Gallery: Fraser Canyon in Late June...

At the end of June, I went on a four day camping trip with a friend and enjoyed the gorgeous weather and beautiful scenery along the Thompson River north of Lytton, BC. I shot with my Fujifilm X-E2 kit but also had a Sony A7R system along for testing. Those photos will come in a future blog entry but there are a couple at the end of the gallery, taken on the last day. Driving back to Vancouver was the main goal that day, but I did stop near Lytton to take a few shots and only used the A7R at that stop.

In case anyone is wondering, the second shot in the gallery was light painted with a couple of green lasers and a flashlight, frantically lighting stuff up during the 30 second exposure. There was a dim flashlight switched on inside the tent as well. It took quite a few attempts before I was happy with how the tops of the grass looked with the laser illumination! For the gallery, click on the above image or...

Gallery link: Fraser Canyon in Late June

Fujifilm XF 10-24mm f/4R OIS Zoom Review

Fujifilm X-E2 w/ XF 10-24mm f/4R OIS zoom @ 12mm, ISO 800, 1 second at f/5.6

For a gallery with a variety of samples, click the image or… Fujifilm XF 10-24mm Samples

[NOTE: This article is a reposting of one I wrote for the Beau Photo Supplies blog back on March 30th, just before my trip to the US Southwest. Since there are likely some people interested in Fujifilm gear that read this blog but not the Beau Photo one, I thought I would republish it here...]

We finally received a small shipment of the new ultra-wide-angle Fujifilm 10-24mm zoom lenses and I have also received my own personal one. By and large, I am very impressed with this new zoom which is equivalent to a 15-36mm zoom on a full-frame camera. It stays at a fixed f/4 throughout its zoom range and also has an amazingly effective OIS unit - the Optical Image Stabilizer. I did a series of shots at 10mm in near darkness with a 0.8 second exposure, so nearly a full second. Of the ten photos, two were unusably blurred, three were a bit blurry but would still make decent 8x12 inch prints I'd say, but five were actually tack sharp, looking almost like they were shot on a tripod. That is the advantage of having an effective stabilizer on an ultra-wide lens! I have also done a handful of shots at 1 second at around 17mm focal length and while the hit rate is a little worse, even that is doable if you try hard. Examples of both are in the above linked gallery. However there can be a disadvantage to OIS…

Decaying House in Northern Oregon...

I decided to post some images of a decaying house in northern Oregon. The dynamic range and colour reproduction of the Fujifilm system helped here. Almost all the images in this post were taken handheld with the new XF 10-24mm f/4R OIS zoom, all but the very last one, showing a different exterior view of the house with the XF 23mm f/1.4R lens.

This house is on Highway 206, northwest of Condon, Oregon. I had taken a few photos there, many years ago on film still (I believe) and every subsequent time I had driven by, it was either almost dark, overcast with a dreary sky or I was simply in too much of a rush to stop. This time I finally decided to pull over and take some photos inside and out. The first time I had stopped there those many years ago, I recall the house still being in much better shape inside. Now the floors, walls and ceilings have many gaping holes everywhere, there are piles of dirt inside the former living room and while there isn't all that much graffiti, there are generous swaths of coloured paint splatter on the floor and walls. Click on each image to open a larger version in a new window...

Southwest 2014 - Third Week...

I am now back from my 3 week trip to the US desert Southwest and am starting to work through all of my images now. However, I thought I would post some highlights from my third week of photography as well, to complete my trio of brief trip overview galleries. The last week of shooting has photos from Death Valley National Park in California and several locations in Oregon, as mentioned in the image gallery notes. The above image was taken on Highway 207, north of Mitchell, Oregon. I have a few short, somewhat interesting videos and time-lapse sequences I may post here in the near future as well.

Gallery: Southwest 2014 - Third Week

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!