As I’ve said in years past, the Oracle has spoken and it is just a matter of time before video takes over many of the functions that previously have been the domain of still photography. So it is important to explore video just to stay on top of it. My heart is mostly into still photography, but movie segments are better for waves on the shore, swaying palm trees, surfers, fireworks and chasing fish underwater. 

I can publish these somewhere, but probably not on WordPress. These  are just a fraction of what I’ll be photographing, so don’t despair.

For underwater fish, I would need a GO PRO camera, but Santa didn’t bring me one for Christmas. For the rest, my Nexus 4 phone takes okay videos, my Galaxy Tab 2 10.1″ takes pretty good videos and my Canon 5D Mark 2 takes pro-quality videos, so I won’t be left bare-handed.

I have purchased a micro tripod called a “cowboy” tripod for still or movie shooting of beach and  fireworks. As it turns out we will be on the other side of the island the night of the fireworks, anyway. But if they’re going the night before, I’ll grab it. I’ll let you know if a tabletop tripod works or not. There shouldn’t be any whales this time of year, so I don’t think I’ll buy a lens extender and sit by the shore, waiting.

I will maybe have enough reason for long lens shooting that I have purchased a very lightweight monopod for this trip. This one is sold under many names but this one is branded Vivitar. It is mostly for surfers and the occasional sailboat on the horizon. It might help while watching sea turtles from a distance, such as at Blowhole down on the south of the island outside of Poipu.

A monopod works well with an image-stabilized modium or long lens for photographing plans in the botanical gardens, like the one down south or the one that I haven’t tried up on the north close to Tunnels Beach (Bali Hai).

I don’t know if I’ll be in the mood for drive up to the little grand canyon, but my ohotos for there in past years were disappointing. There is sort of a make shift indigenous plant exhibit that I have kept tabs on in years past with plants that are, err, out of this world. They look a little like something from another planet, so that intrigues me.

The North Shore condo will have both a sunrise and sunset view from inside. That should be a good time to try out the tripod. I will probably experiment with High Dynamic Range photography there. HDR needs a tripod anyway because it needs several photos to be overlaid on each other to capture the darks and the highlights.

Just realized that I already had a USB-OTG adaptor for my Galaxy Tab 2 10.1″ tablet. It cost about 5 bucks. I plugged the universal Logitech USB adaptor and the Logitech keyboard and mouse work flawlessly. I’ll just throw them in the suitcase for my trip.

Having a good keyboard is like having good coffee — a necessity. This will raise my sense of “havingness” immensely. As it turns out, the tablet works fine for a “screen” and it works fine (as I am doing now) for making blog entries. The mouse is surprisingly useful for typing- type applications. Gotta go.

As you know, it would be cool to use Google Mapsl as an occasional GPS for car navigation in Kauai. In later versions of the operating system (ICS 4.1, and Jelly Bean ) the Google maps have the ability to download maps for an area. I upgraded someone’s Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 from ICS 4.0 to Ice Cream Sandwich 4.04 and the Google map would now show the option to download maps for offline use. This is cool in Kauai because there are places with no data coverage. You are asked to select the area to download and I selected a map of Kauai. It was about 20 MB and took a minute or two on my WI-FI. You could, of course do this at Starbucks or McDonnalds in a pinch if in an area of weak coverage or if you use no data plan. Of course you’d not get the up-to-the-minute traffic, but still have a GPS function and your cell phone would know the hotels and gas stations in the area. Hats off to Google Maps for this latest update.