Dino Saga 080210 _ Islands This Friday I got as close as I am going to get shooting the car and the Islands using a 300 mm lens. At least for now. Didnt know what I was getting into there. The Islands were the easy part. I was thinking that maybe a hundred feet would be enough for the car. A hundred yards didnt begin to be enough. Still dont know but a couple of thousand feet is closer. Will find out, but another day. This time I tried for more height to start with. We had a nice North East wind blowing warm air down the mountain and pushing the fog out to sea. Went up Old San Marcos Pass to the 1,000 ft level and the view was pretty good. Bright sun, 75 degrees on land. Still some haze over the water but you could see the outline of Santa Cruz and Santa Rosa pretty well. Parked the car on a couple of turns and found out how far back I had to get. Hard to find that kind of distance on a winding road. Even worse, you had to walk uphill a long way just to find out you couldnt get far enough back before the road curved behind a mountain. Finally got a fair shot at 150 mm just as the sun was headed into the lens. Islands are to the south and it was nearly noon. Didnt have a really deep lens hood and glare off the car was becoming objectionable. Decided to quit while I was ahead and do some more scouting vicariously. Will try again later in the year with higher sun and clearer air. Just kept going up the old road until it met the new one. Headed downhill and saw a call box turn-out almost immediately. With a view that might work on another day. Good quarter mile of straight in back of it. Of course there is traffic and you would have to turn the car around but minor details. Got back to the computer and fired up Google Earth. Set up over the Islands looking North to set the stage. Flipped to looking South over Santa Barbara and closed in on where I had been shooting. Got down low and leaned back until the islands came into view. Was able to pick up my shot location fairly closely. Hard to get down to road level but you can see sight lines pretty good from 2,000 ft agl. Decided that there was no way of getting the distance on the Old Road so started down the New Road. Found the call box turn-out just below the junction of the two roads. Sight line to Santa Cruz is pretty good. Plenty of altitude. Looks like enough road in back. Another time. Fun to explore with Google. Noticed a light greenish patch over the city of Buelton, about 40 miles Northwest of SB. Light patches usually mean an upgrade in resolution so I went to look. My God, almost as good as Googles HQ. How did Buelton get 1/10th meter resolution? Could only think of one possibility. I had a fantastic tech working for me in the 60s and 70s. He left to start his own business in Buelton. Built a nice big lab to do custom thin film coating under contract to the hush-hush aerospace guys down South. Very discreet. Might have coated a mirror for someones recon satellite and they took a picture of the plant just for fun. Google got it and the rest is history. Take a look, wish we had that kind of resolution in Santa Barbara. Amazing. Another good week. Still learning and still kicking. Dino is running fine. Enjoy. John . Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
John, Nice shots! In 2004 prior to the Monterey event, I drove my Dino to LA to visit friends and had a nice drive on 152. What a fun drive and that was just a taste of what John gets to call "his back yard" - a heck of a good time! For those who haven't been to this wonderful area, it really is quite nice. Even nicer is hiking the Channel islands (not all islands are open for this), and they're a mecca of sealife for one of my other hobbies SCUBA diving. I've over 200 dives in this area and there is so much beauty, that you can't help but revel in what God's hand has produced - so much that it is nearly contradictory to the packed LA area topside. A few of my photos, apologies on the diversion Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
Awesome colours, never seen colours like that even on the best sites in the Red Sea. Amazing All i got was this one though. Sorry out of focus, hand was shaking!! Image Unavailable, Please Login
Scott, Wonderful pictures. The water around the islands is famous for the clarity and the fantistic corals. Brooks School of Photography uses the islands and the Sea of Cortez as classrooms. Michael Costeau and his late father spent and still spend lots of time in Santa Barbara. Your lighting was great. What were you using? I did a lot of work with camera and light housings. Video and stills. Long time ago but still have interest. John
Tony, Fantastic, if that had have been me in there the water would have been even more murky...... like a muddy brown!!! BTW i have sent you a PM regarding something to do with "invisability" on this site Graham
Thanks Graham, got your message. Yes i had to look in the mirror just to check. Anyway must not spoil JC's original post on his saga's......
YIKES, rightly so, your hands were shaking! Oceanic White Tip Sharks were every WW-2 sailors worst nightmare - you guys sure do like to take chances! Brooks is a world famous Institue and well known for their top notch graduates. They regularly rent the Truth Aquatics dive boats for classes and are by the Breakwater of West beach where John took a photo of the Dino on Stearns Wharf in another thread. Tony, the guys on the Truth Aquatics can take lobster when in season, having a camera to lug around precludes me from gathering any, but one guy lent me his to take a photo of, see attached. Camera is on the left in the photo, the strobe is the easily seen bright orange item. Equipment is old film stuff: Nikonos RS/13mm Nikkor-UW lens or 50mm Nikkor macro/ and SB-104 strobe as key light on left with an SB-105 fill on the right. Digital is fantastic for close up and medium shots, but the digital sensor has too much contrast for UW wide angle photos...so far...but they're getting better Did you mention Sea of Cortez? Just South of there, the Socorro Islands have schooling Hammerhead Sharks, Mantas with 4 meter wide wingspans and lots of pristine sealife. http://beta.snapgenie.com/BI1UTMK1 Image Unavailable, Please Login
Scott, Ahh, You have been doing a lot of diving and shooting. Nice rig. For those who don't know what we are talking about, see this for a description of the camera and lighting. www.mir.com.my/rb/photography/companies/nikon/htmls/models/htmls/nikonosrs.htm Way back I did a little work on young Ernie Brooks gear when he was setting up the Brooks campus in Guaymas on the east side of the Sea of Cortez. Your rig is light years ahead of that. Nice to see the results. Thanks for the info. John P.S. Tony, don't feel bad about hijacking the Saga. Photogtaphy is another of my passions and I like talking about it almost as much as my Dino. JC