Blog

Sporadic dispatches from the hinterlands.

New Lens

We just got a new lens: the Canon EF 100-400mm F4.5-5.6L IS II USM. We already have the Canon EF 400mm f/5.6L USM, but this new zoom lens has some advantages.

  • It's got image stabilization (IS), so we should be able to get sharp pictures at lower shutter speeds. With the old non-IS 400 mm, I try to keep the shutter speed above 1/1000 second. We'll see if the new IS lens does better.
  • It focuses much closer: about 3 feet, vs around 12 feet for the old one. This comes up fairly often, especially when shooting pictures of things such as lizards, butterflies, and the occasional friendly bird.
  • It's a zoom. Every once in a while, this could be handy, but I'll probably shoot it mostly at 400 mm.

The key question, though, is this: can I get sharp pictures with it? I went to the UCSC Arboretum and Farm (same place we went for the previous blog entry) to try it out.

I took some more pictures of the Oak Titmouse pair visiting their nest. They eat a lot of long-legged arthropods, but I can't tell if those are insects such as crane flies, or perhaps spiders. This titmouse has a sporty black band across his belly, but none of the other pictures of this species show the band. I guess it's just personal style.

The new lens performed similarly to the old one, but the new one did fail to focus properly on some shots. That's a concern, and I'll have to do some more testing.

The lens seemed to perform pretty well with lizards and birds. It's not clearly better optically than the old lens, but it does seem to do what it's supposed to do. I was able to get fairly close to the lizards (too close for the old lens to focus). Also I made some sharp pictures of a Dark-eyed Junco in deep shade with a shutter speed of 1/40 second -- unheard of for me with a 400 mm lens. Overall, it seems to perform well, though I could always wish for better. It will definitely be nice to have two 400 mm lenses, so Joy and I can both take bird pictures at the same time. So it looks like we're keeping it, although we're still within the return window.

-- Brian

April Weekend around Santa Cruz

Wrentit, Waddell Creek

We spent this weekend exploring the area near home. It was like being on a camping trip, except we camped in our bed at home. On Friday we trekked out to Henry Coe State Park near Gilroy, and spent the day doing a leisurely hike, with numerous stops for listening to birds and looking at flowers. After several years of extreme drought, we finally got some rain this winter, and the flowers were out in profusion.

We didn't see as many birds as we had hoped, but there was plenty to look at along the trail.

Bobcat, Henry Coe

On Saturday we were still inspired to be outdoors, so we headed a short distance up the coast to Waddell Creek and Rancho del Oso. We braved the mosquitoes of the Marsh Trail long enough for Joy to get the photo of the Wrentit at the top of this post, then retreated to a drier area to watch juncos and chipmunks.

Sunday we went out for one more, spending a few hours walking around the UCSC Arboretum and farm. We found some nice birds near the farm buildings.

Overall, a pretty good weekend, considering we stayed home!

Yosemite Valley

We went to Yosemite Valley for a weekend trip, hoping to see Yosemite in winter and take a few pictures. We didn't want to camp, so we got a room at Yosemite Lodge. This required making a reservation several weeks in advance, so we gambled on the weather. January in the Sierra could mean anything, but in an El Nino year like this one, the odds favor precipitation. We hoped for some spectacular light in between storms, but what we encountered was more quietly cloudy.

We took a long walk in the rain on Saturday, with only occasional glimpses of El Capitan, Cathedral Rocks. and Yosemite Falls. Overnight, the rain turned into snow, and we enjoyed a beautiful snowy stroll on Sunday morning.

Lone Pine, the Inyos, and Panamint Valley

We went camping over our Winter break, spending Christmas in the southern Owens Valley area. I wanted to try to get some pictures of sunrise on the east face of a snow-covered Mt. Whitney, and we wanted to get out of town. We headed to the Alabama Hills, just outside of Lone Pine, California.

It's cold over there in the depths of winter, and especially so when you get up before sunrise to take pictures. We sleep warm inside the rooftop tent, so that's not a problem, but it does make for some long nights when we retreat into the tent by 7 pm or so. The first couple of days were good, but once it got windy, we decided to head for a motel in town.

After enjoying pizza and old movies in the motel room, we were ready to head out again. We drove up into the Inyo Mountains, east of Lone Pine. We enjoyed the views of Owens Lake and the Sierra from the Inyos, passed through the old mining town of Cerro Gordo, then went down the steep east side of the Inyos on a rough jeep road. At a couple of points on this excursion, I was very glad to have the locking rear differential on the truck; I was spinning the tires in 4 low until I used the locker. We ended up in a Joshua tree woodland called Lee Flat, inside Death Valley National Park, just before sunset.

The morning temperature was about 19 degrees F (-7 C), but the day soon warmed. We decided to go look at one of the side canyons off Panamint Valley. The road into Wildrose Canyon was blocked as a result of flash flooding earlier in the year, so we ended up in Surprise Canyon, which had a nice flow of water but too much mining debris for our taste.

On the way out, we took the back roads past Darwin Falls, China Garden Spring, and the town of Darwin in Death Valley National Park. I was intrigued to visit a town named after Charles Darwin, but I quickly realized that this wasn't the case. The town was founded in 1874; Charles Darwin's Origin of Species was first published in 1859. The town of Darwin was actually named after a fellow named Darwin French, apparently named after Erasmus Darwin, Charles' grandfather.

After Darwin, we went back for one more might at the Dow Villa Motel in Lone Pine. It's close enough to the Alabama Hills that I was able to get up before dawn and go shoot more photos. Finally, we headed home, with a stop to sample the beer at Firestone Walker Brewery in Paso Robles.