Sporadic dispatches from the hinterlands.
Yesterday I wanted to get out for a walk not too far from home, and I ended up at Franklin Point, just up the coast from Año Nuevo. It’s a little less than a half hour drive.
It was too windy for birdwatching, so I watched the clouds instead. Sometimes it’s good to get out there even for half a day, as a reminder that this is where we live.
We recently got a new camera: a Sony A7R4, along with a Sony 200-600mm lens. These are our first bird shots as we start to learn how to use the elaborate autofocus and other options with this rig. I tried using auto ISO, which worked pretty well. Most of these birds were in fairly low light, so the ISO went up as I tried to maintain a shutter speed of 1/1000 sec. There’s always more noise at higher ISO, but this camera shows less distracting noise than our Canon 5D III.
A bunch of us got together at Harmony Farm for a weekend of family feasting. We ate and drank heroically, and in the afternon Joy and I decided to try to branch out from our usual nature photography to take some pictures of people (and one cat).
Our latest 4x4 camping trip took us a little farther from home than usual. We flew to Vancouver and rented a Jeep with a rooftop tent from Hastings Overland and took a week to explore the southern part of Vancouver Island. It was like being in our own rig, but without having to drive it all the way up there.
Lately I’ve been feeling that my Canon 5D camera setup is a heavy burden; for this trip, I rented a tiny Fuji X-T30 and a couple of lenses. It was half the weight of my usual gear, and I enjoyed shooting with it. Perhaps it’s time for a trade.
August 30 to September 8, 2019.
