Photographs: Coastal Redwoods, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Redwood Forest

July 17, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Redwood trees growing in a gully at Muir Woods National Monument

I had a couple of primary goals on this visit to Muir Woods National Monument: I thought it might be a good location to shoot on this overcast summer day since the high fog softens the light that can otherwise be quite challenging inside the redwood forest. I also wanted to play with a new ultra wide-angle zoom lens, and I figured that this would be a better place for that activity than spending time in an urban setting… even though the latter might allow for more objective lens testing.

I typically arrive at Muir Woods very early in the morning, partly for the quality of the light in the forest at that time of day and partly for the very practical reason that the hordes of tourists from San Francisco are still mostly having coffee back at their hotels! However, I did not get there quite as early this time, and as I entered the park I could tell that it would not be too long before those hordes finished their coffee and began arriving. So I took a side trail up out of the valley of Redwood Creek (the location of the popular nature hike loops) and climbed up towards higher ridges. I was not alone on this trail but there the number of other hikers was reasonable, and for reasons ranging from aesthetic to objective (e.g. – testing that lens) this turned out to be a good choice. As the trail climbed, the views opened both above and below my camera position, and it was possible to shoot straight toward the trees and show a bit more of their height. Here a group of younger redwoods grows closely together in a small valley.

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Wildlife

Elephant Seal Nursery

July 16, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The elephant seal nursery at Piedras Blancas, California

A virtual blanket of elephant seals spreads across the beach just above the waterline at the Piedras Blancas elephant seal “nursery.” During the winter months these large and impressive animals come ashore to give birth and to breed, and after a strong recover during recent decades their numbers have increased greatly, to the point that it is not possible to find them in a number of locations along the Pacific Ocean coast, and not just in those set aside specifically for them.

A still photograph like this one lies at least a little bit, or perhaps just tells a bit less than the full truth. The scene looks very static, with almost no sign of animals doing anything other than lying prone in the sand. In fact, there does seem to be a lot of “sunbathing” going on here! But there is activity. The babies and juveniles are sometimes found huddled together in groups, occasionally cuddled up next to one of the adult females, and quite often nursing. Occasional territorial disputes arise, and they often seem to be settled by some noisy bluffing and baring of teeth. (The battles between large males are a different story, and they can be quite violent and even bloody.) Occasionally one of the seals move up onto the beach or leaves it for the water — if you look closely you can probably spot a few on the move in the photograph.

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Ocean & Coast

Elephant Seal Vocalizing

July 15, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Elephant seal vocalizing, Piedras Blancas elephant seal rookery

The Piedras Blancas elephant seal “nursery” is a well-known place to observe these great animals, especially during the time of year when they come ashore here to give birth. This is most certainly not the only place where the elephant seals come ashore now that their numbers have recovered, but it is one of the most accessible, being literally only feet away from the Pacific Coast highway. A short trail along the edge of the low bluff above the beach allows you to safely watch the action from a very short distance.

At times portions of the beach are virtually filled with elephant seals, often packed tightly together — large adult males who may be lounging around or fighting to establish dominance, females who are often nursing their young, and the juveniles who are born on this beach. The sound (and the smell, but I’ll leave that to your imagination!) of all these animals is quite something, including sounds that might be described as screams, howls, barks, and the almost mechanical sounding guttural calls of the largest males.

Equipment, Reviews

Canon EF 16-35mm f/4 L IS: First Thoughts

July 14, 2014 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

(This article has been slightly updated since it was originally posted i 2014.)

Canon has released a new ultra-wide zoom lens, the Canon EF 16-35mm f/4 L IS lens.* There has been a lot of excitement about this lens among Canon photographers since it addresses some weaknesses in previous Canon lenses of this type, including the EF 16-35mm f/2.8 L II and the venerable EF 17-40mm f/4 L. Each of those can produce fine photographs, but each also has its issues, mostly related to corner resolution. Early tests of the new 16-35mm f/4 L IS suggest that it performs much better in the corners. (In the first months following introduction, there were some issues with corner performance on some copies, but those have been addressed.) The lens also adds “IS” (image-stabiliztion), which is useful if you use it for handheld photography.

With this in mind, I did something I rarely do, and I purchased a newly-released lens right when it came out. Mine arrived last week, but I did not have a good opportunity to put it to real photography use until several days later when I took it out for a morning of redwood forest photography at the Muir Woods National Monument. (I did snap a few promising handheld shots right after I unpacked it, but such things rarely tell the whole story.) I did something else that is a bit unusual for me — I stuck the ultra-wide zoom on the camera at Muir Woods and shot with only that lens instead of the longer focal lengths that I more typically use.

Corner performance has been one of the main issues with the older Canon ultra-wide zoom lenses. The 17-40mm f/4 is known for soft corners at the largest apertures. It is always sharp in the center, but I most often shot mine stopped down, often at f/16 for landscape photography when maximizing depth of field. At smaller apertures the corners improve a lot, but they are never as good as what we see on more recent lenses with short focal lengths. Canon’s f/2.8 16-35 L II starts out fairly well at f/2.8 — in fact, its performance at f/2.8 is arguably its chief virtue compared the previous f/2.8 version — but performance stopped down isn’t any better than that of the less expensive 17-40. The promise of the new 16-35 f/4 lens, and the assessment in many early articles about it, is that it offers significantly better corner performance. Many who used early copies reported that it provides good resolution all the way into the corners, even wide open at f/4 and at all focal lengths. So I wanted to try it out in real-world shooting of the sort I’m most likely to do with such a lens, and see how it stacks up against my 17-40 lens on my full frame camera.

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G Dan Mitchell Photography

Redwood Forest

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Elephant Seal Nursery

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Elephant Seal Vocalizing

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Canon EF 16-35mm f/4 L IS: First Thoughts

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Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.

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Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.