Coons

With the astounding new Canon R5 Mark II sitting on my desk and not much opportunity to use it yet, I'm finally getting around to taking the final step in archiving old images, burning them to 22Gb BD-R discs. These are supposedly the longest-lasting medium, outlasting hard drives, solid states and USB devices by decades. Supposedly. Anyway, I am backing up originals of everything on my web site, and relegating unpublished images to less secure storage. I ran across this one from 2005, a family of raccoons that had just crossed the road in Squaw Creek National Wildlife Refuge, which now goes by the more politically-correct name of Loess Bluffs.

I usually shoot RAW, and the Canon G6 I used for this image is capable of that. But I remember on this extended trip I was often short of space on my memory cards, so this original is JPG. It's also cropped as much as I dared. I don't have other images like this, so it gets upgraded from the "unused" folder. I was on a multi-week work assignment in Kansas City and did not have my big camera (1D II a the time), so all I had was the G6 on side trips to the KC Zoo, Squaw Creek, the Kansas Cosmosphere, Milwaukee, St. Louis and Colorado. I had just gotten the G6 the month before, and it got quite a workout that summer. For the time, it was an impressive camera with 7Mp sensor and 35-140mm zoom (equivalent), but it didn't have quite the reach I would want for these raccoons. As with the 1D II, I still have the G6 and I know it works, but unlike the DSLR I have no reason to use it.

I've mentioned this before, but it is astounding that you can now buy a 256Gb card for less than $20, and back in 2005 when I needed more space it was $70 for a card with 1/250th the capacity. That is enough to hold about 150 RAW G6 images, so when I ran short I switched to JPG which takes up one-third the space. And, at the time I'm sure I thought that was a great price compared to a few years before. Eggs are now unaffordable, but memory is cheap.

The second image here also has been promoted from the 2005 "unused" folder. On my side trip to Colorado, I snapped these geese at dusk using the G6 flash, and got reflections from all of their eyes.

Finally, one of my favorites that did not need to be promoted is this bee that I snapped in Kansas City. Once again, the original is JPG. With good lighting and color balance, RAW isn't as important, but now that I always have enough storage I never shoot JPG if I have a choice.

Bringing it back to the theme of this site, remote cameras, why is it that the G6 introduced in August 2004 has better specs than any current trailcam of which I am aware? If I could slap a motion sensor on the G6 and leave it outside for three months, I would do it. 7Mp and a good lens, sign me up.