I am currently taking a break from my home office in Los Angeles to travel around the state of California. Monday, I drove up 395 with my friend Chelsea, and am now in Tahoe until the weekend, when I am heading to San Francisco. I am taking some time to work on new designs and tidy up Riot Riot. Meanwhile, Jonathan is holding down shop in a slushy Massachusetts! Happy winter!

Highlights so far:

• Alabama Hills
• Mt. Whitney (tallest in contiguous U.S.A.)
• Mono Lake
• Mammoth
• Lake Tahoe!!!

ps. Sorry for the poor photography. Like all Scheffers, when there is a destination ahead, pictures must be taken whilst moving towards said destination.

Jon and I were trying to make tilt-shift images. This isn’t quite there.. but I liked it.. Plus its a small bowling alley in a hotel and that’s awesome. Next time I’m yelling, “Strike a pose!”

The Canon S90 is awesome. I am not going to do a write up telling you what is great and what is not so great about the camera, as there are many more qualified reviews from people who aren’t web developers. Attached below are just a few sample pictures from my trip to the Grand Canyon in January (re-sized only).

More awesome S90 photos from Flickr Community »

For the longest time, I’ve been on forums with people posting beautiful and amazingly composed pictures. I’ve always wanted to be that “one” too, so last Sunday i broke down to buy a Professional (at least to me) camera. To justify it more, it will be used here on RIOTRIOT to further expand our capabilities.

I read many reviews with Nikon vs. Cannon, which never ended. It was such a tug of war which results in personal preference from experts when comparing similar model’s specs. After searching around and finding a great deal at at a local store, i took the leap and purchased the Nikon D60! (link to specs)

From the first week of using the camera, I’m really impressed. Night and day this takes phenomenal pictures. One thing that really impressed me was the low light no flash quality. Most regular point and shoots are horrible when in those situations but this is leaps and bounds in regard to that issue. Take a look at the picture below, that was taken at 11pm Wednesday night with no flash with the camera on Auto ISO setting.

Its stellar, not to mention the color quality also. This cameras CMOS brings all the colors almost perfectly. In the sun this camera is even better. I took a early morning shoot (thursday) down in Narragansett near the water and can i tell even with a dirty car the photo’s came out great! Here are some examples below!

These are all taken without a tri-pod. The lense being used is a Nikon VR 18-55mm. There are a few photo’s where i did apply a “neutral density” filter to help bring color depth and reduce intense light. Another good use for that filter is when taking photo’s of water. Sadly i only have one or two of the waves, and probably not close enough to notice a difference.

In conclusion, for a beginner DSLR user this camera rocks! Below is the items used to take the pictures above.

• Camera Body: Nikon D60
• Lense: Nikon VR 18-55mm
• Filter: Neutral Density (only on some photo’s)
• Memory Card: 4GB Extreme III (30mb/s) SDHC
• Battery: EN-EL9 Rechargeable Li-ion Battery

If your interested to see more photo’s click the link below to view Riot’s gallery!

Thanks for reading.