If you have been to the Bike Trail Pages on the about-bicycles.com website then you know that I have ridden, taken photos (and sometimes videos) and written trail articles on  quite a few bike trails (in the Chicagoland area and in Wisconsin).

New Nikon D5100 for Better Bike Trail Photos

Well, I’ve been using my same old 5MP digital camera since 2005 and it was time for an upgrade so I just purchased a new Nikon DSLR!

I have actually been wanting an SLR camera for much of my adult life (and especially since Digital SLRs became popular) and since I am planning to get out on a lot of new bike trails soon, and there are also some bike events coming up soon ~ and also since the prices on these fantastic and powerful cameras how come down quite a bit now ~ the timing was right and I pulled the trigger on the purchase.

One of the reasons that selected this particular model is because it is a little bit smaller than the full size DSLRs, They classify this camera as a “compact DSLR” although it is still big compared to a point-and-shoot or even one of the new Superzoom cameras (which I was also looking into).

I know from lugging other cameras (and camcorders) out on the bike trails that the smaller sizes are a big plus. This camera is going to be a little more work to lug around (due to the larger size) but I have gotten used to carrying around  photo equipment on my bike and I think I should be able to adjust to it.

The photo above is a front and rear view of the camera that I just bought (of course). OK, so I photoshopped the daisy bike trail picture into the viewfinder. 🙂 I wanted to have a photo of the fully articulating LCD (the flip out view finder screen) so I included both views of the camera.

For my purposes I got this camera with a 18-200mm lens, which is a good multipurpose lens that can be used for close-ups as well as telephoto pics.

I suppose this might look like over-kill for bike trail photos that are mostly going to be viewed on the internet but there are a few good reasons why I upgraded to a high quality DSLR.

First, there have been a handful of times when people who write articles for magazines and hardcopy publications (see this blog post for details) have asked me if they could use photos from this site for their articles. Most of the time the only full size photos that have to send them are from my 5MP camera and often they do not meet the necessary requirements for hard-copy publications.

One of the other reasons for such a major upgrade is just the photo quality. Even if the photos are primarily viewed on the internet, photos from DSLRs are generally just much better quality (even though I do not claim to be a pro photographer (or even close to one) and I can use all the help I can get).

Aside from bike trails, I am also planning to get out to some major bike events this year and wanted to be able to get some quality photos. For example the Bike The Ride event is coming up next weekend (I hope I have the camera by then ~ I ordered through Amazon and just took the free shipping option) if I can get up early enough for this event (and if it’s a nice day).

Also I am really looking forward to the Tour of Elk Grove which is coming up in August. You can find more details on these events at our Special Cycling Events Page.

Anyway, once the new camera arrives and I am able to get out on the bike trails (which will be real soon and I have a large list of trails for this year) and out to the various cycling events, you should start to see some better photos out here!