Here are a few more images from my time in the Big Sur area of northern California last week.  Big Sur is a remote area accessible only via Highway 1 which hugs the coast. Nearly our entire 2 1/2 days in the area were spent between the City of Monterey on the  north and Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park on the south – a distance of only about 40 miles. However, there are so many scenic beaches and state parks along the way, not to mention the 17-mile drive at Pebble beach, you could spend days exploring the area.  Despite the constantly changing fog and haze I was able to get some decent images.  After leaving Big Sur, we headed for Yosemite (I’m still working on those images).

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I have just returned from a wonderful week in northern California. The first half was spent exploring the Big Sur area south of San Francisco with the second half in Yosemite National Park. I have a bunch of images to go through and will be posting more in the coming days. I’ll start here with a couple of images of Big Sur.

McWay Falls is an 80 foot waterfall located in Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park. It is an interesting falls as it is a “tidefalls” emptying directly into the Pacific Ocean. I understand it is only one of two such tidefalls in the area. I used a polarizing filter on the Pentax FA31mm Ltd to cut through the haze that began to roll in as the sun set on our first day.

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Pentax K7 w/ Pentax FA31mm Ltd at 1/15s f/6.3 iso100 w/ CP

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The shot below was taken at Garrapata State Park on the morning of our second day. On this morning, Garrapata was an ocean of yellow flowers.  It was extremely windy with fog rolling in and out of the area – I was warned about the cool windy conditions on the coast, but even so, it was a surprising contrast to what I usually think of as summer weather.  I took this shot at f/16 to maximize depth of field. A slow shutter speed was necessary for proper exposure at f/16, making it impossible to maintain sharp foreground flowers which were blowing in the gusty wind.  I like the “layers” of yellow flowers in the foreground, middle ground, and back ground.

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Pentax K7 w/ Pentax DA 15mm Ltd at 1/13s f/16 iso100

smc PENTAX A* 600mm f/5.6 ED IF

Martin, from southern California, recently contacted me to inquire about the Pentax smc A* 600mm f/5.6 ED IF super telephoto lens. He is considering investing in this fine piece of glass produced by Pentax from 1984 to 2000. I’ve been using this lens to shoot wildlife for a couple of years now. So for Martin, and other Pentaxians out there, I will attempt to provide some information about this lens and a recommendation as to whether it is a good investment for the wildlife photographer.  Here’s the short answer: the smc PENTAX A* 600mm is a fantastic lens – buy it if you can find one.

The longest lens in the current Pentax line up is the DA* 300mm f/4.0 ED [IF] SDM.  It is an exquisite lens but at 300mm is a bit short for wildlife. So if you’re committed to Pentax and need more reach, the no longer manufactured A*, F*, and FA* lenses are your only choice today. These beauties are well known for their image quality and are still in high demand but their availability is limited.  Although I have heard rumors some can be special ordered from Pentax Japan, I believe they are primarily obtained today from such places as eBay and KEH. Occasionally you see them on eBay – I bought mine from a Japanese eBay seller about two years ago. For reference, I paid $2,600 USD plus $125 for shipping. Mechanically the lens was fully operational and the glass was perfect. However, there were a few dings and scuffs on the barrel which kept the price down a bit. Even so, it was an uneasy leap of faith to send that much money to an unknown seller in a foreign country, but I have not regretted it for a moment.

I currently use the A*600mm with Pentax K7 and K10D DSLRs. Both combinations have served me well.  With a maximum aperture of f/5.6 it is not the fasted lens around but wide open it produces tack sharp images with creamy bokeh. The biggest limitation of this lens is manual focus. You have to be quick to shoot wildlife. For me, manual focus and quick do not necessarily go together. However, to become efficient with any long lens you must emphasize your technique and spend lots of time in the field practicing. Despite manual focus,  over time I have become fairly proficient with it. Here are the technical specs:

• Optical – 8 elements in 6 groups
• Aperture Range – f/5.6 ~ f/45
• Number of Aperture Blades – 9
• Minimum Focusing Distance – 18 feet
• Maximum Magnification – 0.12 X
• Special Features – extra-low dispersion element(s), internal focusing
• Front Filter Diameter – 112 mm
• Rear-Filter Diameter – 49 mm
• Max Diameter – 5.25 inches (hood retracted)
• Length – 15.2 inches
• Weight – 7.25 lbs
• Special Features – tripod collar, built-in hood
• Cap – soft leather tie-on cap, 112 mm
• Case – aluminum trunk 

 As you can see, like most high quality super telephoto lenses, it is big and heavy (somewhat top heavy) which makes your choice of tripod and head very important and a key factor to getting good results.  My support solution is a Feisol Tournament carbon fiber CT-3342 tripod with a Wimberley II gimbal head and P-50 mounting plate.  I’ve also used a Manfrotto 393 head which is less expensive than the Wimberley head yet quite functional. I like the Feisol line as I believe you get a lot for your money and the Wimberley II head simply reeks of quality.

Traveling by air with the A*600 is tricky but can be done.  I have two camera bags that can accommodate this lens that fit in over-head bins on most airplanes. The one I use most frequently is a Tenba  Shootout Large backpack style bag. The A*600 fits down the center of this bag with room left over to accommodate one or two DSLRs and a couple additional lenses. I am currently on my second Tenba bag as the main zipper failed on the first one. To Tenba’s credit, they replaced it for no cost and the zippers on the second bag were considerably heavier than the first. I’ve had the second for well over a year now, traveled with it extensively, and have had no additional problems.

The other bag I use with this lens is a Thinktank Airport Security v2.0 roller board style bag. It is designed to meet USA domestic carry-on size standards and has some nice security features for traveling. Like the Tenba, the Thinktank can accommodate the A*600 and one or two DSLRs and a couple additional lenses. If you use the optional short dividers, it will also accommodate a laptop computer. My only complaint is it weighs about 12 lbs empty so once you have it loaded up with gear, it is VERY heavy. However, with the weight comes a lot of padding and serious durability; both necessary for frequent air travel.

The bottom line is this:  The smc PENTAX A* 600mm f/5.6 ED IF is a great lens for wildlife photography if you are able to manage its size and manual focus. Here are a few sample images taken with this lens (click FS in the lower right corner for full-screen images):

The Bob Kerrey Pedestrian Bridge is a cable-stayed 3,000 ft (910 m) footbridge across the Missouri River between Omaha, Nebraska and Council Bluffs, Iowa. It opened on September 28, 2008. This shot was taken with the Pentax K7 and DA12-24mm @ 16mm – manual exposure of 2.5s at f/11.0 iso100; tripod support.

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Bob Kerrey Pedestrian Bridge from the Omaha side of the Missouri River

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I have finally finished processing the images from my trip to Badlands National Park over Memorial Day weekend.

Badlands National Park is located in southwestern South Dakota. The park is marked by rugged terrain and formations that resemble a science fiction landscape of another world. These rock formations take on the shapes of domes, twisted canyons and slanted walls, often striped in different colors. The formations contrast sharply with the surrounding rolling hills and prairies. In addition to the rock formations, the park contains the largest, protected mixed grass prairie in the United States. The park also contains the world’s richest fossil beds from the Oligocene epoch, dating back around 20-35 million years. While the badlands terrain may appear to be barren, there is a great variety of wildlife and plant life here.

The gallery below shows the results of my 1 1/2 days there in late May. Click FS in the lower right then SL for a full-screen slide show.
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Hot day, hot light at the local botanical gardens  . . .
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Terminal A-Reagan Nat'l Airport taken w/ Blackberry

I’m traveling for business today. As I write this, I’m sitting at Reagan National Airport in Washington DC waiting to board my plane. Frequently, I am able to morph business trips into photography trips with a little creative scheduling. Unfortunately, this time I was unable, or unmotivated, to do so. Although there are plenty of photo ops in this town, I have less than 24 hours, it’s VERY hot, I don’t have a car, and  . . .  Well, I’m just not taking any pictures.

I do however, have a lot of time to kill this afternoon so I picked up a copy of Shutterbug magazine at the newsstand to amuse myself while waiting to board the plane. I didn’t get very far into the magazine before I had to put it down. The Editor’s notes distracted me and I’ll have plenty of time for the magazine during the flight.

In his notes, the editor posed an interesting question that got me thinking. For me and many others, travel and photography are inextricably linked. I love to travel and I love photography. But the Editor’s intriguing question was:

“For you, which came first, the love of travel or the love of photography?”  Hmm . . .

When possible, I travel for a respite from the day-to-day stress of the life I’ve chosen. I love these trips. As an avid nature photographer, I find myself scheduling recreational travel to scratch my photography itch. But before deciding on a vacation destination, I first consider the wildlife and nature photography opportunities I will encounter. If there are few, I’ll look elsewhere.

My first memories of travel are from childhood family vacations. But even then, my father made photography a big part of the trip. He instilled in me a love of photography that exists today and which I have passed onto my son. Honestly, as I sit in the bustling terminal at Reagan, I cannot remember a family vacation during which I personally did not take photographs with some kind of cheap box camera or one of my Dad’s hand-me-down 35mm cameras (I still have several of those old standards but he would kill me if he knew I sold his beloved Nikon gear).

Unfortunately, I cannot answer the Editor’s question. I don’t know what came first; my love of travel or my love of photography. Oh well. I guess there are more important questions that need answering, but as I spend hours watching hundreds of business and leisure travelers pass through the terminal, an attempt to find the answer seemed like a worthy and effective way to pass the time.  It was.

What about you; what came first?

Here’s something a little different for me.  I attended a classic car shown on Sunday.  I know nothing about cars but to my layman’s eye, they were quite stunning.  Unfortunately, the weather was miserable; heavy overcast with rain.  However, the classic cars and the dreary weather played right into my recent infatuation with black and white.  There were probably over 50 cars there with countless photo ops but with the rain and non-weather resistant DA12-24 mounted to the K7, I grabbed a few quick shots and called it a day.  These are hand held at iso400 with shutter speeds at 1/125s or less. 

The K7 is well known for producing noisy images at iso400 and above.  In fact, I will rarely shoot at 400.  However, with no tripod and heavy skies, I really had no choice but to push the ISO.  As a result, the first post processing step for each of these was noise reduction with NIK Define 2.0 and then black and white conversion with NIK Silver Efex Pro.  Here’s the best of the bunch:

B&W conversions from Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park taken in April 2009 (click to enlarge):

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Previously posted in color:

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Converted to B&W with Silver Efex Pro from Nik Software