Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature

Purple Wildflower

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Purple Wildflower
Purple Wildflower. Almaden Quicksilver Park, California. April 12, 2008. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Purple spring wildflower (Dichelostemma capitatum, blue dicks) photographed at Almaden Quicksilver Park in central California.

I want to thank Gina Zolotar for helping identify this and other wildflowers I photographed this spring. I know these plants and flowers well – I can tell you when they bloom and where to find them and I can locate the plants even when they are not in bloom. But I’m absolutely pathetic when it comes to remembering the common names of plants and flowers, much less their scientific names.

keywords: flower, wild, wildflower, purple, one, single, stem, green, bokeh, almaden, quicksilver, park, santa clara county, san jose, california, usa, nature, spring, plant, stock, Dichelostemma capitatum, blue dicks, bluedicks

Commentary, Equipment, Technique

Thoughts About Long Zooms and Primes and ‘Image Quality’

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A lot of photographers sweat the decisions about what long lenses to purchase. Among Canon users a common decision is whether to get a high quality telephoto prime (plus one or more teleconverters) or to get a telephoto zoom. Perhaps the most common question is whether to get a 300mm L prime (f2.8 IS or f4 IS) or the 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM.

Many seem to focus on the image quality (“IQ”) issue a lot when trying to figure this out. It is true that the primes have an edge on the basis of pure resolution compared to the zooms. At 300mm the prime will “beat” the zoom at the same focal length. But, as many have figured out, it isn’t quite as simple as determining which lens is “sharpest” – other factors can affect the answer to that question, and sharpness is not the only issue.

Beach and Bluffs, Evening
Beach and Bluffs, Evening

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The sidebar was becoming very long on this site. (Did anyone ever actually scroll down far enough to see the blogroll? ;-) To try to simplify things a bit I have moved a lot of the content from the sidebar to a series of tabs across the top of the screen. I hope it works for everyone.

I still have a longer term goal of doing a more significant site update, but that will have to wait until I have a bit more time to work on it.

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