So what is it about this Canon EOS R5 camera that made me put up with all the difficulty of getting it? Well, let me see.

First of all, it's a different kind of camera, probably the way future DSLR cameras will all be. It's a mirrorless camera, which would take too long to explain here, but there are many benefits to not having an internal mirror like SLR cameras have had since I was a kid. So right off the bat, it made every DSLR camera that has a mirror an antique.

Probably the most important thing to me is it's new focusing system. All modern cameras have automatic focusing, which is a Godsend to those of us who wear glasses and have trouble manually focusing like we all had to do back in the day. But this autofocusing system is different, unlike me ... It's smart.

Along with normal autofocusing, you can tell this camera that you want to focus on a human being, and it will find the human being and focus on it. Or you can tell it you want to focus on an animal, and it will find the animal, ignoring the human being and focus on the animal. You can also tell it to focus on the animal or human's eye, and when that human, or animal, or bird moves, the camera stays focused on the eye even while the animal or the camera is moving. It sounds like magic, and maybe it is.

As I mentioned before, it takes video up to 6K, which many people didn't even think possible. There's not much reason for 6K right now because I don't believe any screens can display 6K. But at least the cameras ready when technology catches up. None of the video stuff interests me because I don't plan on using this camera to shoot video.

The sensor in the R5 is a full-frame sensor and has 45 megapixels, my older camera has an APS-C size sensor and 20 megapixels. So pictures can have much more detail in them. That won't affect the images you see on my blog because I have to downsize the pictures from 42MB to about 300KB, and then the Internet messes around with them even more.

Another really big deal is, in body stabilization, "IBS." Stabilization is what helps cut down on your hands shaking the camera when you're taking the picture. Canon has always had stabilizers in the lens but not in all lenses, only the most expensive ones. But now Canon has stabilized the sensor in the camera so it senses the camera shaking and smooths it out much better than the lens stabilizers do. So now not only do ALL of your camera lenses become stabilized, but the lenses that were already stabilized work even better because the IBS adds to the built-in lens stabilization.

A small thing but of great importance to me is that the viewing screen on the back of the camera can be folded out and turned around as many cameras have always done. For some reason, serious photographers never cared about, but I do so that tells you right off the bat I'm not a serious photographer.

 You may have noticed I take a lot of flower pictures, can't help it, I like to take flower pictures. Their pretty, they smell good, and they don't complain about how their picture turned out. Often, these flowers are very close to the ground, which means me and the camera have to get very close to the ground.

 Even though I'm quite good at getting down there, getting back up again is a whole other matter, especially if I've been down there for a while. I can get back up... eventually, but it's not pretty, and I creak and pop like an old barn door. So having a movable viewing screen that allows me to remain standing or at least squatting while the camera gets close to the flower is a beautiful thing, which I'm sure I will appreciate even more in the future.

                          theboondork

Passenger cars on the narrow gauge Durango & Silverton line.

Back on the subject of my hobbies. I've pared them down considerably without even trying, and I may not be through shedding hobbies just yet. I thought it would be difficult and painful to stop enjoying hobbies that I've been doing for most of my life, but without even giving it any thought, I've managed to lose interest in them quicker and easier than I thought I would.

Some hobbies were easier than others to leave behind. I've been collecting guns for most of my life, and I thought giving up my guns, not all but most, was going to be incredibly painful. But because it was a hobby that could not be enjoyed while living and traveling in an RV, it was amazingly easy to sell most of them off, not miss them, and really don't have much interest in guns anymore.

Other hobbies, such as photography has always been coming and going during my life. It would interest me for a few years, and then I would lose interest and not take a picture for years. I took a fair amount of photos when I was in the Air Force because I didn't have much money for entertainment, but film and developing was cheap on base, so I could afford to take a few pictures, mostly slides because they cost less than actual pictures.

The years that I was in business, I lost most of my interest in taking pictures, don't know why, just did. So I only have a few photos of that time of my life. I only started getting seriously interested in photography again when I became a full-time RVer. Taking pictures of things during my travels seemed to be a perfect hobby for the RVing lifestyle.

My picture taking hobby and my blog go hand-in-hand because taking pictures without showing them to anyone takes a lot of the fun out of picture taking. And my blog gives me a venue and a reason to enjoy my photography hobby, which I appreciate more and more every year.

And since I've realized that photography will be my main hobby, I decided to splurge and finally buy myself a really good camera. The Canon camera I'm currently using is okay and will make a great backup camera, unless I decide to put it on eBay. But there's been some significant changes in cameras since my camera was new and great strides have been made in camera design, and the things they can do now boggles the mind. So when Canon came out with their latest and greatest, and I found out it wasn't just a minor upgrade to what I had but a totally new camera design, I laid my money down and settled in for a two-month wait on a seriously back-ordered camera that finally reached from Japan to my front door yesterday about lunch. And I will talk about that some more tomorrow.

                             theboondork

Not a movie set, not a representation, but an actual Colorado gold mining town saloon from the 1800s. Notice how narrow it is. In old West towns lot size was typically 25 feet wide and 150' long. So if you had money you could buy several lots and have a saloon that looked like the Long Branch in the TV show Gunsmoke. If not you ended up with a 25 foot wide saloon.

The saloon looks all warm and inviting so you can see why men would want to spend time here talking and drinking with their friends instead of their leaky, rustic, cold, log cabin. Or worse yet a tent. And no it's not full of bullet holes. Yes that did happen, but it happened far more in the movies than it ever did in real life.

When I lived in a home without wheels, I had lots of room both inside and out to have about any hobby that I was interested in, and I had several. When I became a full-time RVer, the space I had available for hobbies, or anything else for that matter, became extremely limited, so most of my hobbies were left behind in this transition to a new life.

I kept a few hobbies that fit this new lifestyle I was living. Still, as time went on, even those hobbies became less and less important to me, so the bits and pieces were mostly given away to family members in an effort to simplify my life and have less unused stuff to carry around in the Arctic Fox. So as I sit here today, I have four primary hobbies left, and my interest in some of those is fading rapidly.

I keep a fishing rod and reel lying around, although it seldom gets used. I've been fishing since I was a little kid. Everywhere from tiny creeks to the blue waters of the Gulf Stream. Walking along the shore, wading in the water, or trolling along the reefs in the Florida Keys in a 21 foot Robalo. I've always been a fisherman. But for some reason, it holds very little interest for me anymore, and it feels like I only keep my rod, reel, and a tiny tackle box around so one day I can teach my grandkids to fish.

Another hobby I've had, almost forever, is a love of motorcycles. There have been very few times in my life when I haven't had some kind of a motorcycle to ride, starting with my dad's Cushman Eagle scooter when I was about 12 years old up until today with the little Beta 250cc dirtbike hanging on the back of the Arctic Fox. I rode a motorcycle to school when I was old enough to have a license. I rode one in Japan while I was in the Air Force. I've ridden around the United States while on vacation. And I've ridden around most of Europe. Nowadays, I don't care much about riding on the road, but I do like to putt around in the dirt... But not nearly as much as I used to.

I used to call my computers a hobby because living in a house that didn't move computers were a hobby. I enjoyed using them, I enjoyed building them, and I enjoyed working on them when things weren't going right, which was all too often. But living in the Arctic Fox, they're more than a hobby for me now; they've become a big part of my life. Their my entertainment, my connection to the world, and how I produce my blog, which I genuinely enjoy. So I don't think of my computers as a hobby, any more than I think of my truck as a hobby. I consider them an essential part of my life.

And then there's photography... Photography is actually the whole reason that I wanted to write this post about my hobbies. But since this post has gotten too long, as my blog posts frequently do, now I will have to write about my photography hobby tomorrow.

                               theboondork

Silverton Colorado library. Back in the old days there were a few buildings that would show that a town was civilized and safe for families to live in. A Church, a school, and a library. These buildings were usually built after there were enough saloons to fill the need.