Posts Tagged Tamron 28-300 VC
November 5, 2010 – Sperry Peak
Posted by Dave in Mountains, Picture of the Day, Washington State on November 5, 2010
Sperry Peak
Friday, November 5, 2010
http://davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1851
Hey guys, look, it’s the 301st post! Not quite as exciting as number 300 I guess. Oh well. Also, it’s not quite as nice as the last few I posted. I felt that November was off to too good of a start, that I was using too many good pictures and not enough crappy ones. So, here’s one, intentionally posted late on a day when few people come by my site, to help balance it out. This is Sperry Peak. It’s near Monte Cristo, on the Mountain Loop highway. Have a great weekend!
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel XT, Tamron 28-300mm VC lens. 1/80s, f/7.1, ISO 100. Focal length: 30mm.
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October 28, 2010 – Shannon Creek
Posted by Dave in British Columbia, Picture of the Day on October 28, 2010
Shannon Creek
Thursday, October 28, 2010
http://davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1245
Another day, another picture of Shannon Creek. Seriously, haven’t we already seen all of these? No, believe it or not. But, I think I’ve already said all you could possibly say about it. So, ummm…
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel XT, Tamron 28-300mm VC lens. 1/40s, f/9.0, ISO 200. Focal length: 28mm.
Popularity: 8%
October 21, 2010 – Blackcomb Mountain
Posted by Dave in British Columbia, Mountains, Picture of the Day on October 21, 2010
Hiking on Blackcomb Mountain
Thursday, October 21, 2010
http://davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1431
Hey look, it’s the return of Mediocre Image Thursday! With even less fanfare this time!! (Meaning, I didn’t call it out in the post title. That’s what passes for fanfare around here.) This picture was taken while hiking around on Blackcomb Mountain (part of Whistler-Blackcomb Ski Resort, of course), a couple years ago. This was taken before they had any officially designated trails on Blackcomb (they did have several on Whistler though), a couple of years before they opened the new Peak-2-Peak gondola. To get up to the top, you just followed the routine for those who were skiing on the glacier, which is to say, you rode 2 chairs up from the village, then took a bus over to the bottom of the 7th Heaven chair, and rode it up to the top. (And then the glacier is on the other side of the ridge, and is lift served by two t-bars.) So, if you’re a hiker, you just get dropped off on the ridgeline, and you can scramble around on the rocks and stuff. This is overlooking the 7th Heaven area, looking into Garibaldi Provincial Park (and I believe that’s Overlord Peak and the Overlord Glacier in the distance.)
This, like many other pictures I’ve posted recently, was taken with my crappy lens (my old Tamron 28-300 VC), and thus had to be post-processed somewhat severely to even bring it into the realm of respectability. Even so, it seems like I screwed up the colors a bit and maybe oversharpened it, but that’s standard operating procedure for me. For some reason, this is one of the most highly rated images on Rate Dave’s Photos, although that’s not entirely fair to say, because it’s only gotten 3 votes. (2 10′s and a 9.) Needless to say, I don’t feel that it deserves those ratings, but hey, whatever floats your boat.
Come back tomorrow, and I’ll post something better! I don’t know what it’ll be yet, but it’ll be the best thing ever. Maybe.
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel XT, Tamron 28-300mm VC lens. 1/60s, f/22.0, ISO 200. Focal length: 28mm.
Popularity: 11%
October 20, 2010 – Diablo Lake
Posted by Dave in Picture of the Day, Washington State on October 20, 2010
Diablo Lake, North Cascades National Park
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
http://davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1329
Wow, I just realized just before I wrote this sentence that I haven’t posted a vertical picture in exactly one month. That’s… not really that interesting, but it’s definitely statistically anomalous. So, given that… umm.. *this* is the picture I chose to break the dry spell? Hmm.
Some days I have a pretty clear idea of the picture I want to post ahead of time, or at least the general theme I want to go with. But other days, I have no idea. On those days, I generally just start flipping through my pictures seeing if anything catches my eye. (Generally I do this by just flipping through Rate Dave’s Photos just clicking on the “see next picture” link, until I find 5 or 6 decent candidates, then I pick one.) This one floats by from time to time. It’s not my favorite, but I do like the colors. So, I decided to go out on a limb today and toss it up on the wall.
This was taken on the Seattle City Light tour of Diablo Lake. Diablo Lake is up in North Cascades National Park. It was formerly a river, but now it’s got a couple dams on it that provide a decent amount of power for Seattle. (Ross Lake, the one that stretches just over the border into Canada, is formed by the dam at the top of Diablo Lake, for what it’s worth.) On the tour, they toss you on a boat and take you from one dam (at the bottom of Diablo Lake) up to the other. It’s fairly interesting, definitely worth the time to do. Plus, the views are really nice, although the tour takes place right in the early/mid afternoon, when the light is the absolute worst for taking pictures of those views. But it’s fun, and it gives you an excuse to hang around in the park for the day.
And yes, the water really is that milky green color. It’s all glacial meltwater, so there are tons of minerals and stuff dissolved in it. Depending on the time of day and angle of light, it can really be striking, it can look really strange if you’re not expecting it. I have run out of things to say today.
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel XT, Tamron 28-300mm VC lens. 1/60s, f/6.3, ISO 100. Focal length: 42mm.
Popularity: 11%
October 5, 2010 – Galena Summit
Posted by Dave in Flowers, Mountains, Picture of the Day on October 5, 2010
Galena Summit
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
http://davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1497
Okay, today’s post will actually be a quick post, unlike yesterday, where I said it would be a quick post, but then I proceeded to include 3 chapters from my upcoming memoirs.
Took this one a couple years ago (yes, with my crappy lens), at Galena Summit, in Idaho. I’ve posted other pics from that day here before, perhaps one or two that are almost identical to this one. I actually didn’t even do my homework, I didn’t go back to check which ones I’ve posted from here before, all I can say is that I haven’t yet posted this exact image. To my knowledge, I have yet to re-post a single picture. I’ve posted very similar pictures, and I’ll continue to post pictures that are even more similar to each other. But I’m going to hold off from actually using the exact same image a second time as long as I can (but believe me, it’s coming eventually, the number of days in the future is greater than the number of unique pictures I have now plus the images I will take between now and the future. So, umm, do the math…)
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel XT, Tamron 28-300mm VC lens. 1/60s, f/32.0, ISO 200. Focal length: 109mm.
Popularity: 8%
October 1, 2010 – Summit Lake Basin
Posted by Dave in Colorado, Picture of the Day on October 1, 2010
Summit Lake Basin, Mt. Evans
Friday, October 1, 2010
davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1792
Hello, folks. Quick post today. This is another one of those pictures that came out the huge batch that I’ve been working my way through, taken with my old camera and my old, crappy lens. Some of the pictures made it through okay, but on a bunch of them I had to sharpen them quite a bit to make up for the lens. Sharpening can definitely help, but it definitely doesn’t look as good as if it was nice and sharp coming off the camera. Plus, when I get started sharpening, I tend to over-sharpen, which can look kind of nasty. Although it’s not ALL bad with that lens, it had image stabilization, which allowed me to get away with a slower shutter speed than I normally would (1/125s), which allowed me to close the aperture down to f/22 (which is TINY!), so I could get a nice depth of field (although because of the crappy lens, none of the stuff in the depth of the field was really in focus anyway.. But whatever.)
This was taken in the Summit Lake Basin on Mt. Evans, in central Colorado. There’s a paved road that goes all the way up to the top, at 14,240 feet of elevation. (That’s 4,340 meters, for those of you that are metrically inclined.) The lake that you can just see poking out of the left side of the frame is Summit Lake, you can park right next to it. The spot where I was standing was about 1/4 mile from the parking lot. If you peek over that ridge, you look into Chicago Basin, which has these two lakes called Chicago Lakes. They’re really cool looking, I almost posted a picture of them today, but I decided to save it for later. As you can tell, the weather was a bit iffy that day, although the skies never opened up and dumped a bunch of rain on me like it looked like they might. So that’s good.
So, that’s it until Monday I guess. See you all then, right?
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel XT, Tamron 28-300mm VC lens. 1/125s, f/22.0, ISO 200. Focal length: 28mm.
Popularity: 11%
September 21, 2010 – Vesper Peak and Lake Elan Basin
Posted by Dave in Mountains, Picture of the Day, Washington State on September 21, 2010
Vesper Peak and Lake Elan Basin
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
http://davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1859
I’m still making progress on all of the pictures I took two summers ago. I know, impressive, right? At this rate you’ll see the pictures I took this weekend sometime in the 2020s. I actually posted another picture from this same hike way back in the day. It was the third picture I ever posted, in fact. (Well, I also posted one last week, but whatever.) The takeaway from that is that I often go through and grab images here and there from past hikes and such, but it takes awhile for me to actually take the time to properly parse through the whole set. I’m still only about halfway through the pics from this hike, but I’ve found several decent ones, that I’m sure you’ll be seeing here sometime or another.
You’re looking at Vesper Peak. The spot where I was standing is accessible via the Sunrise Mine Trail, which is sort of near Monte Cristo on the southern side of the Mountain Loop Highway in Washington State. You hike up into a big huge basin, then up and over one of the ridgelines, crossing at a place called Headlee Pass. Then you hike along a ridge over to this spot. The water you see there is drainage from a lake which I’ve seen called Headlee Lake (named after the pass), Vesper Lake (named after the Peak), and my preferred name, Lake Elan (named after the ski company. Duh.) It’s looking like we may actually get 12 hours or so of nice weather this weekend (fingers crossed!) so I’m actually considering coming back and doing this hike again. When I was there, I just stopped at the lake, but this time I want to hike up Vesper a bit, because I think there could be some nice views. But I’d need to get an early start, which may not be possible, we’ll see.
How about you? Any awesome plans this weekend? Hmm, small talk seems a bit awkward in this context. Forget I said anything…
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel XT, Tamron 28-300mm VC lens. 1/125s, f/10.0, ISO 200. Focal length: 28mm.
Popularity: 8%
September 16, 2010 – Creek Along Sunrise Mine Trail
Posted by Dave in Picture of the Day, Washington State on September 16, 2010
Creek along Sunrise Mine Trail
Thursday, September 16, 2010
http://davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1843
Hey, just because it’s Thursday and I’m posting a mediocre picture doesn’t mean I have to call it out. I think it’s already obvious to everybody, right? I’m still going through the backlog of pictures taken with my crappy lens a couple years ago, and today’s photo is yet another result. Granted, not EVERYTHING mediocre about this image came from the lens. For example, I probably could have moved that branch out the way, but I didn’t. Oh well.
This was a creek crossing along the Sunrise Mine Trail. The creek may have a name, but I don’t know what it is. The Sunrise Mine Trail shoots off from the south leg of the Mountain Loop Highway, in the north-central Cascades. The trailhead is right near Big Four Mountain (the one with the picnic area) and Monte Cristo (the ghost town that’s 4 miles in along a former road). You would be forgiven for not knowing or caring where any of these landmarks are, but I do, so I’m stating them here for reference. It’s a really nice trail. It’s fairly difficult, but it’s got some great views most of the way to make up for it, none of which can be seen in this picture. It’s on my list of trails to get back to someday, perhaps a little bit later in the fall when the colors start changing. (I was there in early September, so things were still pretty green at the time.) I’m sure you’ll be seeing a few more shots from this hike here and there, I’m only about a third of the way through the pics from that day.
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel XT, Tamron 28-300mm VC lens. 1/40s, f/8.0, ISO 800. Focal length: 28mm.
Popularity: 6%
September 9, 2010 – Mediocre Image Thursday – Mt. Bierstadt
Posted by Dave in Colorado, Mountains, Picture of the Day on September 9, 2010
Mt. Bierstadt seen from Guanella Pass
Thursday, September 9, 2010
http://davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1766
So, what, yesterday wasn’t bad enough for you, huh? Mediocre Image Thursday is BACK! It’s so mediocre that I couldn’t even make it happen consistently. I suppose I was setting myself up for failure by starting it right before two Thursdays where I knew in advance I’d be unable to follow through. But, whatever, we’re back now, woooooo!!!
This is another old image (a couple years old) that’s the result of me slowly going through the archives. This process is particularly frustrating for me, because I’m currently right in the thick of the time that I used my crappy Tamron 28-300mm VC lens. I eventually realized how much it was affecting the quality of my images, and I rectified the situation. But since I’m only now really truly spending the time to go through the pictures, I’m really only now really paying the price. It’s true that I can take comfort in the fact that it’s a lens I no longer use, so I don’t have to fight off that gut feeling that maybe my equipment is letting me down, and that perhaps I’ll have to face up to the fact that I made a poor purchasing decision, and that I might need to drop more cash to fix the situation. Now I only have to fight off the gut feeling that all of that stuff did indeed happen, but it’s in the past now and there’s nothing more I can do. I’d say it’s an improvement.
Anyway, I’m venting. Today’s picture is from Colorado. Specifically, it’s a picture of Mt. Bierstadt, which is a “fourteener”, meaning, it’s one of 50-some peaks that are over 14,000 feet in Colorado. I took it from Guanella Pass. There’s a road that goes over the pass, one of those dirt roads that’s not really the way to go if you’re just trying to get somewhere, but is really pretty if you’ve got the time. Here’s something interesting: I’ve hiked up two fourteeners in my life, one was Quandary Peak over by Breckenridge, and the other was this one, Mt. Bierstadt. It happened way back in high school, and tragically I forgot to bring my camera these days. I was still in to photography back then (with my old-school 35mm), but I wasn’t as obsessed as I am now. I know that’s true, because if the same thing happened today, and I realized at the trailhead that I forgot my camera, I can tell you with absolute certainty that I wouldn’t be climbing that mountain. I am one lazy mothereffer, let me tell you. If there’s no chance of getting nice shots out of it, you would have a very hard time convincing me that it was worth the effort.
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel XT, Tamron 28-300mm VC lens. 1/60s, f/22.0, ISO 400. Focal length: 39mm.
Popularity: 10%
September 7, 2010 – Mt. Baker Ski Area
Posted by Dave in Mountains, Picture of the Day, Washington State, Winter/Snow on September 7, 2010
Mt. Baker Ski Area
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
http://davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1736
Hey everybody, welcome back! Hope you all enjoyed your long weekend if you live in a place such that this last weekend was a long one. Alternatively, I hope you enjoyed your regular-length weekend followed by your fairly typical Monday! My traffic dropped fairly precipitously over the weekend, so I’m guessing that means that most of you were indeed not around a computer. Either that, or you had very little confidence that I’d actually be posting anything. Or, most likely, both.
The weather around here was crap this weekend, which cancelled my plans to go backpacking near Glacier Peak. I still hope to make it back to that trail, but this weekend wasn’t looking like the right time. Instead, Julie and I headed over to the desert, where the forecast (which was correct) said it would be 70 and sunny. I didn’t really realize it until this weekend, but holy crap! There’s some absolutely GORGEOUS terrain over there! I definitely need to get out there and explore it more. You can probably tell that today’s picture is absolutely not from the desert, and if that’s what you were thinking, you’re correct. I’m still following my rule that I won’t go through my new pics until at least a couple days since I’ve taken them. Which means, I’ll start looking through them tonight or tomorrow.
So, since I couldn’t look through the weekend’s pictures last night, I ended up instead looking back through some old pictures that I’ve still got on my hard drive. (Eventually I archive them off to DVDs, but I’ve got a few years of pics that I haven’t done that with…) I’m still slowly trudging my way through my old pictures, digging out any that are even remotely interesting. I’ve mentioned this several times. But, last night, I went even further back than that, and revisited a bunch of pics that I had already dug through and grabbed everything that I thought was worthwhile. But, I suppose I was in a different kind of mood or something, because in 4 or 5 months worth of images, I found 23 that I had previously passed over that are at least worthy of putting in Rate Dave’s Photos (which is a pretty low bar, honestly.) This being one of them. Not all of them are any good of course, but some of them are good enough to toss up here. (Well.. okay, yeah, still a pretty low bar. Shut up.)
This was taken at Mt. Baker Ski Area, which is in the northern part of Washington State. I’ve only skiied there once (the day I took this picture), although I have also snowshoed there, and I’ve been up there a whole bunch of times in the summer (it’s inside Heather Meadows Recreation Area). This was I believe on closing weekend a few years back, so mid to late April. Checking the timestamp on the image says yes, April 27. So, almost into May. Now you can see one of the things that frustrates me: why do they have to close these mountains so early?! They clearly still had plenty of snow. I suppose you could argue that by then, most folks have already hung their skis up for the season, so it becomes more and more difficult to keep running the lifts profitably, but whatever, I’m not concerned with the bottom line, I just want to ride a line to the bottom! Sigh, oh well.
It’s worth noting as well that Mt. Baker Ski Area holds the world record for snowfall in a single season. I believe it’s not just the world record for ski areas, but for any point where snowfall is measured. That could be wrong, but I think it’s right. Anyway, the record was set in the 1998-1999 season, when they had 1,140 inches of snow fall. (That’s **95 FEET** of snow, or 29 meters!!) That was a La Nina year (you know, the opposite of El Nino). Oh, did I mention that La Nina is also scheduled to make an appearance this season? Yes. Yes it is. Excellent.
I should also note that this picture was NOT from the record breaking season. This was just from a more typical season, where they average 647 inches. Still not too shabby, kinda makes you wonder why I’ve only skiied there once, huh? Oh, right, it’s more than a three hour drive. That would do it.
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel XT, Tamron 28-300mm VC lens. 1/500s, f/11.0, ISO 100. Focal length: 109mm.
Popularity: 17%
August 11, 2010 – Shannon Creek
Posted by Dave in British Columbia, Picture of the Day on August 11, 2010
Shannon Creek
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1274
Hello everyone, and welcome back! (Well, the second part only applies to me.) I just got back into town after spending the weekend on the north shore of Lake Tahoe, for a family reunion. And, I haven’t had a chance to even download the pics off the camera yet, much less post one here. I believe I got at least a couple that are picture-of-the-day-worthy, so hopefully you’ll be able to see those at some point in the near future.
In the meantime, here’s Shannon Creek. I’ve posted a lot of pictures of Shannon Creek, many of which came from the same day that this one did. But it’s been awhile, so I figure it’s fair game. As a quick refresher, Shannon Creek is in British Columbia, just outside of Squamish, which is the town halfway between Vancouver and Whistler. It sits at the bottom of Shannon Falls, and it’s a great little stop along the drive to get out and stretch your legs.
That’s all, go back to whatever you were doing.
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel XT, Tamron 28-300mm VC lens. 1/40s, f/11.0, ISO 400. Focal length: 92mm
Popularity: 8%
August 3, 2010 – Mt. Evans Highway
Posted by Dave in Colorado, Mountains, Picture of the Day on August 3, 2010
View along the Mt. Evans Highway
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1619
So you’ve heard me say that I’m sitting on a multi-year backlog of old pictures, right? Yeah, still true. But today’s picture is a result of me actually making some progress on that over the weekend. That sentence sounds way more impressive than it actually is. When I hear somebody say “I made progress!” I generally think that means they made it through a couple months of backlog. But, no. I’m stuck on August 8, 2008. Before this weekend, I was about a third of the way through that day. Now I’m about two thirds of the way through that day. So, umm.. not really that exciting I guess.
This process is fairly painful for me though. Many, many times I’ve grumbled about how I spent a couple years using a crappy lens, and how I have since realized that, and done something to correct the situation. Unfortunately, that was right in the thick of the time spent with the crappy lens. So I visited all of these really cool places and did all of these really cool things, and so many of the pics cause me physical discomfort when I look at them. Ugh. Many of them (like this one) can at least be brought back into the realm of respectability with some post-processing, but if you looked at the full-size image you’d believe me if I told you that it’s hardly hang-on-the-wall worthy. But, I promised myself I’d make it through them all eventually, pulling out all the halfway-decent ones. So this won’t be the last time you see one of them.
I almost went ahead and finished off the post right there, but then I realized I haven’t actually touched on what the heck you’re looking at. This was taken along the Mt. Evans Highway, which is sort of near Idaho Springs, Colorado. (By “sort of near”, I mean that Idaho Springs is where you leave the highway (I-70) to head up into the mountains…) The Mt. Evans Highway is apparently the highest auto-road in either the world or North America, topping out at 14,400 feet or so. (Google tells me that’s about 4,400 meters.) It’s paved the whole way, and it goes right to the top of Mt. Evans. (And it’s worth noting that Mt. Evans is just a bit taller than Pikes Peak (at 14,100 feet), which isn’t too far away (a couple hours) and also has a road (although not paved) going up to the top. Anyway, to get this shot I had to walk a few hundred feet from the roadway, but this is essentially the same view you’d get from the car. It’s a really pretty drive, and you should do it. There, now I’ve talked about the picture, have a nice day.
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel XT, Tamron 28-300mm VC lens. 1/40s, f/22.0, ISO 400. Focal length: 30mm.
Popularity: 8%