Happy New Year! Last photos of 2015...

Gallery (20 images): Happy New Year! Last photos of 2015...

Happy New Year to all! The shots in the above gallery are my last photos of 2015, taken while walking home from work along False Creek. All the best for 2016!

Gallery: Joshua Tree National Park, CA - Day 4 / 2010

Gallery (40 images): California 2010 / Day 4

After leaving Anza-Borrego in the morning, on the way north to Twentynine Palms I stopped at the side of the road a few times to photograph some nice patches of wildflowers. After a bit of grocery shopping, and a much needed shower, it was back into Joshua Tree National Park for an afternoon and evening of hiking around the park. Compared to Anza-Borrego, there was virtually nothing blooming in Joshua Tree yet, probably a bit too early in the year or perhaps there hadn't been enough rains further north? The last two photos in the gallery, one of which is the above image, really shows some of the park's vistas nicely, with the piles of huge weathered boulders and vast numbers of Joshua trees visible when you open the larger version of the images. There's something almost otherworldly to those views...

All posts from this trip: California 2010

Gallery: A Beautiful Sunday

Gallery (30 images): A Beautiful Sunday...

A week ago, we had a gorgeous weekend and I took advantage of what might have been the last nice weekend in a long while to go out and hike around near Alouette Lake and then later on, closer to sunset, by Pitt Lake. No lens tests, no reviews, just some photos on a beautiful, crisp, sunny fall day...

Tested! Fujinon XF 35mm f/2R WR

Gallery (40 images): Tested! Fujinon XF 35mm f/2R WR

I recently received my own personal, brand new Fujinon XF 35mm f/2 lens, in silver of course, to match my silver X-E2. Actually, the combination looks rather retro and very nice to me, like an old Leica lens or even an old silver Hasselblad lens in miniature! The WR designation means it is resistant against moisture and dust ingress, joining the 16mm f/1.4 and 90mm f/2 lenses as the only primes with WR. How does it perform optically, you might be wondering? Well firstly, have a look at gallery of sample images by clicking on the above image, then continue reading below…

Suitably retro: the new silver Fujinon XF 35mm f/2R WR on my Fujifilm X-E2 body

with a wonderful Burke Mountain Leather custom strap and Fujifilm hand grip

Gallery: Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, CA

Gallery (100 images): Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, CA

More catching up on photo processing! This is the first gallery from my March 2010 trip to southern California. It encompasses some photos from my drive down through California and then two days of shooting in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park.

It was an amazing year for blooming wildflowers and cacti, so I made the long run down to SoCal for a quick eight day road-trip. The above photo shows one of the abundant ocotillo shrubs in Anza-Borrego, with clusters of red/orange blooms at the ends of long spiny stems with lush green leaves. The park was exploding in bloom and the local papers were giving tips on the best places to see all the wildflowers. Well, it turns out I had to avoid those places, since the ones mentioned were packed with people (see photo 86!), many of whom were just lounging in the fields of desert wildflowers, off to the side of the road with folding patio chairs and coolers of beverages! Then there were all the other photographers in those spots too, zigzagging through the fields of blooms. Well, after visiting a few areas like that, I decided to explore the backroads myself, well away from the spots mentioned in the papers, and had a much more pleasant and fruitful time photographing away from the crowds...

All posts from this trip: California 2010

Gallery: Rhyolite and Mojave National Preserve

Gallery (45 images): Rhyolite and Mojave National Preserve

These are the first shots from my May trip to southern California, with my blog postings moving backwards from last to first. You can see all the galleries from this trip in order by clicking the following...

Link: All galleries from this trip...

The drive south from BC was mostly rainy and stormy and things didn't really clear up until I hit southern Nevada and the ghost town of Rhyolite. After Rhyolite, I bombed through Death Valley, deciding I should make time and get to Joshua Tree National Park to have a few days before the Memorial Day Weekend crowds hit. It was somewhat hazy through Death Valley, so I didn't take any shots until I got to the Mojave Desert National Preserve further south. I wanted to head over to the huge Kelso Dunes, but even there, the skies were very hazy and mostly gray. A little further south in the Mojave National Preserve, the skies started to improve and I finally took some photos. A lonely red Fishhook Barrel Cactus, with heavy and vicious spines, served to add some colour to five of the photos from one spot. The following morning was once again overcast and gray, not really clearing until I got to Joshua Tree National Park.

NOTE: Apologies, but I have noted that some of the "Back to post" links at the top of each image gallery are not returning you to the proper originating blog post as intended, rather back to the main page of the blog. I have not been able to figure out if this is a glitch due to the redirects from my mikemander.com domain host or something to do with Google Blogger. It was working fine for the longest time but within the last week, I noticed this glitch. Will be trying to fix this...

Gallery: Joshua Tree National Park - Day 1

Gallery (40 photos): Joshua Tree National Park - Day 1

I was camped a ways north of Joshua Tree National Park, in the Mojave Desert National Preserve, and in the morning I had gray, overcast skies. I did take some photos near the Sweeney Desert Research Centre, but due to the dull light, none of them made it into this gallery. By the time I got to Joshua Tree National Park, drove around to decide on a campground and secured a site at "Jumbo Rocks", it was already later in the day, so I didn't get a whole lot of shooting in. Thankfully, the skies there was much nicer than what I had in the morning!

For a brief, 1920x1080 time-lapse movie (a 10.4MB download) of the sunset shown in the first photo, click the image above to open in a new window. For this 5 second time-lapse movie, 138 frames were taken over about 34 minutes but unlike my regular photos, they were just processed in Lightroom and not in PhotoNinja.

Link: All galleries from this trip...

Gallery: Joshua Tree National Park - Day 2

Gallery (65 photos): Joshua Tree National Park - Day 2

How time flies! It's now been well over a month already since my last posting of a gallery from my California trip, earlier this year. This is day two in Joshua Tree National Park, with more shots of amazing eroded boulders and rock formations. I shot quite a bit near the Jumbo Rocks campground, where I had stayed two nights. I did a morning hike from where I was camping, then traveled around Joshua Tree park for the day, coming back in the evening to shoot until sunset at Jumbo Rocks again. There are some great rock formations and views a mere 10 to 15 minutes of hiking from where I had set up my tent, a very cool campsite to stay at for sure!

Link: All galleries from this trip...

Gallery: Fall, and more XF 90mm f/2 tests...

Gallery (50 images): Fall and more XF 90mm f/2 tests...

Fall is coming, the leaves are changing and I spent another day with Fujifilm's 90mm f/2 firmly attached to the front of my X-E2. When I get a new lens, shoot with it, and then scarcely want to take it off the camera... well that's a sign that I really like that lens. My previous lens purchase, the XF 16mm f/1.4, was the same: on my trip to California earlier this year, about half of my 3300 photos were taken with that 16mm. Even though longer focal lengths are not something I use all that often, the 90mm has given me such wonderful results, that I've been using it a lot more than I thought I would.

There seems to be something almost "magical" in how it renders highlights, be it reflections on water, or reflections off metal or chrome.  Look at the large version of photo 43 in the gallery for example, and maybe you'll see what I mean? The 90mm is so sharp that I want to seek out textures too: old crumbling brick walls, rusting metal or decaying, yet colourful leaves. An added bonus is that it focuses very closely, considering it is not a macro. In fact, it offers roughly 1/4 life-size reproduction at its closest focus. Some portrait lenses have a tough time getting you a tight headshot, but with this 90mm, you can frame a face tightly enough to capture just the eyes.

Lastly, I wanted to mention how perfect the aperture ring feels on this lens, despite it being a WR design. Detents are firm and crisp, with full stop detents being distinctly stronger than its 1/3 stop detents, attention to detail which is commendable in my view. This is not the only Fujifilm lens to offer this full-stop/third-stop difference in feel, but it is one of the most obvious that I have felt. This little bit of "tactile perfection" is something that just makes the lens even nicer to use in practice. Not all Fujifilm lenses have felt so good, with the 18-135mm kit lens having a particularly mushy and vague aperture ring for example, but the aperture ring on this lens feels, at least to me, just about perfect. I am stating this as a distinct point of praise for Fujifilm's lens engineers, with the hopes that they take this to heart and not only continue to design future lenses that are superb optically, but make ones that also feel equally superb mechanically...

Gallery: Fujifilm XF 90mm f/2 Tests

Gallery (30 images): Fujifilm XF 90mm f/2 Tests

These are my first tests of Fujifilm's excellent new Fujinon XF 90mm f/2R LM WR portrait prime lens. It has a linear-motor (LM) mechanism for fast, quiet focusing and the WR designation means it has a water and dust resistant design. In short, it is a truly superb new addition to Fujifilm's extensive lineup of impressive prime lenses. More comments on its optical quality are in the notes at the top of the gallery. I have provided large, 4000 pixel wide images so you can closely examine its image quality, since smaller ones hardly do justice to the sharpness and clean rendering of this lens.

I was fortunate enough to have some interesting fog over the city during sunset too, although with handheld shots at slower shutter speeds, not enough sleep and too much coffee that day, I fear some of those won't be quite up to my usual sharpness standards. Not to mention the contrast sucking nature of the fog will make things look softer in general too. However, the first set of images done earlier in the day with better light (1-18), those should show what the lens is capable of. Seeing as how I called it a "portrait lens," yes there are a couple of portraits (thanks Nicole!), shot wide open at f/2 as well.

It's likely that this lens might replace the 50-230mm in my general "hike around" kit since for landscape work, when I did use that zoom, I often found myself shooting around 90mm with it anyway, give or take. It has been rare that I ever framed a pure landscape (or even cityscape) shot at much more than 100mm, so the 90mm should work perfectly in a great many instances. Of course, if birds or wildlife are my intended subject, then the 50-230mm will come along as well, or eventually, the upcoming 100-400mm zoom.

The 90mm brings me one step closer to having an ideal prime lens kit. I am now waiting for the new XF 35mm f/2 to arrive (scheduled to ship in November I believe), which will then likely replace the 18-55mm zoom in my kit, which I am now using more or less as a 35mm stand-in. At that point, my primes will be 16mm f/1.4, 23mm f/1.4, 35mm f/2, 60mm f/2.4 macro and 90mm f/2. I do also have the 14mm f/2.8 but I often want wider, so the 10-24mm f/4 will be the standard ultra-wide in my lens kit. Since it is extremely good too, especially in its mid range (around 14mm), the 14mm prime will seem a bit redundant to be honest and I likely won't take it with me on a regular basis. The 16mm is quite close to the 14mm as far as focal length and is so incredibly good, that I wouldn't miss the 14mm all that much I think. The last prime lens I will be wishing for, is something in the 9mm to 11mm range but unfortunately, I have not seen even the slightest hint of anything like that coming...

As much as I like primes lenses, I also have the ability to travel light with a three zoom kit if size and weight are a concern: the 10-24mm, 18-55mm and 50-230mm, all image stabilized and surprisingly good optically, especially the 10-24mm!