Southwest 2014 - Second Week...

Well, my second week of travel has gone by, with generally fabulous weather for photography. Finally some clouds and interesting light! There were a few challenging days where the sky was grey, raining and generally hopeless for taking photos, but by and large it was nice. The above photo was taken at the south rim of the Grand Canyon. I had a great sunset there but sadly, the next morning it was totally grey and overcast.

The following gallery contains images from White Sands, Bandelier National Monument and Los Alamos in New Mexico, then Petrified Forest National Park (lots of huge fossilized tree trunks and great Painted Desert scenery) and the Grand Canyon in Arizona.

Gallery: Southwest 2014 - Second Week

Greetings from Alamogordo, New Mexico...

I've been on the road for a little over a week now, and have covered a fair bit of ground. Some of the interesting spots I've visited so far are Snow Canyon State Park, just outside of St. George, Utah (the above image is from there), then in Arizona I've been to Meteor Crater, Oak Creek Canyon, Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, Saguaro National Monument, Tombstone and Chiricahua National Monument.

Next up is White Sands, New Mexico. I am blogging from a nice little cafe in Alamogordo right now, waiting for evening to approach, when I'll be hiking out into White Sands for sunset.

I've been shooting exclusively with my Fujifilm X-E2 system and am loving the lighter weight, especially when hiking in the heat, the incredible lens quality and the gorgeous colour rendition. On my first real day of hiking, in Snow Canyon State Park, the temperature soared to 38º C, quite a shock from the cooler weather we were having back in Vancouver. Now I've acclimatized quite well and yesterday while hiking around Chiricahua National Monument, up at 7,000 feet with the temperature at a mere 18º C, I was actually wearing a jacket most of the day!

For a gallery of forty selected images: Southwest 2014 - First Week

Testing Fujifilm's telephoto zooms...

Gallery: Fujifilm X-series Telephoto Tests

I recently had the opportunity to borrow both of Fujifilm's current telephoto zooms for their X-system, the Fujinon XF 55-200mm f/3.5-4.8R OIS zoom ($699) and the XC 50-230mm f/4.5-6.7 OIS zoom ($399). While sharing a similar zoom range, these lenses are distinctly different when it comes to features, build quality and price. Amazingly enough though, when it comes to optical performance, much to my surprise they are both very nearly tied. In fact, if I had to pick one over the other purely from a resulting image quality standpoint, I would actually choose the less expensive 50-230mm zoom… and in fact, I did. I recently bought the 50-230mm for myself and while it certainly does not best the 55-200mm by a very substantial margin, there were a few other factors that led to my decision.

For 25 sample images from these lenses, click on the gallery link above. Note that while I had both lenses with me on numerous occasions, I ended up using the 50-230mm more, both for its slightly greater zoom range and for its lighter weight and lighter zoom action. As a bonus, I discovered the cheaper and lighter zoom was actually a little sharper too! Therefore, the gallery is heavily biased towards the 50-230mm, which is the one I bought after all...

Thrunite TN32 comparison...

The trees lit by the TN32 are 400 meters away!

So I just received my new Thrunite TN32 flashlight, a sort of belated Christmas present. It is physically the largest light I own now and it also has, by far, the tightest focus and greatest throw potential of all of my flashlights. In fact, it has been reviewed and tested by others and measurements indicate it should throw a visible beam up to 950 meters. The above photo was taken in Minnekhada Park the other night, and from that same spot, I could also clearly light up trees right by the High Knoll lookout, and that is about 800 meters away, so I would say that the 950 meter estimate is pretty close... although one would need ideal conditions to achieve that - really dark, no dust or haze etc.

Flashlight Ceiling Beamshots (Take 1)

Gallery: Flashlight Beamshots (Ceiling / Take 1)

I've decided to take my experience in compressing a photograph's dynamic range and apply that to rendering flashlight beam-shots in such a way as to show all the subtle colour differences and beam artifacts. There are many subtleties to the beams produced by various flashlights and while it is relatively easy to see these differences visually when shining against a blank white wall, it is not so easy to capture on camera, at least not with a single photo. Combining the large, 'domed' LEDs with high precision, polished reflectors and anti-reflection coated lenses in modern high-end flashlights can also create colour artifacts in the beam, sometimes quite obvious and other times more subtle.

I have endeavoured to somewhat accurately portray these differences in the gallery which you can access by clicking on the above image. Not only might these beam-shots be of interest to other flashlight aficionados, those that sometimes call themselves "flashaholics", but some of the subtle patterns and coloration are also quite beautiful in their own way. I need to be careful, since with my growing collection of lights, I may be well on the way to "flashaholism" myself! A great resource, if you want to learn more about modern high-end flashlights, is CandlePowerForums.

The middle image above (and the first image in the gallery) show the collection of lights, diffusers and filters that I photographed. There are many notes following in this blog entry, describing the test conditions, which lights were photographed etc. One thing that I will stress right from the get-go is that the photos in this gallery can in no way be used to judge the relative brightness of these lights. More details follow…

[update 12/31/2013]: added one missing photo and revised the order of the gallery and descriptions slightly to make more sense.
[update 1/1/2014]: Added labels to each shot in the gallery and fixed a few minor things in the article. Happy New Year!
[update 1/6/2014]: Added in the Thrunite TN32 beam-shot and took out the laser+refracting head to keep the gallery at a clean 35 shots.

Happy Holidays!

Hope you all have a Merry Christmas and all the best for the coming New Year!

A Hawk at Beau Photo...

It is not unusual for people to bring their pets into Beau Photo. We all love animals there and generally welcome them but on Friday, a slightly rarer animal made an appearance... a Harris Hawk! It was amazingly calm and composed, even letting perfect strangers touch it. Apparently it is "famous" having appeared is some films I believe. A few minutes were spent admiring the hawk with people pulling out their cameras and iPhones to take some photos. I took some shots with my Fujifilm X-E2 and a few more of this beautiful raptor follow...

Fujifilm XF 23mm f/1.4R: First gallery of tests...

Gallery: First Fujifilm XF 23mm f/1.4R Tests

Click on the image above to see my first image gallery of tests with Fujifilm's brand new and superb XF 23mm f/1.4 R wide angle lens. I have now tested this lens quite comprehensively and am extremely impressed with its quality. The only remaining question for me is how flare resistant it will be when placing the sun inside the shot, or just outside the frame. Sadly, the weather simply has not cooperated for me to do a test like that yet.

For a detailed review I wrote, see here: NEW! Fujifilm XF 23mm f/1.4 R wide-angle lens...

Fall colours, fog and GX7 followup...

Stanley Park Fall Colours (click image for gallery) - X-E1

It was a good year for fall colours here in Vancouver, with a nice spell of good weather before the major fall rains hit. This meant I could get out a few times and get some nice autumn shots for a change! The above image, and linked gallery, were taken with my Fujifilm X-E1 and all images were processed primarily in PhotoNinja v1.2.1 with a minor followup in Lightroom before exporting the gallery. It was an absolutely gorgeous day that Sunday, and there were many vibrant trees and lots of colourful leaves on the ground. The rest of the images galleries in this posting have photos taken with my new Panasonic GX7 and just processed through Adobe Lightroom...

UBC: More light painting...

Through the generosity of a contact I have at the UBC Botanical Gardens, I was able to get into the gardens after hours one evening last week to do some light painting. I had plans to do an elaborate, wide area, wide angle paint of the upper gardens, the eastern most section that is right next to Thunderbird Stadium. Alas, there was a game or practice on, and all the stadium lights were lit, flooding that area with a bright orange glow. To do the elaborate light paint I had envisioned, it would have probably taken me about 5-7 minutes, maybe longer, and that would have meant a bulb exposure equally long. With the stadium lit, even a one minute long time exposure probably would have been totally washed out.