Narada Falls, Mt. Rainier National Park, Washington

This is a High Dynamic Range Image, necessitated by the sun on the top of the falls, and the darkness in the canyon below. The HDR exposures covered nearly 4 stops range.

Technical Details: Canon 5D, 24-70mm f/2.8L lens, B+W circular polarizer. Exposures were f/22 for 1/13 sec, f/22 for 1/6 sec, f/22 for 0.3 sec, f/22 for 0.6 sec.

Post processing included color balancing the shaded area (warming it), enhancing saturation, adjusting levels, and contrast.

August 23, 2008

Canon 5D, Canon 24mm TSE (both shifted and tilted on vertical axis), f/14, 0.5 sec, ISO200, 3-stop grad ND (Singh Ray).

Paradise Creek, Mazama Ridge, Mt. Rainier NP

This photo was taken on August 23, 2008 at Mt. Rainier National Park in Washington.

This is an image from the Paradise River, just below Mazama Ridge, Mt. Rainier National Park, in the Washington Cascades.Technical Details: Canon 5D, Canon 17-40mm f/4.0 at f/22, 1.0 sec, ISO 100, B+W circular polarizer to block reflections on the rocks.

NOTE: This is a "manipulated photo" in that the image was flipped horizontally to make the water flow from left to right. This does not exist in nature in this form.

First Light at Mazama Ridge, Mt. Rainier National Park

This photo was taken on August 23, 2008 at Mt. Rainier National Park in Washington.

This is from Mazama Ridge, just below the Paradise River. Technical Details: Canon 5D, Canon 24mm TSE f/14, 5.2 sec. ISO 100 with a Singh-Ray 3-stop grad ND (hard) to tone down the sky and mountain.

This was a late year for wildflowers in the Cascades, about 3 weeks after the normal bloom, and the bloom has been inconsistent, with the lupine a bit stunted. Several snow fields still crossed the trail, and the climb up to Mazama ridge, which we began around 5:15 AM was still pretty wet.

Lens Test: Canon 300mm f/2.8 vs. 100-400 f/4.5-5.6

...tested on a Canon 40D vs. a Canon 5D.

I had some concerns about the sharpness of my relatively new, still warranted, Canon 300mm f/2.8 lens after taking some bird photos that just weren't as sharp as I wanted. Mostly, I'd used this lens on my Canon 40D to get some extra telephoto punch via the 1.6X crop sensor, but most of my images just weren't as sharp as I'd like. I'm still concerned that the 40D isn't focusing well enough or fast enough in the servo mode on a moving subject (reputed to have some front-focus/back-focus issues) so I tested the lens by shooting across Lake Union in Seattle, using a tripod and +/- IS (which I haven't analyzed yet).

Shown below are small 100% crops of the first 6 shots I've looked at. The bottom line is that when looking at an edge section of the image, the 300mm f/2.8 shot at f/8 easily beats the 100-400 shot at either f/8 or at f/14. The real surprise to me was that the image from the 40D cropped sensor (which appears more telephoto due to the sensor crop factor) actually seems to have more detail than the image from the 5D. That would suggest that the 40D is a great camera/sensor to give you a little more telephoto punch than the 5D (full-frame) sensor. Both cameras were shot with mirror-lock-up and at ISO400, with no IS in either test. Another surprise, the Canon 135mm f/2.0 actually produced pretty sharp pictures with reasonably good edge sharpness (same cropped area) when using a 2x telextender (effective focal length 270 mm) ... shot at f/8.0 (2 stops closed down from maximum aperture).

Here are the shots:

300mm f/2.8L shot at f/8.0

100-400 f/4.5-5.6 shot at f/8.0
Canon 5D (at about 280mm focal length)

100-400 f/4.5-5.6 shot at f/14

Canon 5D (at about 280 mm focal length)

(a little sharper than at f/8.0)

Here's the Canon 40D with the 300mm f/2.8 at f/8.0

...and the 40D with the 100-400 shot at f/8.0

...and for comparison, 1st the 5D 135mm f/2.0 with a 2x

teleextender shot at f/8.0

So, for now, it is "back to the drawing board" to figure out why my bird shots weren't as sharp as I'd like. Perhaps I didn't wait long enough for the IS to settle, or perhaps the servo focus was spending too much time trying to catch focus and just not nailing it. Hmmmmm.....

Sunrise at Lower Robin Lake, Cascade Range, WA

(August 2008)

Last week, I was fortunate enough to be able to take my family on a 5-day backpacking trip to the Robin Lakes in the Cascade Range. Robin Lakes are accessed out of Tucquala Meadows, which is down a relatively long road out of Roslyn, WA. Departing Tucquala Meadows, the trail proceed for 2 miles to Hyas Lake, then past Hyas Lake about another 1.5 - 2 miles before starting an ascent over Deception Pass. After ascending for about 0.5 - 1 mile, the trail to Tuck Lake and Robin Lakes branches to the right off of the Deception Pass trail. Just after the junction with the Deception Pass trail, the trail to Tuck Lake decends briefly to a beautiful clear creek (fill your water bottles here!) before rising sharply over the next two miles to Tuck Lake. The climb is steep, and the trail is moderately well-maintained, but there are several spots where shorter hikers may need a bit of help getting up and over rocks (in several places, I had to use my hands to climb up and over rocks or grab onto roots to hoist myself up). I was carrying around 50-lbs, since I had a significant amount of camera gear, and extra food for the hungry hikers. Overall, the climb from Tucquala Meadows to Tuck Lake is around 2,000 feet. Past Tuck Lake, and following a bit of a scramble around the south side of the lake, the trail again rises steeply during the 1.7 mile ascent to Upper and Lower Robin Lakes, which are at an altitude of about 6200-feet, and about 900-feet above Tuck Lake (the climb, though, is at least 1200 vertical feet with some of the ups and downs.

This photo was taken with a Canon 40D (lighter than my 5D), a 17-40mm lens, at f/8.0, for 0.3 sec. using a Singh-Ray 2-stop grad ND (hard) filter to tone down the intensity of the sky and allow me to brighten the non-illuminated foreground. In retrospect, I wish I'd taken my Canon 5D, brought along my 24-70 f/2.8 as my primary lens, and perhaps even left my 135mm f/2.0 L lens home (I brought the 135mm on the 40D along with a 2x teleextender, to help me take pictures of mountain goats...in fact, I often found that even just the 135mm was too much telephoto, and I never used the teleextender the whole trip).

I'll post a few more photos in the weeks ahead, and will hopefully be able to grab some shots near Mt. Rainier this weekend or next, as the wildflowers appear to be peaking at 5,000 feet near Paradise right now.