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Hi all. I have always wanted to carry bird spotting or wild flower guides while out walking, but the weight and bulk penalty used to stop me. But today, the solution hit me between the eyes. As I always have my digital camera on me while walking, I have now loaded images of birds/flowers/tree's and animals onto it's memory card. The images are named and some have a reference to size on them. With memory cards holding hundred's or thousands of small pic's, this has no impact on picture taking. and doesn't add to weight or bulk Does anyone else do this, Or have I come up with a useful suggestion here?
Sounds like a useful suggestion to me. I'm just having a look (and a weigh) of a stack of Collins guides. I have Birds, Insects, Butterflies, Trees, Wild Flowers, Alpine Flowers and Grasses, Sedges, Rushes & Ferns! Carrying that around with me would require a Sherpa, but then again, I'm not sure how much of that I could usefully load into memory in a way that would be easily searchable while on the move.
One little trick I've done regularly with the digital camera while on the hoof is photographing bus timetables, mapboards, information boards, etc. Saves scribbling stuff down each time, and it's easy to refer to the images. When I'm finished with them, they get deleted.
I did something similar at the Outdoors Show last year; rather than pay some extortionate amount for a programme, I photographed the big stand layout sign at the entrance.
I thought of doing this with a PDA some time ago, and actually creating a proper 'e-book' to support it, with search facilities that guide you to help identify flowers, trees etc. Most field guides have such a guide, but automation would make things so much easier.
As a starter, you could google for US Army Manual FM 21-76, and download the Appendices B and C 'Edible & Medicinal Plants' and 'Poisonous Plants'.
Yes I did that! There were no maps obtainable when I wanted to go up Cerro Chirripo, the highest mountain in Costa Rica. I had to photo the map painted on a big signboard outside the rangers office. Definitely a last resort, didn't test it much as the trail is so well marked. Ah, happy days, thanks for reminding me!
I usually take a starmap with me in my mapcase, just a free one off the web. I've often thought of doing a cheat-sheet for the terrain, but never get round to it. Good idea, Ray. I'll photograph a few pages of "Hostile Habitats" into JPG format.
This is a great idea folks. <fx: and another reason why I will go digital before too long now!>
The DIY approach has a lot of merit but I reckon there must also be some commercial scope for publishers. Theres a bunch called Vertebrate Graphics (here) who publish great mountain-biking guides plus some other outdoor books and stuff (including the BMC Harvey maps), who make their guides available on CD too - you can buy the book, the CD or both as a bundle. On the CD each book chapter is a pdf file holding the route intro, description, profile and info, and route map (which in the newer guides is full Harveys mapping!). The CDs are about half the price of the books but you'd miss out on the general book intro and all the photos if you only bought the CD. But to go out for a particular route you can print all the useful stuff directly onto 2 or 3 A4 sheets - saving the weight of the book and avoiding trashing your book in poor weather! It would also be a fairly easy step for the user to put that content on their digital device in suitable format. I wish more publishers would think to do something like this.
(I suppose the drawback is commercial: VG publish a 'plea' with their digital content - "Please don't copy this to all you mates - profits from the sale of our guides help to fund production of more guides in the series." I wonder how many customers abide by it. I'll print my mates a copy of the route for the day but I haven't passed on the digital material itself.)
That's a great idea, I was walking near Ben Alder bothy and wanted to take a short cut to Rannoch station. As my map was a MM print I didn't have the section I wanted, so I took a photo of the map pinned to the bothy wall.... worked a treat. A good idea would be to carry your reference material on a spare card, so it doesn't get mixed up and you don't have to scroll through loads of photos.
Field studies council makes a whole range of laminated cards for different taxa e.g. dragonflies, butterflies etc. Quite lightweight and tough. You can probably get them online. http://www.field-studies-council.org/ publications/foldout.aspx
Even better they even have one for the pennine way!
You can now buy the collins bird guide for PDA's. Amazingly it will also play bird songs and calls. Not cheap though and only works on some pdas.
I tend to carry a full bird guide (the excellent Collin's publication with the black cover) because that's my main interest and for me it's worth the weight. For bird song, I keep a number of MP3's on my my phone/PDA. For flowers/plants I generally use the camera on my phone/PDA to take a photo for later identification. Insects I either take a photo, if they're still enough, failing that I look them up on the internet (either specialized sites or Google image search), again using the PDA.
Like Paddy says photographing other things can be useful too. As I write up the walks on my website when I get home I quite often photograph information boards I see on route and in car parks.
Last time I moved house I had to disassemble a big ikea wardrobe, and what I did was photograph each bit as I took it apart, it was so much easier to put it back together again.
You can also use really good digital cameras to take pictures instead of using a scanner. I've found it very effective especially sanning old pictures!
