and a barometric altimeter. My old unit also has these extra features, and while I really liked the electronic compass, it wasn't worth the pain of having to put up with the barometric altimeter, which is entirely worthless, producing results that differ only slightly from random. So, I avoided it for this purchase.
Anyway, my old unit and my new one are my only experience with handheld GPS, so I don't have much to compare them against except each other. In case others are interested in the eTrex HCx series, I thought I'd offer my first impressions....
Garmin eTrex Legend HCx
Here are some first impressions of the eTrex Legend HCx...
It comes with a small lanyard, but no belt clip. I can use the big bulky belt clip that came with my 60CS, but that almost doubles the thickness of the thing. Is there no thin, non-bulky belt clip for Garmin units?
It accepts a MicroSD card, but does not come with one. I bought a Transcend 1 GB MicroSD card from Adorama for twelve bucks. The unit can save track logs to the card, which I can then use for geoencoding my photos.
In my prior unit, I was limited to the 10,000 point internal memory. That's less than three hours when saving a track point every second, or about 14 hours when saving every five seconds, so I had to be careful not to fill it up on extended trips. With the 1 GB card, I figure that I can have it save a point every second for more than a year, so I no longer need to worry about track-log space at all.
The eTrex has only six buttons, compared to the nine of the 60CS, and the layout is completely different, so I had to relearn the buttons from scratch. Some functionality that I was used to on the 60CS seems to be completely lost on the eTrex, such as the ability to flip among the screen pages in reverse. The “enter” button, which is a dedicated button on the 60CS, is now part of a four-point rocker button, and I find that I often press it as a rocker when I intend to press straight in for “enter.” Maybe I'll get used to it...
The eTrex is clearly designed to be used while being held in the left hand. The 60CS seems fairly ambidextrous to me.
The screen on the eTrex is smaller. I miss having the battery-strength indication always there at the top (on the eTrex, you have to hit a button to see it), but otherwise the smaller screen has not been an issue for me.
As mentioned earlier, the antenna is more sensitive. It can get a signal in many places that the 60CS can't, and do so faster. In my tests, the 60CS gets its first fix in about 45 seconds after being turned on, while the eTrex HCx takes about 31 seconds. However, if the eTrex is “hot” (which means that it's had a signal at any time within about the last 15 minutes), it re-fixes immediately, which is nice. (I've got a note into Garmin asking exactly what “hot” means for this unit.)
Once the eTrex gets a fix, it automatically switches to the map view. This really bothered me because I generally prefer to see the satellite view (which is what the 60CS does), but I figured out that if you adjust the settings such that the satellite page is at the top of the list of pages to be shown, it won't automatically switch.
The 60CS has writing on the buttons that's been rubbing off. The eTrex won't have this problem because it has no writing on its buttons.
Both units support WAAS for added accuracy, but it keeps getting disabled in the new eTrex unit. I asked Garmin about it, and they said that a firmware update was being worked on.
My unit arrived with a bad pixel on the screen, but it's really noticeable only during the power-on screens.
Speaking of the power-on screens, Garmin allows you to create a message that's displayed when the unit is turned on, and I've put my name and phone numbers on mine. With the 60CS, the message is displayed for eight seconds, which is long enough at least for someone to recognize that it's the owner's contact info.
The eTrex unit, on the other hand, shows it for only two seconds, which is not really long enough to even notice. The eTrex unit does show a couple of “Garmin” and copyright screens during startup, so if they combined them like they do with the 60CS, they could show all of it longer without lengthening the overall startup time. As it is, the personalized startup screen is essentially meaningless on the eTrex.
I was surprised to find that the date/time shown by the units sometimes differed between them by as much as 1.5 seconds. The time is supposed to be kept exceedingly accurate, updated continuously from the satellites, but according to Garmin, this can sometimes get “stuck.” They told me that auto-locating the unit can reset this. (“Auto-location” is done when the unit is first turned on after purchase, and when it's turned on more than 600 miles from where it was last used.)
Overall I'm happy with the eTrex Legend HCx, and if I can find a reasonable belt clip or other way to attach it to my camera bag, I'd be even more happy.
I've still got to pay the bills while traveling, so spent the day on some programming projects. We had a nice storm blow through, so I sat on the veranda with my laptop, enjoying the rain, wind, thunder, and lightning while I worked.
Lotsa' Rain
When you sit on the veranda of my folks' place, the birds generally accost you for waxworms and peanuts, which we keep on hand for them. There were more birds than normal, perhaps due to a lack of flying insects during the heavy rain; at times, there were eight or nine at once. Some of the chickadees come and land right on you. It was quite pleasant.
Some of the birds were so wet and scruffy-looking that I eventually got my camera and left it beside me, occasionally trying to get a shot. By this time the storm had passed and much of the scruffiness was gone, and anyway, I had a difficult time getting a good shot because it was fairly dark, and the birds were often closer than the minimum focus distance for the 70-200/2.8 zoom I was using. Combine that with how fast they move around, and it added up to requiring more skill than I had to focus properly. Still, it was good practice.
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200mm — 1/90 sec, f/2.8, ISO 640 — full exif
Scruffy Woodpecker
At one point while I was working, a chickadee landed on the top edge of my MacBook's screen, and sat there for a few minutes checking out the computer and my typing hands. I continued to type normally (I was IM'ing to my brother Steve) and the bird didn't seem to mind my flying fingers, but I didn't dare reach for the camera. After a while, he flew off.
Anthony likes to feed the birds with Grandma, and it's on my list to try to get some nice shots of him doing so.
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 180mm — 1/160 sec, f/4, ISO 640 — full exif
Wadd'ya Lookin' At?
The other day, after visiting a farm with Anthony, we stopped by a house where Grandpa was binking. “Binking” is our family's term for using a metal detector. For many years my dad's had the hobby of hunting for old stuff at area parks and old houses (always with the owner's permission, of course).
This part of Ohio was settled as early as the 1790s, so one can often find old coins and jewelry if one knows where (and how) to look.
We arrived just as Grandpa was about to dig on a target....
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 17mm — 1/250 sec, f/4, ISO 100 — map & image data — nearby photos
Approaching with Caution
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 17mm — 1/800 sec, f/2.8, ISO 100 — full exif
Anyting Dealing with Dirt Raises the Interest Level
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 28mm — 1/640 sec, f/2.8, ISO 100 — full exif
Lending a Hand with the Proximity Probe
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 55mm — 1/250 sec, f/4.5, ISO 100 — full exif
Phew, This is Tough Work!
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 34mm — 1/125 sec, f/4.5, ISO 100 — full exif
I Think Something's There
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 55mm — 1/200 sec, f/4.5, ISO 200 — full exif
A 1948 Silver Quarter
Value: about two bucks in silver
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 35mm — 1/1600 sec, f/4.5, ISO 200 — full exif
Quality Time With Grandpa
Dad does this for the fun, not the money, although having recently finally sold his accumulated silver coins for $1,800 in silver value perhaps went a long ways toward what he's spent on gas and equipment over the years.
The real satisfaction is to find a bit of history. For example, last year he was at an old house where the owner said that his sister had lost a gold ring when she was a little girl, 50-something years ago. Gold rings are generally difficult to find because they register the same on the machine as a pulltab (which is extremely common in the grounds of Ohio), but knowing there may be a ring in the area, Dad decided to dig all the pulltabs. The first target turned out to be a pulltab, but the next was the ring.
Dad didn't get to see the look on the face of the woman when the ring she lost 50+ years ago was returned to her, but it's was a wonderful feeling for him to have found it. He's done this many times over the years. Perhaps even more commonly, when he finds a class ring, he uses the information on the ring to track down the often flabbergasted owner to return it. He's been successful in finding an owner several dozen times.
It's been a very dry summer, so he hasn't binked much this year. (He won't dig in a lawn unless he can be sure to leave it without any marks, and that's difficult when the ground is dry.) We were lucky that he was able to do it a bit when Anthony was there, and that he found the nice silver quarter when Anthony was there. It turns out that there wasn't much else at that particular house, so Anthony's timing was doubly good.
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 85mm at f/1.4
From the “Too Much Information!” file...
I'd been a bit under the weather lately because, er, my plumbing had been stopped up (more bluntly: constipation), until Mom thought of something she'd used 40+ years ago: magnesium citrate.
An adult my size takes a dose of one bottle (10 ounces). We picked one up yesterday afternoon for just $0.99 plus tax, but it was worth its weight in gold.
I drank the whole bottle of the sour lemony stuff, then a large glass of water, and waited. Four hours later, it made itself known during a short but entirely effective trip to the bathroom. I'll spare you further details, but I'm feeling much better today.
It continues to work a bit for the next day, but otherwise doesn't have much residual effect, so it really seems to be an ideal cure. I thought others might wish to know so that they can keep it in mind for their own future needs.
This was my first (and hopefully last) bout with constipation, but rest assured that I'll keep you updated with more details, should they present themselves. 🙂
(By the way, the “U.S.P.” after the name on the label stands for “United States Pharmacopeia.”)
One of the nice things about visiting with Grandma and Grandpa is visiting with Grandma and Grandpa. Here, Grandma shows Anthony some old family photos....
Here, Grandpa writes a story with Anthony...
