Posts Tagged Tokina 11-16
March 24, 2010 – Hiking on Whistler Mountain
Posted by Dave in British Columbia, Mountains, Picture of the Day on March 24, 2010
Half Note Trail, Whistler Mountain
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
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Here it is, folks. The last image you’ll be seeing from me for a couple weeks. I know, I know, you thought this day would never come. For awhile, it sure seemed like it wouldn’t. But, time kept rolling on, as time does, and now it’s time for me to get the heck outta town. I would promise that I’d miss you all, but I probably won’t. I’ll be too distracted by fun stuff.
This picture was taken along the Half Note trail on Whistler Mountain. I’ve posted some other pics (well, at least one) from this same trail before. Whistler is a great place to go in the summer as well as the winter, because they have those magical lifts that take you way up into the high country, without you having to do any of the work. Ah, it’s a beautiful thing. That’s why I love Europe, because those kind of things are all OVER the place. Here in the northwest, they’re few and far between, and the mountains are steep, and the roads all follow the rivers way down in the valley, so if you want to get up to the pretty stuff, you have to work your ass off. Unless you ride up the gondola (and the Peak Chair) to the top of Whistler. Then it’s almost free! (Well, not monetarily, but whatever.)
This picture was taken with my super wide angle lens (Tokina 11-16), which I only acquired at the end of last summer. (Thus, it hasn’t been used too much.) It should get plenty of use this summer. Although, it might not, because I *also* got my hands on the Tamron 17-50, which is itself much more wide-angle than any lens I was using before (previously 28 was as wide as I could get). The difference between 17 and 11-16 is a lot less than the difference between 28 and 11-16, so I may find myself able to get most of the wide-angle shots I want with the other one, we’ll see. Or, more likely, *I* will see, and you will just continue to see random pretty pictures. That works too.
Have a great couple of weeks!
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tokina 11-16 f/2.8 lens. 1/250s, f/11.0, ISO 100. Focal length: 11mm.
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February 3, 2010 – Lake Dillon
Posted by Dave in Colorado, Picture of the Day on February 3, 2010
Lake Dillon
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
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So I wrote this joke to start off today’s post with. I got halfway through typing it, but it was sooo bad that I just couldn’t do it. I had to clear it out and start from scratch. I’m actually embarrassed that I was almost willing to put it out there. Wow.
This is Lake Dillon. It’s in Summit County, Colorado. It’s a man-made reservoir dealie, that sits between Silverthorne and Frisco and Breckenridge and Keystone. (The latter two being ski resorts.) If you follow the valley off the top left of the frame, you’ll be heading toward Breck. Meh, I’m running out of things to say today. There it is, enjoy!
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tokina 11-16mm lens. 1/250s, f/8.0, ISO 100. Focal length: 11mm.
Popularity: 18%
December 16, 2009 – Mayflower Gulch
Posted by Dave in Colorado, Mountains, Picture of the Day on December 16, 2009
Mayflower Gulch, Summit County, Colorado
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
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Well, it’s Wednesday. Awesome, right? Yeah, exactly. Today’s picture is from Mayflower Gulch, which is a little ways up a little trail/4×4 road just off Highway something-or-other in Summit County, Colorado, the one that goes from Copper Mountain to Leadville. It’s a really nice alpine basin, with the standard set (for Colorado, anyway) of broken down, abandoned houses from long-gone miners. I suppose there are a couple trails that leave from right around here and explore more remote places too. But I didn’t have time for that when I was there.
The weather was kind of a mixed bag when I was there. No rain (not yet anyway), but clouds that were constantly moving through. That meant that most of the time I had in the actual basin was spent under cloud cover. That actually affects your pictures quite a bit, because it makes a surprisingly large difference in your exposure whether your foreground is in the sunlight or in the shade. Generally, I prefer sunshine as you can imagine (although if you can get one of either your foreground or your background in the sun and the other in the shade, it can provide some really nice contrast), and I would have preferred that for the day I was here, but alas, you take what you can get. As a result, I had to expose the shot more than I would have liked, which resulted in losing almost all of the color out of the sky. (A polarizing filter would have helped, but I don’t yet have one that fits my wide-angle lens, which is what I was using here.) I really like that little spash of sunshine on the peak there in the distance, without it I think it would have just kind of been washed into the background, leaving a much less interesting shot. This way, it’s kind of peeking out, saying “HEY! I’m here too, damnit.” Wait, your pictures don’t talk to you? Oh.. Weird.
Anyway, in an unusual moment of foresight, I’ve come to realize that tomorrow I’ll be posting a picture of a flower and a bug, and Friday is going to be a really nice shot of Mt. Baker. So be sure to stick around for that before you abandon the picture of the day for ever and ever. Until then…
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tokina 11-16mm lens. 1/250s, f/6.3, ISO 100. Focal length: 16mm.
Popularity: 22%
November 13, 2009 – Garden of the Gods and Pikes Peak
Posted by Dave in Colorado, Picture of the Day on November 13, 2009
Garden of the Gods and Pikes Peak
Friday, November 13, 2009
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Welcome back, I’ve missed you all! Well, most of you. Today’s picture is from Colorado Springs. The foreground is the Garden of the Gods (specifically, Kissing Camels), and in the back you’re looking at Pikes Peak. I’d love to be able to tell you how hard I had to work to get this picture, that I had to hike miles and miles into the wilderness, blah blah blah. But no, I was driving by, saw that it looked really nice, so I stopped in the parking lot of the Garden of the Gods visitor’s center. Oh well, they can’t all be exotic, right?
Remember: if you’re trying to take pictures where you want your foreground to be super dark and you want to be able to see the color and detail in the sky, you need to underexpose it, sometimes severely. If I had just pointed the camera and let the light meter do the work, you’d be able to see the foreground, but the sky would be an uninteresting white blob. In general, the best way to ruin the color in a picture is to overexpose it. And, if you ask me, every camera I’ve ever owned likes to overexpose your shots by default. I mean, there are exceptions where, for a particular shot, it gets it right, but I’ve found that I’m much happier with the results if I leave my exposure compensation on -1/3rd stop all the time. Sometimes I bump it back even more. Having vivid colors is more important to me than having all of the detail be “properly” illuminated. Who decided what illumination is “proper” anyway? Not sure. But everyone seems to agree on it, except for me. Anyway, there’s a couple quick tricks that you can use to bump down the exposure if you find that a picture you want is coming out too bright. The first is of course to set your camera’s exposure compensation. Bump it down to -1 or more, see if that helps. Of course, that only works in manual mode. If you want to stick with automatic (or you have a camera that won’t let you set the exposure compensation), just point the camera at the sky, and push (and hold) the shutter in halfway. That should lock in the focus and exposure settings on the sky (which is typically much brighter than everything else – thus making the camera think it needs to allow less light in to the sensor). Then, frame your shot as you like. Voila – nice, rich colors. Probably worth mentioning: this isn’t that effective if your foreground isn’t far away, since when you lock in your settings against the sky, your camera will almost certainly be focusing on infinity. I could go into more detail about what I’m talking about here, but I’ve used up my quota for keystrokes today.
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 lens. 1/320s, f/14.0, ISO 200. Focal length: 16mm.
Popularity: 25%
October 30, 2009 – Whistler Mountain
Posted by Dave in British Columbia, Mountains, Picture of the Day on October 30, 2009
Half Note Trail - Whistler Mountain
Friday, October 30, 2009
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What’s up Dan, Diane, Shannon, and my other Facebook reader?! (Richard.) Hello too to my nameless Picture-of-the-day.com readers! And to my Picture-of-the-day.com readers that have names but whose identities I don’t know. And, of course, hello to Will also. Today’s picture was taken near the summit of Whistler Mountain. Julie and I took took the gondola up there to go hiking around, since it’s an easy way to get up to the high country, without having to, you know, walk all the way. This particular little pocket (right along the Half Note trail) was a bit odd because it was all white granite everywhere, whereas most of the rock up there is much darker. Since none of us are geologists, that’s probably not interesting, but there’s still two interesting nuggets in there, so the quota is fulfilled. That’s how I work: I do just enough to get the job done, but I don’t have the drive to do any more.
I used my new new wide angle lens for this shot. I say “new new” because the first time I bought it, it had this weird distortion in the middle, so I had to exchange it for another one. I would normally use a polarizing filter for this kind of shot, so that the clouds would really stand out against the blue sky. But I don’t have one yet for that lens, so that will have to wait until next time I guess.
Summer (and fall) is a great time to visit Whistler. Whistler is hosting the Olympics. The Olympics are cool. I’d say more, but I’ve run out of sentences.
That’s all for today folks, have a great Halloween!
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Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tokina 11-16 mm lens. 1/400s, f/10.0, ISO 100. Focal length: 13 mm.
Popularity: 15%
October 7, 2009 – Loveland Pass
Posted by Dave in Colorado, Mountains, Picture of the Day on October 7, 2009
Hiking near Loveland Pass, Colorado
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
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Today’s picture is based on another request from last week, this time for something from Colorado. That one’s more of an ongoing, standing request more than anything else, but whatever. This is the view along one of the trails that leaves from Loveland Pass, which is along Highway 6 in Summit County. (As in, this is just up the road from Arapahoe Basin and Keystone.)
One of the things I love the most about Colorado is how accessible the high country is. I mean, sure, there are plenty of spots that are super remote and you have to work pretty hard to get to, but the number of spots where you can get near or even above treeline without even leaving your car is phenomenal. (That’s not even mentioning the places you can get assuming you’re willing to hike for a few miles – incredible!) I’m so jealous about that, you don’t even know. Washington has some mind-blowing high country, but the mountains are so steep and rugged out here that it’s almost always a real pain in the butt to get there. (I’m talking 4- or 5-thousand foot ascents.) So, being able to get to a spot like this when you’ve only got a couple hours to hike on the way to the airport makes me smile.
Now, on to other business. I’m sorry to keep bringing this up, but… About those calendars. A couple of you asked for calendars via Facebook messages, but when I wrote back, I never heard anything from you! So if that sounds like you, please check your Facebook inbox, you’ve probably got a message from me waiting. Basically, I just need an address to mail them to. Shoot me an email – dave (at) davefry.net.
That’s it!
Map: http://bit.ly/PM3lb
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tokina 11-16mm lens. 1/250s, f/10.0, ISO 100. Focal length: 11mm.
Popularity: 17%
September 9, 2009 – Loveland Pass Lake
Posted by Dave in Colorado, Fall Color, Mountains, Picture of the Day on September 9, 2009
Loveland Pass Lake
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
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Hey everyone! I’m back from my short vacation, which means that you get more pictures. Most of my trip was spent showing off the baby to my parents, but we did get out a couple times for some really quick hikes. All in all, I learned two things on my trip: 1) my wide angle lens is fantastic (with one major glaring caveat), and 2) my other lens, which up until recently was the single lens I used for 100% of my pictures, is total crap. (Sigh)
The new lens (a Tokina 11-16 mm), is super sharp, has a delicious super-wide field of view, and, perhaps most importantly, is an f2.8 throughout the range, meaning you can open it super wide, and get great handheld shots even in pretty dark conditions. (Couple that with the fact that wide angle lenses in general tend to have SUPER wide depths of field, and you can see why I’m so excited about this.) I played around with it a lot this last week in lots of different conditions, and while there are definitely shots you can’t get with it (focusing in on distant detail, or taking portraits), it’s actually quite surprisingly versatile. Only rarely did I take it off to swap to my other lens (a Tamron 28-300), and I was never really satisfied with the results when I did. It’s just so much easier to get a great shot with the Tokina, and the Tamron only seems to get the focus right some of the time, so you get a lot of shots that look great on the camera’s screen, but when you look at them full size, it’s all a blur.
This particular picture is of a little alpine lake near Loveland Pass, in Summit County. (Right near Arapahoe Basin ski area.) I failed to find its name after a few minutes of Googling, so we’ll all just have to deal with calling it “Loveland Pass Lake”. The whole time we were up there, there were little clouds passing overhead, so if you looked at the same view 3 times in 10 minutes, it’d be different each time, because different parts would be in the sun and in the shade. Kind of cool. Also, a lot of the little scrubby plants were changing color for the fall, so the hillsides looked like they had been dabbed with paintbrushes, it was really nice.
Now, you heard me mention that there’s a caveat about this lens. So it turns out there’s a ring of fuzziness, right in the middle of the frame. You can’t see it when the picture is reduced to web-size, I’ve only been able to really notice it at the original resolution. But the ring’s diameter is just about the size of that thin horizontal set of bushes on the far shore. It’s maddening, and I’m not quite sure what to do about it yet. I’m probably going to make a couple example images with the fuzziness circled so I can show the shop where I bought the lens. This is almost certainly something that I’ll have to send back for warranty repair, but I don’t want to wait 2 months to get the lens back, since the fall is when I’m planning to get out hiking as much as possible. There’s a small chance the shop will be willing to just exchange it, but I’m not sure I have the energy for that fight. Plus, I’d still have to mail it both ways, since my local shop was sold out and I had to buy it online. (I bought it through a third-party seller on Amazon.) I probably won’t bother keeping you guys updated with what I decide to do.
I got plenty of great shots on the trip (with the exception of the ring of fuzziness – sigh), so you’ll probably see them appearing as the picture of the day here and there for awhile to come. But probably not tomorrow. This one just happened to be on top of the pile when I downloaded the pics from my camera last night, so it’ll be a long time until I can properly go through them all.
Map: http://bit.ly/vxcq4
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tokina 11-16 mm lens. 1/200s, f/10.0, ISO 100. Focal length: 11mm.
Popularity: 20%