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Just wondering if the increase price of fuel these days are keeping you guys closer to home.
Here in the Greater Toronto are the price of fuel is pushing $1.16/per litre. My car takes premium fuel so I'm paying about $1.27/ per litre.
My one day outing yesterday cost me about $40 round trip.

I don't know what you guys are paying around the globe, but this is ridiculous.

Definately Rui... That's a big reason I've been looking closer to home of late for deer shots. That and cause my usual haunt just hasn't been producing the last 1.5 years.

I'm kinda lucky right now cause I'm doing a project for the government trying to document the health of deer populations throughout the province focusing on my region but with several trips a week down south... hence why I have posted so many deer pics of late... great for me cause they pay for all my milage and I'm out 5 to 6 days a week doing it. Also gives me an excuse to take a break from my real job bad part is I'm exausted when I get home.

Last year I allowed myself $100.00 a week for gas for photo outings/camping/hiking trips... with the prices the way they are now you just know we are going to hit $1.25 or more this summer... compared to about $1.00 last summer that's a big jump.

I was hoping to make a lot of trips this summer to Last Mountain animal preserve for bird migration shots and the prairie chicken mating dance... if prices do go that high I will be cutting back those outings for sure...

Either way though this is the summer I focus on Saskatchewan and the prairies which means a ton of driving... need to do that before I leave here.

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Canon 7D + 50D + EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM + EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM + EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM
Pelican // Black Rapid // Think Tank // Manfrotto // Garmin

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Come over here for a bit, makes your fuel seem dirt cheap. Regular petrol here is in the ball park of £1.30-ish a litre depending on where you buy. That's... over $2. Fortunately I'm low mileage, averaging under 6000 miles a year so it doesn't add up too badly.

Just saw this fun on pricing today.

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Canon DSLRs: 7D, 5D2, 1D, 600D, 450D full spectrum, 300D IR mod
Lenses: EF 35/2, 50/1.8, 85/1.8, 135/2+SF, 28-80 V, 70-300L, 100-400L, TS-E 24/3.5L, MP-E 65, EF-S 15-85 IS
3rd party: Zeiss 2/50 makro, Samyang 8mm fisheye, Sigma 150 macro, 120-300 f/2.8 OS, Celestron 1325/13
Tinies: Sony HX9V.

Prices are expected to hit $1.50/litre this summer. Pretty ridiculous.

I guess the sales of tiny hatchbacks will be going up...

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$1.50???? Grrrr... should have picked last summer to photograph the province

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Canon 7D + 50D + EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM + EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM + EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM
Pelican // Black Rapid // Think Tank // Manfrotto // Garmin

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diesel is around $1.30 here. I do about 30000Km a year. About half of that is driving to work. The other car is on premium unleaded closer $1.50, but we only do about 5000km in that.
While the Australian Dollar is high its kept the fuel prices down, but expect that we will be closer to $2.00 when the dollar slips back down and the with the higher price of oil. Nothing you can do about it, its just like a tax.

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Canon Powershot S95, Canon 6D,7D, 24-70 2.8 Tamron VC, Canon 15-85, Canon 85 1.8, Sigma 30 1.4, 50mm 1.8, Canon 100 2.8L Macro, Canon 70-300L +Kenko 1.4 Pro 300DGX, Canon 430EX II and RS 4 Classic

Well it is getting ridiculous here too - but of course relative to the prices you guys are mentioning, we've still got it pretty good in the states! South Florida is on the more expensive side of the pricing in the US - we're running about $0.90 per liter. That's quite high, up about 35% over the past two years - but we've fluctuated up and down again several times over those two years...lately it fluctuated up and seems to have stayed there. With rumors of it going higher - I expect we'll be over $1.00/liter soon here. California and NY are a bit higher than us, north Florida is actually lower, and the midwest of our country is still much lower. State and local taxes make a difference on our price - I can fill up between two stations on my drive home from work - one in Broward county will be $0.88/liter, and one in Palm Beach county will be $0.91/liter - and they're just 5 miles apart. Those of us who live in southern Palm Beach county can drive 3 miles south to the Broward border to fill up for 3 or 4 cents less per liter (my conversions are working overtime here - we go by gallon - and ours runs $3.50/gallon now).

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Justin Miller
Sony DSLR-A580 / Sony 18-250mm / Minolta 50mm F1.7 / Sigma 30mm F1.4 / Tamron 10-24mm / Tamron 200-500mm / Tamron 90mm F2.8 macro / Minolta 300mm F4 APO
Sony NEX5N / 18-55mm F3.5-5.6 / 55-210mm F4-6.3 / Pentax K adapter / Konica K/AR adapter / bunches o' Konica & Pentax lenses!

Galleries:
http://www.pbase.com/zackiedawg

I've always found that amazing about the states... how the gas prices fluctuate from one station to the next... up here in saskatoon you are lucky to see a penny difference between any of the gas bars in town. Prices do fluctuate from citiy to city though by up to 8 cents a ltr... get out into BC and on the island and it can be as much as 20 cents a ltr more than out here in the prairies... same with the heavy metro areas down east around toronto.. they can be 15 cents or more higher than we are out here.

no idea what happens on the east coast..

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Canon 7D + 50D + EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM + EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM + EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM
Pelican // Black Rapid // Think Tank // Manfrotto // Garmin

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I can see the huge difference between South Florida where I live, and central Florida...South Florida is sort of like a northern island - little New York or New England, marooned down in the south...whereas central and northern Florida is very much the 'old south' style - still linked to the confederacy days...so different in culture, music, architecture, style, pricing, and just about everything. Gas prices are similarly separated - south Florida's prices are just as they'd be in a busy urban northern city, while central Florida has the laid-back rural pricing. I fill up at home at $3.49 a gallon, drive to Disney World...then fill up in Orlando for the drive back home at $3.14 a gallon. Pretty big pricing difference!

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Justin Miller
Sony DSLR-A580 / Sony 18-250mm / Minolta 50mm F1.7 / Sigma 30mm F1.4 / Tamron 10-24mm / Tamron 200-500mm / Tamron 90mm F2.8 macro / Minolta 300mm F4 APO
Sony NEX5N / 18-55mm F3.5-5.6 / 55-210mm F4-6.3 / Pentax K adapter / Konica K/AR adapter / bunches o' Konica & Pentax lenses!

Galleries:
http://www.pbase.com/zackiedawg

Must be nice to have cheap gas prices down south.

http://www.vancouvergasprices.com/index.aspx?fuel=C

* $ shown per Litre

Here are the prices almost $2,50, so what youre sceaming about?! Come on, we pay much more than you and even then youre talking about the price...

Okay, this isnt really a wildlife and pet topic?

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Ruben

Panasonic DMC-FZ18, Panasonic DMC-FZ28, Canon G5, Canon 350D, Canon 50D + BG-E2N
Tamron 17-50 2.8, Canon EF 70-200mm f/4L USM,
Canon 18-55 II plus lots of Minolta MD/M42 lenses and bodies

Maybe we should bring up the other topic that applies to this issue: What do you drive, and what mileage does it get?

Being in big, bold, fast America, with the cheap gas and huge cars, I have been addicted to more powerful vehicles for a while - though admittedly fuel prices were much cheaper when I first got the addiction. My current car is 300HP, all-wheel drive, and weighs in at about 4,000Lbs. It can stretch to 26MPG on the highway, and 18 city, if I feather the throttle and drive calmly at speed limit. Yeah, that's going to happen.

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Justin Miller
Sony DSLR-A580 / Sony 18-250mm / Minolta 50mm F1.7 / Sigma 30mm F1.4 / Tamron 10-24mm / Tamron 200-500mm / Tamron 90mm F2.8 macro / Minolta 300mm F4 APO
Sony NEX5N / 18-55mm F3.5-5.6 / 55-210mm F4-6.3 / Pentax K adapter / Konica K/AR adapter / bunches o' Konica & Pentax lenses!

Galleries:
http://www.pbase.com/zackiedawg

Sure it is, when we depend on our vehicles to get to our locations. Many of us including myself will drive hours to get to location. I will sometimes drive upto 3 hours one way.

When fuel prices are as high as the are, I tend to stay closer to home and not make those long trips as often.

I'm too lazy to look up the conversion to liters...lol. But ya it's been going up a lot here. Just this past weekend I was planning to take a drive to a place to find Big Horn Sheep, but decided to save the fuel money. Ended up back at the wetlands which is only a 30 min drive. If I wasn't saving for more camera equipment I would have went

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I definately agree with rui in regards to this being a wildlife photography issue. know I put a lot of km on my car for photography outings. This spring, summer and ealry fall I plan on shooting all areas of saskatchewan. I have estimated in doing so it will take about 3 months and probably involve putting about 12,000 km on my car at least. I'm also contemplating adding southern alberta to the project if time allows as I really wanna shoot the foothills region on the boarder of southern alberta and BC. If I have time this will easily add another 2000 km to my photo outings. Now those are the big plans that do not take into consideration my outings after work or other odd trips I may take.

In regards to what I drive... an electric for around town, work and short photography outings, a harley for fun on nice days in the summer and a compact for trips and the rest of my photography outings which would equate to about 80% of my outings.. gonna get a jeep when my lease is up on my compact. Need to start getting into some tougher areas for photography. Starting to run into too many people these days when I am out.

In regards to milage.. I gett about 300 to 350 km to a tank when out of photography session and it costs me about $50.00 to fill up

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Canon 7D + 50D + EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM + EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM + EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM
Pelican // Black Rapid // Think Tank // Manfrotto // Garmin

Reflections On Canadian Wildlife
My Flickr