This Morning's Walk

I have to be out and about around 6AM these days in order to get the sun before it rises too high in the sky. Especially with a 20 minute walk to get anywhere scenic. This morning I walked with my Canon 5D Mark III and EF 24-70mm f/2.8L lens.

Of course, every time I'm out with just a landscape setup I see all kinds of wildlife. This morning it was a pair of adult bald eagles and two juvenile bald eagles on the flats below the dam West of Peebles Island. Of course, the opposite is also true, that when I am out with a long lens there are great cloud formations or rainbows or something and I don't see much wildlife.

Here are four HDR processed scenics from this morning including the Hudson River from the Troy-Waterford bridge, the North Bridge to Peebles Island and a Peebles Island path with the third branch of the Mohawk River in the background. All were made between 6:30AM and 7:00 AM

Catching Up Since the Last Entry

Here are a few shots since the last blog entry on Wednesday. All of these were made with my EOS 5D Mark III.

This first shot was made Thursday morning with my EF 100mm f/1.8 Macro lens and is a heavily cropped version. I didn't even know the insect was there until I looked at the files on my computer.

100mm, f/6.7, 1/250 sec., ISO 400

This next shot was made during last evening's foggy sunset after a day of humidity and rain. This was made with my EF 24-70mm f/2.8L lens and is a four image HDR composite.

70mm, f/5.6, 1/250 sec., ISO 400

These next two images were made this morning with the 5DIII and 24-70mm lens. The spider web is cropped quite a bit to eliminate the distracting background which is more in focus than I'd like but f/11 was needed to get as much of the web in focus as possible.

The bog scene is a 5 file HDR composite.

65mm, f/11, 1/125 sec., ISO 400

28mm, f/6.7, 1/90 sec., ISO 1600

Some Nice Sun For A Change

The last few days have been gorgeous and I was able to get out with my 5D Mark III and EF 24-70mm f/2.8L lens. One inconvenient thing about this time of year is that if you're not out and about before 7AM, you're missing the nice low, early light.

Here are four shots from my walk on Peebles Island this morning, all HDR processed, some four files, some five files. Exposure information is for the normally exposed file.

5DIII, EF 24-70mm f/2.8L at 30mm, f/6.7, 1/250 sec., ISO 200

5DIII, EF 24-70mm f/2.8L at 34mm, f/5.6, 1/180 sec., ISO 400

5DIII, EF 24-70mm f/2.8L at 25mm, f/5.6, 1/250 sec., ISO 400

5DIII, EF 24-70mm f/2.8L at 65mm, f/4, 1/750 sec., ISO 400

Getting Started in May

We'll get May started off with some recents shots made with my Canon G1X.  With its almost APS-C sized sensor this compact camera with a built in 28-112mm equivalent lens is a nice carry around option when photography isn't a main priority.

Unlike Canon EF-S lenses, which are used on APS-C sized sensors and have a "field of view" crop factor but are focal lengths as if they covered a full frame sensor, the G1X lens is actually a 15.1-60.4mm lens with the field of view of a 28-112mm full frame lens on a full frame camera. While Canon APS-C cameras have a field of view crop factor of 1.6x with EF or EF-S lenses, the G1X has a crop factor of 1.85x.

The captions will contain shooting data. I will put focal length equivalent figures in the caption for reference. This first shot is from last week.

G1X, 35mm eq., f/5.6, 1/1000 sec., ISO 400

The remainder of the images are from this morning. The last two are 100% crops of different portions of the third image.

G1X, 85mm eq., f/5.6, 1/60 sec., ISO 400

G1X, 28mm eq., f/5.6, 1/200 sec., ISO 400