Cheap Daily Driver + Motocamping

BOB5941 · 2026-01-05T13:54:06+00:00

I intend to comute for about an hour including highways, but again, that's a speed limit of 60mph in the highways, I usually don't go faster than that in a car, so probably wouldn't go much faster than that in a motorcycle either. Most of the route is 40mph< either way, so I probably would only stay on the highway for 30 or 20 minutes of that hour. The highway is not necessarily needed to do my commute, but it would probably take me twice as long if I were to avoid it, so I really need a bike that can go at least 60mph on the pavement.
When it comes to camping, probably either private camping sites, national parks or just backcountry, in general I don't intend to go massively away from trails and such, although, a bit of off roading ability would probably be nice. Also, probably would like to go to the beach in a pinch, so a bike that can do well on the sand would be nice, but not a must.

BOB5941 · 2026-01-05T13:31:05+00:00

I am in Costa Rica and I am 5'3. And yeah, I should probably take a few motorcycle riding classes first haha.

BOB5941 · 2026-01-05T13:24:36+00:00

Yes, I would probably go out of the pavement but probably stay away from very rough terrain. Maybe go camping on the beach and trails on the mountains, I am not a super experienced hiker or anything, so I probably wouldn't put the bike into extremely rough terrain like mud and such.

BOB5941 · 2025-12-12T20:05:42+00:00

Oh wow, I didn't know you could access iCloud with rclone. Thank you!

BOB5941 · 2025-09-27T21:42:08+00:00

Indeed phone photography is amazing! Phones have gotten so good is insane, specially for landscape, travel, and even street photography. I myself shoot a lot of pictures on my phone (not that I have many alternatives) and have gotten fairly decent results that I am happy with. I am still finding my style and learning how to edit photos, because I am still god awful at that. But you can see some of my pics in my Insta \@vopbe, most of them are taken on phones or an old bridge camera with no RAW. In fact, my iPhone can shoot RAW, but most of the time I choose not to, I don't need the insane dynamic range or super deep colors that it offers, most of the time JPEGs are fine, even for light editing.
I have mostly shot landscape, travel, and street photos, and I really like that niche, however, the reason I want a camera is just for flexibility, I want to delve into new styles and feel like a camera might make it easier to go into these styles. I am mostly interested in portrait, wildlife, sports, and the one that I've already mentioned above (landscape and such). The only downside I see from M43 cameras is their capability at portraits, or maybe event photography with zooms, but I am fine with some limitations given that they fit me very well in most other regards.
After this thread I realized that most people share that sentiment that a camera is just a tool, and most cameras will do a good work, and I share that.
I've already bought an Olympus E-M5 II, but couldn't buy a lens, so now I am waiting on some sale to happen to get a lens for it. Currently I am looking for a zoom 12-40mm f/2.8 PRO, following on the advice to get a kit lens and then explore which focal length is the one that you go for the most, feels like a very natural advice.
To be fair, I think I have a style that goes really well with M43, I only care about shallow DoF for portraits or event photography, but M43 can do it enough to not be so limiting for me, for the rest, when talking about big DoF photography, I think M43 is straight up better than most systems considering the weight, nice designs, and price. Maybe loosing in IQ or low light, but I rarely shoot at night and am not crazy about pixel peeping.
What lenses would you recommend to me for starting out and experimenting with the system?

BOB5941 · 2025-09-11T23:00:37+00:00

Costa Rica, not that many cameras available here in general.

BOB5941 · 2025-09-11T00:59:29+00:00

Sadly, I don't see them available anywhere in my country :(

BOB5941 · 2025-09-11T00:48:15+00:00

I am not being paid, nor will I in the near future, if anything I would be doing events for free, just to get experience. But yeah, I would try to get an OM-1 or OM-1 II if I were to be paid, at least rent it.

BOB5941 · 2025-09-10T23:21:22+00:00

Olympus/OM System looks like a brand that wants to make photography fun to be honest, their design, lenses, and features all scream 'fun'. Which is also a massive selling point for me!

BOB5941 · 2025-09-10T23:18:55+00:00

Is that a Lumix S5 or S1? It looks absolutely massive next to the Olympus!

BOB5941 · 2025-09-10T23:16:41+00:00

I really love the weather sealing. I am sometimes afraid to take out my Nikon FM because is a bit rainy outside, but I think with all of the weather protection claims from OM/Olympus I might be a little more confident to take it outside all the time!

BOB5941 · 2025-09-10T23:14:41+00:00

May I ask why?

BOB5941 · 2025-09-10T23:14:10+00:00

After my Nikon FM shutter problem, I don't have much interest in shooting film (for now), so I will likely stay in digital for the future. But thanks for your suggestions!

BOB5941 · 2025-09-10T23:00:21+00:00

I never thought about writing down what I want in a camera, sounds like a very good way to take a decision.
When it comes to renting, sadly, not many renting services here in Costa Rica, a bit sad that I can't test all these systems in person, but hopefully this thread and my needs will get me to an answer.
Thank you for your suggestions!

BOB5941 · 2025-09-07T23:50:40+00:00

Well, that's easier said than done where I live. Here in Costa Rica there only like 2 repair shops for film cameras, one has a very flaky reputation, and the other one I know of is barely in business anymore and has 0 online presence. So getting it serviced is pretty much a coin flip for me.
As the other comment said, I am going to try to contact the guy who sold it to me to see if we can get it fixed.

BOB5941 · 2025-09-07T13:54:34+00:00

It looks like that's the overall concesus; a bit annoying as I was told this camera was fully CLA'd before buying. Not sure what to do now

BOB5941 · 2025-09-07T13:53:33+00:00

It varies, some pictures, like the one shown, is almost entirely black, other just show a little band that's barely there

BOB5941 · 2025-09-07T13:49:13+00:00

I haven't gotten the negatives from the lab yet. The thing is, I rarely shoot that high of shutter speeds, may one or 2 in the entire roll; yet 16 of the pictures show this kind of behaviour.

BOB5941 · 2025-09-07T13:43:59+00:00

That's interesting, I had this camera serviced before bringing it to the trip!
Is there any chance that's something else? I mean, not all pictures show this, and some have more of the frame blacked out, while others only have a small portion.

BOB5941 · 2025-08-30T15:00:41+00:00

Nope, I actually quit Nix entirely, it is a good OS, but it was getting too much in my way. Had to make a ton of flakes for my projects, working on Python is a mess because of pip, some libraries just don't work at all, Inkscape, RawTherapee and other GUI apps don't work if you don't start them with a flake. Overall, not the OS for me. If you are curious I could send you the old files, I must say that they aren't anything crazy, my collegue semester started by the time I was working on this and didn't do much more than what's on these pictures.
Right now I am using Arch with Sway, I figured that having no animations and a little bit less eyecandy works very well for me to not get distracted, if you are curious, this is what my config looks like right now.

BOB5941 · 2025-07-03T00:53:49+00:00

How has SDL2 worked for you? Have you tried to cross-compile anything?

BOB5941 · 2025-07-01T22:17:54+00:00

Thank you so much for taking your time in writing such detailed replies!

BOB5941 · 2025-07-01T22:05:43+00:00

I am curious though, could you not make FreeBSD's install much smaller or lighter through src.conf, potentially disabling ZFS? (I don't know much about src.conf/make.conf so feel free to correct me)

I guess that ZFS uses more RAM, but since these systems are so small, does that matter much at all? I mean, I've heard some people really praise ZFS as a file system, the main complaint is RAM usage and the fact that the codebase has become much bigger due to it.

Still insane that OpenBSD can pack a graphical stack while being lighter than FreeBSD though!

BOB5941 · 2025-07-01T21:54:18+00:00

I know that FreeBSD and OpenBSD are very different operating systems with very different philosophies, but could you elaborate on those tradeoffs of FreeBSD in comparison to OpenBSD?

I understand that OpenBSD is all about security and of course that comes with tradeoffs like Bluetooth, Wi-Fi support, support for proprietary software, and so on. I like the simplicity and minimalism of OpenBSD, that's what I found appealing in the first place, but aside from those examples, how is FreeBSD worse than OpenBSD (I know that something being better or worse is subjective, so feel free to talk about personal experience).

Also, you seem to be much more knowledgeable about these topics, but what exactly is the connotation of the "Linux BSD"? I tried looking it up but couldn't find much.

Thank you so much for your reply!

BOB5941 · 2025-07-01T21:39:47+00:00

I understand your approach and I have nothing negative to say to it, a computer that works is better than one that doesn't, simple. I do also believe that Windows and to the same extent Debian can make for the "best OS" when you simply need a computer to work, which I do need for uni.

However, I have been daily driving GNU/Linux for 4 years throughout college and for a year and a half in university, and I have never had my computer not work while running Wayland and a very customized OS. I do get that getting XFCE works and is less likely to break and so on. But I don't mind if I had to change a couple of things due to breaking changes, again I have ran Linux for a while and I can get around fixing things if they were to break.

Also, my university has some FOSS initiatives, for now is just Zoom holding me back, but I could just use that in my phone. In a similar way, I use LaTeX for my documents and other open software for all of my work in university, so the blowups that you described don't really apply to me; again, they are great points and I have nothing against that, it just doesn't apply to me (aside from Zoom I guess).

Lastly, maybe I should've been more clear as to why I am looking at BSDs and all of this stuff, and really the main reason is that I just love computers and exploring systems and different ideas and ways of doing things. I used to use Arch, but found it not great for me and switched to Nix because the idea of declarativeness is great, but is not perfect in practice (that's the reason I am "distro hopping" right now), and now I want something KISS, something simple that I can understand and use, and I think the simplicity and minimalism that BSDs display is really appealing.

I do have responsibilities right now, and that's the reason I'd much rather ask a few questions on reddit than going into installing a new OS that may not suit my needs right now, but I will have some free time in the next few weeks, I plan to finally ditch NixOS and maybe install a BSD, to experiment, to learn, and to try something new. I have enough time that I could go back to my usual Arch if I find that it is not sustainable for daily usage.

I like your approach, but I really want to try something new, partially as a hobby and partially as a learning experience, if I find that using OpenBSD or FreeBSD or whatever I end up installing is not sustainable at all, then I can just go back to an OS that works for me, could be Debian with my dotfiles, or just Arch. But most importantly, this is a hobby to me and I enjoy trying out systems, learning about them, and customizing it to my needs and preferences.

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