A few days ago, I said that I had planned to take a hike on monday evening. I did manage to make the hike, even after leaving work a bit late, and barely made it back to the car by sunset. The 6-mile round trip hike took me about an hour and a half, but I ran a good bit of the way down because the sun was setting quickly and I didn’t want to get stuck out in the dark (I had forgotten my cell phone in the car, but had a flashlight).

Here’s a trick for all of you digital-camera owners out there. If you get caught without a backup battery, as I did on this hike with my D70, and you are using Li-Polymer or NiMh batteries, you can remove the batteries from the camera for a few minutes, plug them back in, and snap a couple of pictures before they die again. This is because the batteries have a ‘rebound’ effect when they are unloaded, and the camera will see the higher rebounded voltage when you plug them back in, giving you a few seconds before shutting off. Many cameras, such as the D70, will still pull a little current from the batteries even when ‘off’, so you have to physically take the battery out to take advantage of the trick. Using this method, I managed to get about 6 extra picts out of my dead D70 battery during the hike. Here’s my favorite:

I also posted this gallery from last Saturday’s hike up the Mt. Wilson trail above Sierra Madre.

Watch out for the rest of the Rome Picts to show up soon—I’m going to post a lot of them unedited, as well as some less-than-flattering shots of my bachelor party. Stay tuned.