Monday, April 25, 2022

A Restive Sunday, Riding the Shafer Trail and the Sony HX-80 Camera is Toast.

 Sunday, April 24

Woke to find someone had parked their popup camper near the tent.  Fortunately, he decided to leave shortly after I had breakfast.  He was a loud music player too, good riddance.

I went with Scarlett down to Moab for a grocery store run, came back to find may other campers had left the Dalton Wells area as well.  Again, good riddance.

By late afternoon, it was much less crowded and much quieter for the most part, and my soul felt more at peace than during yesterday's congestion and weekender crowding.


You'll noticed I repositioned things to better occupy the spot that used to house two RVs and a tent.  Just trying to keep some isolation until I leave here sometime this week.

Note to self: The Moab area is just too popular and crowded.

Monday, April 25

A "mo better" day in terms of crowding in Dalton Wells.  I've only one camper van within easy line of sight now.  Good enough.


Rode into town to get something from NAPA and then headed up on Potash Road towards the Shafer Trail.  I usually do it from the top down, using Canyonland's N.P. as the starting point.  Today, I rode it from the bottom up.  I think it's better in terms of spotting good picture backgrounds.







I liked the mushroom capped rock pillars






You can see the upper portion of Shafer Trail

The road has been improved greatly, its not as rough as I remembered it on a Ural but then again, that was years ago.

Once up on top, it was 31 miles back to Moab, about 33 back to the campsite.  I got back around 2:30 PM or so, oiled the chain on Yagi and rested the rest of the afternoon.

One short ride though, the La Sal Mountains were so clear today, I had to get another picture:

The last picture by the Sony HX-80

The Sony HX-80 camera, with its pretty great 30X zoom capability is toast.  It had been giving me trouble with its lens deploying the last few weeks.  So I made a claim to Sony since I'd bought the extended protection plan.  Turns out, Sony said it would cost more to fix it than to pay me the cost of the unit!  Sad.

So, they refunded me the money I paid for the camera.  The camera still worked, kind of, for a bit but today nothing I tried could get the lens to extend properly and seat.  Oh well.  So, bottom line, the Sony HX-80 isn't robust enough for motorcycling usage, at least, my type of motorcycling usage!

4 comments:

RichardM said...

Sad review of the Sony. It was a popular camera. I’m not sure what would survive your type of motorcycling besides the action cameras.

redlegsrides said...

True, RichardM, I am hard on my cameras. The Sony A5000 though, has done fine, the previous one did fine till it burned up along with Fiona!

The A5000 though, like all cameras which extend their lens forward to operate, are subject to damage if dropped or fall while on a tripod in windy conditions.

I'm thinking now of shopping for a replacement telephoto lens, the previous one burned up with the previous a5000, to take care of long distance pictures and short depth of field shots.

CCjon said...

Spectacular scenery, impossible to capture with one photo. Maybe get a 360 degree camera?

Its a tough call on which camera to get. We want sharp photos with both wide and telephoto capabilities, yet knowing how they get banged up on the rides, we don't want to spend a lot just to break it in a couple of years use.

redlegsrides said...

Thanks CCjon, and exactly, I don't think any camera can really take the punishment but especially those with moving parts! I suppose I could in case them in foam when not in use but you know how long that will last.