New Coloraodo Wilderness

Yesterday the Omnibus Public Lands Management Act was signed into law. This designates roughly 310,000 acres of new wilderness in Colorado and 2 million acres nationwide. The new wilderness areas in Colorado are the Rocky Mountain National Park Wilderness (250,000 acres) and the Dominguez Canyons Wilderness (60,000 acres) which forms the heart of the new Dominguez-Escalante National Conservation Area (210,000 acres total).

As a nature photographer and wilderness fan, I am happy to see these lands protected for future generations.

In a few weeks, I will return to the Dominguez Canyons for a 3-day backpack trip to explore some areas of the newly designated wilderness. And I am really looking forward it!

Boulder Falls

This is one of the first Canon 5D Mark II files I've done any significant work on. Its not anything spectacular, but I thought I'd post since the big 5D2 files are so nice to work with. This was taken during mid-day light, so I multi-processed 1 raw file into 4 exposures and blended them, did a little burn and dodge and boosted the contrast and saturation just a tad. With respect to the contrast and saturation of the 5D2 files, I'm really pleased with the way the files come straight out of the camera. Anyway, here is Boulder Falls outside of Boulder, CO.

For Sale

Since I recently upgraded to the Canon 5D Mark II, I'm selling some of my previous gear. Follow the links for details.

1. Canon EOS 30D Body
2. Tokina 12-24mm AT-X Pro DX for Canon EOS

Drop me a note or leave a comment if interested. :-)

Canon 5D Mark II Autofocus Microadjustments

I ran through an interesting exercise today - evaluating the autofocus microadjustment with the Canon 5D Mark II and 2 of my lenses - the 24-105mm f/4 L IS and the 70-200mm f/4 L. I used the test chart and technique described by Jeffery Friedl. It took about an hour, most of it reading and set-up. Once I started taking and evaluating the test images, it went quite quickly using Adobe Lightroom. I tested each lens at several focal lengths - 24mm, 50mm, 70mm, 105mm, 150mm, and 200mm.

The results? The 24-105mm was spot on and did not require any microadjustment - nice! The 70-200mm was also very close. I ended up setting a -2 adjustment for this lens.

Now its time to get out and actually take some photos. :-)

Canon 5D Mark II First Impressions

I took delivery of a Canon EOS 5D Mark II yesterday. Throughout the day, in between work and family, I played with the camera and read through the manual. Here are some first impressions, likes, and dislikes...

• I'm pleased with the overall build and ergonomics. Much of the button, wheel, dial layout is familiar (coming from the 30D).
• The viewfinder is large and bright and the LCD is quite nice.
• The menu redesign is much improved.
• Live view is cool (coming from large format) and the grid, info and histogram overlays are fantastic. But you can't shoot with mirror lock-up from live view? Bummer. Although, its easy enough to compose in live view, then switch off and shoot with mirror lock-up.
• The customizable mode dial settings (C1, C2, C3) and "my menu" are great features that I will use a lot. It will be great to be able to jump from one type of shooting situation to another with the flick of the dial. Here's how I've configured them (for now)...
• C1 - Landscape from tripod: Aperture priority starting @ f/16, ISO 100, mirror lock-up, 2 sec. self timer, etc. I'll likely often use live view with this setting.
• C2 - Trail and Travel hand-held: Aperture priority starting @ f/11, Auto ISO, single shot
• C3 - Wildlife and quick grab: Shutter priority startting @ 250th, Auto ISO, AIServo, multiple shot.
• My Menu - Exposure bracketing, format card, mirror lock-up, date and time (I set this often to sync with GPS), long exposure noise reduction.
• Image quality - wow! I haven't made any prints, yet. But on screen pixel peeping shows lots and lots of details. I post more on this after I do some printing.
• Video - fun! I probably won't use the video for more than casual, documentary. But my kids thought it was cool that we shot video, plugged the camera directly into our HD TV and watched "movies."
  

I ventured out early this morning for a sunrise shoot. The light was less than stellar, in fact boring, and the few clouds did not light up. But I shot a few frames anyway and processed them in Lightroom. It will take a bit more practice to get the best out of the 5D II files, but here's a preview...