Pentax K-x e-book is in progress. Should have it completed within the next four weeks.

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Hi Pentaxian friends.

I finally received enough information from Pentax to write an e-book about the newest Pentax DSLR, the K-x. There are a lot of functions similar to the K-7 and some of the K-7 e-book can be recycled. I have a very good feeling about this new K-x, because it uses a Sony 12.4 megapixel CMOS sensor. The image quality will likely be very good at high ISO. I believe that it will surpass the K20D and K-7 at high ISO.

I haven't had a chance to shoot with the camera much, but as I write the e-book, I will also be testing the K-x. I will report my findings.

In the meantime, you can get e-books for the K10D, K100D, K20D and the K-7 on this blogsite. You can print the e-books on your own computer/printer for your own use, however, a "copyright" watermark will appear on each page. My prices are ridiculously low, but that makes copying my books for resale non-profitable.

Thank you for visiting,

Yvon Bourque

The K-7 goes primitive camping and rock crawling with us. Very rugged camera.

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Hi Pentaxian friends.

My Step-son and I went camping and rock crawling this weekend in the Big Bear Lake area of the San Bernardino Mountains. I tested the K-7 against humidity, dust and cold and it did just fine. The pictures below are samples of the weekend. I was too tired to add captions last night but here are some now. I also took some video and once stitched together, I will post the whole video experience here. It was impressive.

Thanks for looking,

Yvon Bourque

We started out from Lucerne valley and drove south to the San Bernardino Mountains.

At Elevation of 4,000 ft, we decided to air-down the tires so that we could get a better grip and it would be needed later on rough roads.

We stopped at the summit of the first mountain to take a few pictures and ...


to change our altitude!

The first part of the trip took us through mostly rocky terrain.

We reached the top of another mountain, About 6,000 ft elevation, where we thought we could set up our base camp. As it turned out, from there we could see a better spot in the distance at about 2,000 ft higher.

We left this rocky area through...

a newly paved road.

From there we drove East to the next mountain that showed as being 8,300 ft elevation on our map.

We finally got to a nice spot, surrounded by boulders and flat. We couldn't go any farther as the rugged road came to an end. The elevation was 7,604 ft and it was very peaceful except for the cry of coyotes in the woods behind.

We set out tents up and relaxed for a while.

The camp all set up, we were hungry.

We carved some meat out of a wild deer we caught...not! We did have some steaks and some Johnson bratwurst and some canned chili.

Looking around for wild game, I saw this enormous chipmunk crossing the trail. It must have weight at least 1 or 2 ounces. I figured that shooting it with a 12 GA shotgun wouldn't leave much meat to eat! I spared the little guy. Actually, I only shoot animals with my cameras. The shotgun we brought was more for safety reasons.

Steaks started grilling.

Steaks ready to eat.

The sun went down and temperature started to drop.

The sky turned out pink and purple and made the scenery ideal for silhouettes.

Donny got a little carried away with the starting fluid!

Now that's better.

There is nothing like watching a John Wayne movie in the wilderness.

A hot fire to warm your feet and the hike-in

movie theater was great.

Morning came and I can still smell the bacon cooking...yum!

We are starting our trip back home via the longest way we could find amongst the various trails.

The roads were not all that friendly, but really fun for driving with a Jeep.

We had to run on the tire sidewalls at times. That's why a good set of off-road is a must when riding on boulders.

It took us more than two hours to drive through this 3 miles long road.

The efforts paid off as we came to a nice water hole...

that even had tons of trouts in it. Next time we will plan to camp there one night, fish for our dinner and take a fresh and very cold bath.

Words of advice: If you camp in an area that goes below the freezing point at night, regular toilet paper does much better than "Cottonnelle wipes" which frozed to a block of ice. :(

The K-7 did great, it got water on it, a lot of dust, shot a around 20 Degrees F, and it got tossed around in the Jeep. This is one tough camera.

Tomorrow is the Pentax World Global Shoot Day. We will be camping in the San Bernardino Mountains @ more than 8,000ft Elevation. K-7s are ready...but

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Hi Pentaxian friends.

This weekend me and my step son are supposed to go primitive camping in the San Bernardino mountains. You can go by foot, but we usually go with my Jeep. In preparation for this trip, I checked the Jeep this week to make sure everything was in order. We drive to about 8,000 ftelevation and because the air is thinner up there, vehicles don't always burn the fuel in the proper air/fuel mixture.

As murphy law would have it, I found out that the intake manifold gasket was leaking and that the radiator was also loosing coolant. I have been working on the Jeep since Wednesday and it is almost ready (Friday Night @ 7:05 P.M.). We hope there won't be anymore problems and we think we will be ready around midnight.

We want to leave before sun-up so that we can take great sun rise pictures on the mountains. Tomorrow is the “PENTAX WORLD” GLOBAL SHOOT DAY: Saturday, October 10, 2009 . We are hoping to get some great shots to share.

I just wanted to take a few minutes to post this. I'm going down in the garage to finish our repairs work.

Update at 1:30 A.M Saturday. We can't get the new carburetor to work properly. It looks like a defective carburetor. We will spend one hour in the morning trying to install the old carb and if that doesn't work, we will still go camping on the mountains but with my trusted Chevy 4WD Pickup. You can't always have what you want... ;(

Thanks for reading,

Yvon Bourque

Nobel Prizes for Camera + Photography (Noisy edition)

Nobel Prizes for Camera + Photography (Noisy edition)

I am proud to announce that 1000 noisy cameras has awarded me a "Nobel Prize for camera + Photography" in the Camera-Literature category. Imagine that! I will be receiving $1.4 million, but due to liquidity issues, the first payment will be made in November 2099 providing that I'm still alive. I will be arounf 150 years old by then. What an honor this is.

Mr. Obama...eat your heart out!

Thank you to www.1001noisycameras.com/ and all the people that voted for me. I will cherish this prize forever.

Devastating fires in California near my home. It is a place I visited often with my Pentax DSLRs.

The small mountain town of Wrightwood pictures above.

The above map is where the fires are burning. The pictures below were taken in the red circled area. I live in the Victor Valley area, which is close by. If you are familiar with by blogsite, I often venture in my Jeep to the San Bernardino mountains and usually show some photographs on this blogsite. In fact, we are going there for the upcoming weekend, and will camp atop one of the mountain. I will be taking pictures from there on the 10th, and will submit some to PentaxForums for the “PENTAX WORLD” GLOBAL SHOOT DAY: Saturday, October 10, 2009

The pictures of the fire above are not my photographs. They were imported from the News Media on the Internet.

The photos of the Yucca trees were taken by me during the course of several months. It will be a long time before similar pictures can be taken. In a few weeks, I will visit the area to see the devastation. I hope that some vegetation has survived. It was a spectacular place. I had never seen so many Yucca trees in one place.

Email: brqyvn@aol.com

Hi Pentaxian friends.

California has been plagued with more fires this year than since I moved here six years ago. This time the fires are too close for comfort and a beautiful area is burning down. This is an area that I photograph often and never get tired of the scenery. I don't know what will be spared, but I hope they contain the damages to minimum.

The following excerpts are from the Los Angeles Times and can be read in its entirety at the link posted below.

A fire in the San Gabriel Mountains has burned 3,500 acres, destroyed at least three houses and threatened hundreds more homes.

Several remote canyon areas and a portion of Wrightwood were under mandatory evacuation, and the rest of Wrightwood was under voluntary evacuation. Fire officials said erratic winds were pushing the fire in several different directions through dense forest land, in some cases spotting a quarter of a mile ahead.

The Sheep fire is roughly burning between Lytle Creek Canyon and California 138. The mandatory evacuation include areas east of Heath Canyon and west of Heath Canyon between Lone Pine Canyon Road and California 2.
An evacuation center has been set up at Eisenhower High School in Rialto. The blaze began about 2 p.m Saturday in the Lytle Creek area east of Mt. Baldy and west of the Cajon Pass. It spread rapidly northward, threatening ranches and truck farms, among other properties, said John Miller, a spokesman for the U.S. Forest Service.

More than 500 firefighters from the Forest Service and San Bernardino were deployed in an uphill effort to contain the flames. By this morning, the fire was only 10% contained.... Link