Jeff, cool hike pics. When I first looked at the shadow behind the flowers a breaching whale came to mind, but I don't think that's what it is
Laura, enjoying your museum pics, makes me think I haven't been to any of the two air and space museums here recently.
Leighton, good to see you back here, nostalgia or not Hope the recovery is proceeding well!
Ken L, cool scenes at the bike coaltion event.
Jim in Simi Valley, thanks for posting the sculptures at the high school. And love that colorful door!
Jose, I love it when you get back from one of your tours, we get a steady stream of treasures, whether its historic or zoological ones.
Peter, great comparison of the 400 and 600 using the moon. The one on the left seems slighly sharper, although it maybe just be the crater shadows since the left side is curving away from us. Either way at that magnification the results are superb!
Philippe, terrific French street closeups as usual!
Steve in Lancashire, always enjoy your posts from across the pond. The anti-social social club was a good find.
Scott, teasing Reagan again with the lovely snow scenes Its been bouncing back and forth here, the flowers are really not sure whether to open up or wait out the spring.
George, ah a Noct pic. Jealous of you folks with Nocts
Andy, love the Melbourne market scenes, cool place for photography!
They just move out of the way and let you walk right thru the middle of them
which makes me a little nervous
I still remember Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds"
Peter, great comparison of the 400 and 600 using the moon. The one on the left seems slighly sharper, although it maybe just be the crater shadows since the left side is curving away from us. Either way at that magnification the results are superb!
Where's Curtis
I had the same feeling about the lower left segment - slightly more crisp punch to it. That may be because the exposure was brighter and I had to pull it down to match the other lens.
Turns out, that lower part is the 600mm, the upper is the 400mm. When viewed out of camera, there is no contest, but after the usual CA removal for the 600mm, and some adjustments of black and white point, the contrast comes up with the 600mm as well.
Shooting the 400mm is just a lot less post processing - you can show these images straight out of camera and be done with it. But when you have time to tweak the images and actually nail the focus (5% vs 95% with the AF), there isn't that much of a difference to justify the price difference, especially today when a good 600mm f/4 can be found for little over half of what I paid 3 years ago.
What's not in this comparison is the "cheap" 200-500mm VR, which I think the reason why fast long MF lenses are rapidly losing value these days. When I rented that lens last year I almost decided not to get a 400mm f/2.8 - it is just that good.
Before I put the 600mm up for sale I will give it another chance in May at the spring vintage races, mostly for extreme reach long shots (1800mm stuff with 2x and DX body). I want to see if there a reason to keep it around, but I am already carving out what gear to put into the Pelican case space vacated by this big lump of glass...
Thanks, Samy. Yeah, no whale in that shot, but they've been buzzing the coast recently and coming remarkably close to shore.
I'd post a pic, but my whale shots usually end up looking like grainy Loch Ness monster photos.
On the California snow front, Mammoth Mountain just got another three foot dump. Word is they'll be moving the summer mountain bike runs to a lower part of the hill because they expect to be skiing and boarding at Main Lodge well into the summer.
Mammoth Pass has broken the all-time precipitation record at 92 inches of water for the season. Records have been kept since 1940 and the previous record year was 1969.
Foggy14 wrote:
Thanks, Samy. Yeah, no whale in that shot, but they've been buzzing the coast recently and coming remarkably close to shore.
I'd post a pic, but my whale shots usually end up looking like grainy Loch Ness monster photos.
On the California snow front, Mammoth Mountain just got another three foot dump. Word is they'll be moving the summer mountain bike runs to a lower part of the hill because they expect to be skiing and boarding at Main Lodge well into the summer.
Mammoth Pass has broken the all-time precipitation record at 92 inches of water for the season. Records have been kept since 1940 and the previous record year was 1969. ...Show more →
Foggy14 wrote:
Thanks, Samy. Yeah, no whale in that shot, but they've been buzzing the coast recently and coming remarkably close to shore.
I'd post a pic, but my whale shots usually end up looking like grainy Loch Ness monster photos.
On the California snow front, Mammoth Mountain just got another three foot dump. Word is they'll be moving the summer mountain bike runs to a lower part of the hill because they expect to be skiing and boarding at Main Lodge well into the summer.
Mammoth Pass has broken the all-time precipitation record at 92 inches of water for the season. Records have been kept since 1940 and the previous record year was 1969. ...Show more →
Snow in the Sierra is a great thing, until you see what it will do to your July hiking plans
I am on the fence right now if I will even try, because the only window I have in the summer begins July 1 and Ends August 5, and even if I push the trip as far back towards Aug 5, we are looking at many miles of snow on the high altitude segments of the hike.
The only silver lining I see in all the snow reports is that they are mostly talking about snow depth, not snow water content numbers. Compared to the biggest winter on record, this year is dropping off. Perhaps this most recent storm will bump the numbers up again, but since March 1, the weather has really not been that wet. The third graph on the page below is what will determine if I am doing a summer or late fall hike...
I am posting a few images from 2010 on the MF shooting AF thread, to show what a winter with less water than this year was like in late July up near Muir Pass...
Steve, wow, BIF shots with that unique lens. Great job, especially like the light on the second one. I don't think they had all those hi fi coatings in the days of the AIS for chromatic aberration
