A Couple of Short Bike Rides

I went on a couple of short bike rides the other day.  The weather was nice and I was feeling fairly well so I figured I better get out on the bike before it is too cold and the bike is stored away until April or May.  

I'm still trying to figure out the best way to carry a little bit of photography gear while riding.  

The problem is that I want to have easy access to this gear and, preferably, easy access to this gear without having to completely get off my bike.  I'll stop and stand, of course, while straddling the bike but I'd prefer to not have to get completely off the bike, take off a backpack, and dig into the backpack on the ground...  shoot a few photos...  then put everything away again, put the backpack on, and then get on the bike again.  Just typing that wears me out!

I've tried a few different options over the past week but I'm not completely satisfied with anything I've tried so far.  Everything seems to be less than ideal and a major compromise.  I might need to resort to purchasing yet another photography backpack.  The one backpack I have is rather large which makes it a bit uncomfortable for riding.  I could get one that is a bit smaller which will still allow me to mount the camera on one of the shoulder straps and I'm thinking that would be a step in the right direction.  

I've tried a sling pack (only one shoulder strap)...  that is very uncomfortable and didn't really hold the camera well enough anyway.  If I'm just standing and walking while upright, the sling works fairly well but being bent over on the bike doesn't work well with a relatively loose sling pack.  Nothing feels "secure" even with a cross-body strap.  The problem is the camera is heavier than the tiny sling pack and is rather loosely dangling from the single strap of the sling pack.

So now I'm leaning toward either purchasing a smaller photography backpack (two shoulder straps) or purchasing a full upper torso harness for holding the camera.  The harness would be more secure and slightly less expensive but then I would lose the extra storage that a small backpack would provide.  The other problem with a backpack is they can get hot while riding and getting hot isn't good for my mast cell disease and usually results in anaphylaxis.  I may have just talked myself into purchasing the harness.  

Anyway, below are a few photos from the two outings on my bike the other day.  

The first photo was shot with an old camera with a Kodak sensor.  The lens I used is perhaps my worst lens out of all my lenses though.  I don't have a whole lot of lenses for this old camera so my choices are very limited.  Regardless, this photo came out fairly well...

The rest of the photos were shot with my Panasonic G9 camera.  This is a pretty good camera but not nearly as good as my Sony cameras.  I want to like the Panasonic (or even this micro four-thirds format) because of its relatively small size but I just can't get anything even close to the results I get from my Sony gear.  

The only advantage to the Panasonic is that the lenses are smaller.  That being said, the Panasonic G9 is probably larger than my Sony cameras so the camera and lens combos may be about equal in weight in most circumstances if I'm being honest.  However, if I need to use a significant telephoto lens, then the Panasonic would definitely be smaller and lighter.  Putting aside the size and weight differences, I am just not all that happy with the quality of the image files coming from the micro four-thirds format nor do I like the color straight out of the camera.  This is a nice format for the grandkids to use though.

We're supposed to get rain everyday for the rest of the week so we may not have any leaves left by the time the rain stops.  The little bit of extra weight that the rain adds to the turning leaves causes them to fall to the ground.  If we get a little bit of wind too...  autumn is over.

It may be time to focus on Christmas at this point....  which isn't a bad thing at all.  I was just hoping to get a bit more use out of my new bike before I had to store it away for the long Vermont winter season.