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 US Southwest with Leica & Zeiss | |
As some of you know I spent the last three weeks in the US southwest doing a very intense tour of the national parks. In that period I visited nine national parks, two national recreation areas, two tribal parks and one state park. We started in Denver, Colorado and the road trip ended in San Francisco, California. All in all we covered 7,600 km (4700 miles) and travelled through six different states.
I was travelling with a group of friends that weren’t all that into photography and the schedule was extremely hectic. So I didn’t get to choose the place or the time (i.e. light) to shoot but I still got a fair amount of pictures.
I have been thinking about how I should execute this post. Even if I just post a couple of shots from each park there will be a large amount of photos. So I have to split it up somehow. I’ll start by posting a photo from each place in this post, in alphabetical order. Then as I process the bulk of the shots I’ll do three or four parks per post with 2-4 pictures per park. They will be in chronological order. I’ll make a post ever day or every other day depending on how quickly I can work through them.
Anyway, before I proceed with the images, this being a gear forum, a bit about the gear. I had essentially four cameras with me. The Leica M9, M6 and Canon 5DII & 7D. I lent the 7D to one of my co-travellers and I did not use it at all. The 5DII was intended for tripod based shooting and as a backup system, should the M9 fail. I didn’t use it much and it mostly just stayed in a camera bag in the car.
The M6 did not see much use as I could not be bothered with carrying around two cameras with me. I had some 20 rolls of film with me, but I only used up three.
As for lenses, I had for the Leica the Zeiss 18/4 ZM, Zeiss 25/2.8 ZM, Leica 28/2 Cron ASPH, Leica 35/1.4 Lux ASPH, Zeiss 35/2 ZM, Leica 50/1.4 Lux ASPH & Leica 90/2 Cron ASPH. For the Canon system I had the Zeiss 21/2.8, 50 MP, 100 MP & Canon 70-200/2.8 IS MkII.
My four most used lenses, that I used for about 80% of the shots were the 28 Cron, 90 Cron, ZM 18 & 50 Lux, which was fairly predictable. The most used lens was the 28 Cron (23%) followed by the 90 Cron (17%). The ZM18 & 50 Lux were used equally much (15%).
I had one gear incident. One of my friends dropped my 70-200 onto a concrete pavement. She managed to detach the lens from the camera and it fell, hitting the ground hard. The IS motor broke, but the AF still worked. I’ll have to send it in for repairs (it’s insured). Otherwise there were no problems. In Antelope Canyon I wrapped the M9 in a plastic bag, cut holes for the necessary openings and sealed it with electrical tape. This was a good thing as the plastic bag as well as my 5DII were covered in very fine, almost powder like sand. In Antelope the mighty 21 Distagon failed me for the first time (optically), but I\'ll tell you about it in a later post.
Anyway, enough talk, on to the image posting thing. Alphabetical order. NP = National Park, NRA = National Recreation Area, TP = Tribal Park, SP = State Park. In case you are wondering what a tribal park is – it’s a park that is in an Indian reservation and under the management of the tribe (in this case the Navajo).
Antelope Canyon TP, Arizona:
Arches NP, Utah:
Canyonlands NP, Utah:
Dead Horse Point SP, Utah:
Death Valley NP, California:
Flaming Gorge NRA, Utah:
Glen Canyon NRA, Arizona:
Grand Canyon, Arizona:
Grand Teton NP, Wyoming:
Mesa Verde NP, Colorado:
Monument Valley TP, Arizona:
Rocky Mountain NP, Colorado:
Yellowstone NP, Wyoming:
Yosemite NP, California:
Zion NP, Utah:
Alright, that’s the first round. Now I’ll try to work on my jet lag, although I fear I’m still on California time (9 hours difference) as it is 6 AM here in Stockholm and I have not gone to bed yet. 
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Links to other image posts in this thread:
Part 2: Grand Teton & Yellowstone
Part 3: Mesa Verde, Arches & Canyonlands
Part 4: Monument Valley, Grand Canyon, Antelope Canyon & Horseshoe bend
Part 5: Zion, Death Valley & Yosemite
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