People often ask me about my favorite gun and caliber.
Extreme situations sometimes dictate different choices, but my favorite all-around selection is a Canon 28-135mm, 3.5-5.6 telephoto lens on a Canon Rebel XS body. I cannot count all of the deer, ducks, turkey and fish -- not to mention the sportsmen who caught them -- I've "shot" with that combination. And fast? A 7mm magnum shoots about 3,000 feet per second. My Canon rig shoots at 1/2000th of a second, you know, for the really fast targets.
We're talking about camera equipment, of course, which next to my laptop is the most important gear I own.
Photos immortalize every outdoors adventure, and modern camera equipment is so good that a novice can shoot professional-grade photos without spending a fortune.
I use the aforementioned Canon rig for most of my photography because the 28-135mm focal range is ideal for most of the hunting and fishing situations I encounter. For shooting closeups and for cramped spaces, an 18mm lens eliminates all distance-related conflicts. It also makes fish and deer antlers look bigger without having to resort to cheap tricks such as having a subject hold a fish far away from his body.
My big orange Pelican case also contains a Canon PowerShot SX50HS. It's a hybrid with a 24-1,200mm zoom lens that shoots excellent, high-resolution video. Its microphone is not great, but it is serviceable.
You can also switch to manual mode and run it like a standard single lens reflex camera. It takes practice to toggle back and forth between shutter speed and f-stop, but at 12.1 megapixels, its images are so rich and well saturated that I use it almost as often as the Rebel.
In fact, I used the PowerShot for most of my dove hunting photography in Argentina in 2010, including, in my opinion, the most spectacular dove hunter photo ever taken. It was a late afternoon image that I shot over the shoulder of the late Don Holbert of Little Rock. Holbert appears as a silhouette, and you can clearly see a big puff of feathers erupt from a dove against a deep blue sky while the spent hull tumbles from Holbert's shotgun.
I ruined that camera when I fell in Caney Creek while hiking the Caney Creek Wilderness in 2012 with my sons Matthew and Daniel. I liked it so much I bought another.
What else do we have in the orange Pelican? Ah, yes, a Fuji FinePix XP90. It's a nifty little point-and-shoot job with a 28-140mm zoom that also shoots high-resolution 1080p video.
It's handy for doing quick interviews with anglers at bass tournaments, quick on-water interviews with fishing guides, or videos inside deer stands or pop-up blinds.
The FinePix is waterproof, which makes it ideal for underwater photography when snorkeling and for live fish releases. It has a surprisingly good mic, and I've used it often for some of the videos on arkansasonline.com.
For action photography, I have a GoPro Black Hero 4 and two Sony Action Cameras.
Action camera photography is its own unique medium that produces a style of video that no other camera can duplicate. Frankly, I've yet to master it. Or, more to the point, I've yet to exploit its full capabilities.
I use the GoPro and its brethren mostly for action fishing photography, but I am frustrated that I cannot get the rich, high-definition videos that play at the in-store GoPro displays. I also use it for shooting whitewater video at water level and high-speed boating video.
Unfortunately, I am well past the age of extreme mountain biking, rappelling, snowboarding and shooting Class IV rapids, where action cameras shine the brightest. My challenge is finding a niche to maximize these cameras' abilities within my own limitations.
None of these cameras is prohibitively expensive, but, as much as I hate to say it, the iPhone 6 and equivalent smartphones have excellent cameras, and they also shoot excellent video within limits.
The problem, when you really start messing with this stuff, is that you get more into the photography than you do the actual hunting and fishing.
When I look at all the photos I have taken over my career, I think it's a nice problem to have.
Sports on 06/09/2016