New Zealand 2002

In January, 2002, a group of riders ventured to New Zealand for a dual sport ride down the West coast of the South Island. There they found a stunning landscape combining countless tumbling waterfalls, impenetrable rain forests, long beaches, icy blue glaciers, still mountain lakes, snow capped peaks and gentle alpine meadows. 

All on a single day's ride. 

After that, it got more intriguing, more mysterious, more beautiful and full of laughter and adventure. 

This is a wee bit of that story. 

Photo Gallery

Preparation

Arrival Day

Welcome Day

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

Day 5

Day 6

Day 7

Day 8

Video Gallery

In progress, will be posted shortly. 

Hotel Info

About the web pages:

I used a product that automatically generates a thumbnail pages, the HTLM pages, etc. called JASC Media Center Plus ( www.jasc.com ). Highly recommended. 

About the photos:

There are 1059 photos in the New Zealand collection. 421 are analog APS prints scanned into digital files. 638 were native digital photos. 

All photos with a file name that begins DSC were taken by Doug Hackney (or whoever happened to be shooting) on a Sony DSC-P1 digital camera ( www.sony.com ) .

All photos with a file name that begins with KS were taken by Kathy Stajic on a Nikon Coolpix 5000 digital camera (www.nikonusa.com)

All photos with a file name that begins with DC were taken by Dale Cooper. 

All other photos were taken on Steph's venerable Minolta Vectis APS camera (www.minolta.com). It may have been dropped a few times and the paint is wearing thin, but it keeps putting out crisp, sharp shots. The APS negatives were scanned into jpg files and integrated with the digital shots. Most scanning was done by the photo lab and put on CD's. I scanned one cartridge the lab missed on our Canon CanoScan FS4000US 35mm/APS scanner (www.usa.canon.com). 

On the Sony, I used the camera's maximum 2048 x 1536 resolution for all shots. The images were about 1.3 megabytes in raw jpg format. I compressed them to 15x jpg compression before posting them to the web site. The resulting files are 300-500k with little resolution lost from the 1.3 megabyte raw size. Some shots have been altered to increase light and contrast levels. I ran a sharpness filter on some shots as well. I think the Sony is limited more by it's small, simple lense than by its resolution of 3.3 megapixels. A couple of trips down Baja, one around central Mexico and New Zealand probably have taken their toll, as I've crashed on top of it more than once. 

Kathy Stajic shot at the Nikon's 5 megapixel resolution of 1920 x 2560. The sharpness, crisp detail and natural color saturation of her shots reflect the superior lense and resolution of the Nikon, and are a good reflection of how far digital cameras have come in the two years since the Sony DSC-P1 came out. I did not do any file compression  or sharpness filtering and very little exposure adjustment on Kathy's files.

I haven't received information from Dale Cooper yet on what type of camera he was using. He shot at 1600 x 1200 pixel resolution. I did not do any file compression  or sharpness filtering and very little exposure adjustment on most of Dale's files. I heavily adjusted the contrast and luminance on Dale's shots of the awards dinner. 

The total image breakdown is: 

If you would like a photo print copy of a photo:

Select the picture from the thumbnail view, then select it again from the single picture view. Once the full frame picture is displayed, right click on the picture and select "save as." Once you have saved the file to your local system, email a copy of the file to an on-line photo service, such as www.kodak.com, or take the file to a local Kinkos ( www.kinkos.com ) and you can get a hard copy print. Alternatively, you can print it yourself on any black and white or color printer.

Contact Information: 

These pages are collections of photos and writings by Douglas Hackney. They are not associated with or sponsored by Malcolm Smith Adventures. This is not the official Malcolm Smith Adventures or Malcolm Smith Motorsports web site.

Malcolm Smith Adventures can be reached at Adventures@MalcolmSmith.com
Malcolm Smith Adventures
P.O. Box 20054
Riverside, CA 92516
909.275.0455 voice
909.275.0455 fax

Kiwi Dirtbike Adventures can be reached at kiwi_dirtbike@clear.net.nz
Kiwi Dirtbike Adventures
P.O.Box 442
Feilding, New Zealand
Phone : +64-21 616707
Fax : +64-21 2186190

Thunderbike Powersports can be reached at sales@thunderbike.co.nz
Thunderbike Powersports
82 Achilles Avenue
Nelson New Zealand
Phone:0064-3-548 7888
Fax: 0064-3-546 9982
Freephone within NZ: 0800 8486337 (0800 THUNDER)

The Lynx Ferry (Wellington to Picton) can be reached at passengerservices@tranzrail.co.nz
Phone: 64 4 498 3303

Douglas Hackney can be reached at dhackney@egltd.com or www.hackneys.com

All contents copyright (c) 2002, Douglas Hackney, all rights reserved.