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Reposted from my other blog:
Plan a photography trip to Yosemite Valley. A couple days beforehand, realize that the weather is going to be “interesting” and that camping is not going to be a really wonderful idea. “Upgrade” to a Curry Village “tent cabin, unheated” – hey, it is cheap! Spend Saturday photographing (the wonderful fall colors) in the rain. Check in to your “tent cabin, unheated” and get yourself snug just as the rain starts. The rain increases until it is more or less pouring. The wind begins to rise.
The “tent cabin, unheated” is reasonably snug and dry, but soon you remember news stories about boulders from a rockslide that crashed into Curry Village a few weeks ago, crunching an unoccupied cabin or two. The rain increases. The wind strengthens.
Suddenly there is a loud clap of thunder. Followed by the sound a large rocks and boulders crashing down from the cliffs above.
More thunder. Several times during the night you hear more boulders coming off the cliff. You wonder whether anyone has reconsidered the wisdom of locating Curry Village right beneath this cliff.
Just sayin’.
Gates of the Valley. Yosemite Valley, California. November 2, 2008. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
Gates of the Valley and the Merced River, Autumn – Yosemite Valley, California.
I made my annual fall color pilgrimage to Yosemite Valley this past weekend and since I had a few extra minutes while going from point A to point B I decided to stop at this over-photographed location and try a long exposure using a 9-stop neutral density filter, thus the effect you see on the surface of the Merced River in the foreground.
The trip was not quite what I anticipated. The fall colors were quite good, with lots of bright yellow maples, my favorite yellow and brown oaks, golden meadow grasses, and more.
But it rained. A lot.
It started almost as soon as I arrived on Saturday morning, got worse as the day wore on, poured overnight, and rained off and on most of the day on Sunday. Even this shot in seemingly clearing weather was taken as a light mist fell.
keywords: yosemite, valley, national park, el capitan, three brothers, merced, river, reflection, plant, tree, grass, meadow, forest, fall, autumn, color, clouds, fog, blue, sky, time, exposure, landscape, nature, scenic, travel, california, usa, stock, ripple
An interesting juxtaposition caught my attention this morning.
Yesterday Michael Reichmann posted a very interesting article (“You’ve Got to Be Kidding“) in which he compares the image quality from the (arguably high end point and shoot) $500 Canon G10 with that obtained from his high end Hasselblad medium format digital system. While some are misrepresenting the point of his article to be that the G10 is equal to the Hassy MF system (it isn’t, and he didn’t write that), the significant point is that for many uses the G10 can produce good size prints (13″ x 19” in Reichmann’s article) that are largely indistinguishable from those that came from the MF camera.
At about the same time I saw a link to a dealmac.com posting about sub-$600 prices for the Canon XSi 12.2MP APS-C DSLR with the quite decent EFS 18-55mm image stabilized lens. Anyone who looks at the features of this camera objectively and knows about the generally quite good reviews of this lens understands that this is a tremendous value for a camera system that is more than capable enough for the vast majority of DSLR purchasers.
So, on one hand we have a small almost pocketable camera (the G10) that can produce excellent quality prints as large as most people will ever produce (much larger, in fact). If your point of comparison is DSLRs of a year or two ago – $1000+ in many cases – this is a quite amazing thing, and could induce many buyers to think about the G10 or a similar camera, either as the camera or as an adjunct when traveling light is important. But wait, the cost of a quite decent DSLR isn’t $1000+ any more – it now appears to be perhaps only $100 more than that of the G10.