Switching the Blog Over to My Hosting Site

Future blog posts will take place on my Zenfolio based hosting site. This site has been losing photos lately and I don't want to deal with replacing them.

You can now visit the blog at https://trulandphotography.com/blog.

UPDATE: The missing photos have apparently returned but I'm still sticking to the new plan.

Waterford Harbor and the Drained Canal

Some nice scenes on this morning's walk over to Waterford this morning. The harbor was nice and calm with enough clouds for some interesting reflections. The canal is still drained which creates some interesting scenes.

All of these are five file HDR composites except for the train image which is a single file.

Morning Walk Up the Champlain Canal Trail

For this morning's walk I decided to head from home and up the old Champlain Canal trail north of the village of Waterford. This trip includes a weighlock, which I've included, and a lock, which I haven't, as it now contains the remnants of someone's campsite gear and looks awful.

I carried the EF 24-70mm f/4L IS USM lens on one of the EOS RP bodies. It's nice to see some green things starting to pop up. There was also an interesting cloud as I started out.

Here are some of the results.

Happy Easter

I took a quick walk over to Peebles Island this morning for some Easter sunrise shots. Sunrise comes late here due to some hills to the east of the Hudson River. Today, the sun came up just to the north of Bald Mountain. I carried an EOS RP and EF 24-70mm f/4L IS USM lens.

Deep Blue Skies

I was out twice today, trying to take advantage of some nice mostly clear weather. I carried the 70-200mm lens with me on my five mile walk early in the morning. As usual when I'm out early enough, I didn't have to worry at all about physical distancing. Here are some shots from that session.

Mohawk River - 127mm

Ontario Street, Cohoes - 121mm

Waterford Museum - 70mm

Waterford Waterfront, Hudson River - 70mm

A few hours, and a 40 minute drive, later I used the 17-40mm lens to photograph the Saratoga Monument in Schuylerville, which is now a part of the National Park Service. You can read about the monument at https://www.nps.gov/sara/planyourvisit/saratoga-monument.htm.

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21mm

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Plan B Worked Out

This morning, instead of just walking from the house, I decided to drive over to Peebles Island and spend some time walking all the trails. In addition to scenics I was planning on looking for closeups of emerging vegetation so I was using the RF 35mm f/1.8 IS STM Macro lens.

But, at 7:30 AM, there were ten cars in the area of the parking lot at Peebles Island where people park to use the trails. At that time on a normal weekend, much less a weekday, there might be one or two. I was not in the mood to dodge people on the trails so I went to plan B.

Vischer Ferry Nature and Historic Preserve is a much larger space than Peebles Island with longer and wider trails. And there was only one car at the parking lot near the Whipple bridge. When I left there were five or six but I walked for about four miles and only saw two people. Perfect.

Here are some of the shots from this morning.

The Same Early Morning Stroll With a Longer Lens

This morning to walked pretty much the same route as yesterday but this time carried the EF 70-200mm lens on one of the EOS RP bodies. Here some snapshots.

70mm

121mm

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116mm

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70mm

Early Morning Stroll Through Three Counties

Lately, mostly due to weather, I haven't been bringing a camera along on my three mile walk across the Hudson and Mohawk Rivers and back. This morning, however, it looked like there might be some decent scenes so I brought one of the RP bodies and the EF 24-70mm f/4L IS USM lens along.

Physical distancing is not a problem when I get out early enough as I rarely run into anyone who isn't in a vehicle of some kind. Here are some of the scenes from this morning.

Social Distancing in Saratoga County

I hopped in the vehicle and headed out to some uncrowded locations late this morning for some walking and some shooting. I had my whole bag with me but only used the EF 24-70mm f/4L IS USM lens.

I started at Cohoes Falls but with overcast skies, the images are nothing exciting. I then headed up to Vischer Ferry Nature Preserve, stopping at the Crescent power station looking over at the end of Flight Lock Road in Waterford. Here is one of the images.

33mm

Once at Vischer Ferry, I walked around the trails a bit. Here are two reflection scenics HDR processed in both color and black and white.

The 24-70mm lens has a closeup setting that lets you focus closer at 70mm and get to a magnification of .7X. The image stabilization in this lens also is Canon's hybrid design which supposedly helps hand held closeup shooting. This Tree Lungwort is a handheld single file at f/11, 1/125th second and ISO 400.

Schoharie Crossing

Having decided not to keep the EF 16-35mm f/4L IS USM lens, I sent it back to Lens Rentals a few days early. This morning I traveled to the Schoharie Crossing State Historic Site, a new location for me. Although I had a trail map on my phone, I didn't see an easy way to connect with any trails from the only parking lot I could find.

My main purpose was to check out the Schoharie Aqueduct which carried the old Erie Canal across the Schoharie Creek. While the creek is normally quite tame, in times of flood, like Hurricane Irene, or prolonged rain with summer storms, it becomes many times its normal size.

Here are some shots I could get from the East side of the creek where the visitor center and parking lot are located. I had both the 24-70mm and 70-200mm lenses, each attached to an EOS RP body.

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70mm

192mm

89mm

24mm

127mm

I Don't Think I'll Keep It

While my plan was to purchase the rented EF 16-35mm f/4L IS USM lens at the end of the rental period, my current thinking is that I will pass. The lens is great but there are a few points against purchasing this copy at this point.

First, the lens is larger and heavier than either my EF 17-40mm f/4L lens or my EF 24-70mm f/4L IS lens. Second, this is the first rental for this particular copy and the purchase price is only $21 less than the new retail cost of $999 which would include a warranty from Canon.

Third, the lens has some circular flare with the sun in the frame which I've seen on online review testing and which I ran into this morning. Here is some rainbow flare at 16mm and f/8, which is typical, apparently.

In any case, I have until Friday to evaluate whether this lens is worth the extra money over the 17-40mm lens I already own. Here are some other shots from this morning's walk.

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24mm

EF 16-35mm f/4L IS USM Lens

As I did when I rented the EF 24-70mm f/4L IS USM lens, I stopped at Oakwood Cemetery after picking up the EF 16-35mm f/4L IS USM lens from FedEx. I'm hoping this lens will take the place of my 17-40mm lens which I'm currently trying to sell.

This lens has better image quality and image stabilization although it costs almost twice as much. My plan is to use it in place of the 24-70mm lens in the two camera setup with the 70-200mm lens. If I'm only going to use one camera it will probably have the 24-70mm lens attached.

I've started a gallery dedicated to Oakwood Cemetery at https://trulandphotography.com/oakwood. The gallery contains more photos from today. I hope to be revisiting the cemetery more frequently in the future.

The first two shots show the extremes of the focal length range.

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35mm

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24mm

Vischer Ferry Nature Preserve Scenics

A sunny, if not overly warm, afternoon was a good opportunity to take a nice 3.7 mile walk around Vischer Ferry Nature and Historic Preserve this afternoon. All these shots are with the EOS RP and EF 24-70mm f/4L IS USM lens.