Two Spring Sunsets - Alberta Landscape Photography

One could say that winter is officially done.  As my wife pointed out in her post of a first proper Alberta landscape sunset, the wait is finally over.  I think it is safe to say, that we are back to the big Alberta skies, and perfect time for more spring and summer Alberta landscapes. It is so nice to be able to go out, in a T-shirt and feel the warmth of a setting sun, smell of the earth, and hear a high pitched buzz of a mosquito. Yep, they are out there already.  It's really unnerving when you are focused on taking that great image, and hear that familiar buzz in your ear.  Do I swat it and ruin the image, or wait it out??  Times likes these I'm glad I have a digital camera.

I took these images over the last couple of days.  First it was a planned trip.  We left early enough to find a spot, setup, and get ready.  The second was a typical "Hey, do you see the clouds?? We have 10 minutes, grab the dog and the cameras! Lets go!" type of deal.  Both times the Sony 10-18 got a nice work out.  It's a great lens.  Beautifully wide to capture the big Alberta skies, and sharp for great detail.  Did I mention it's light?  Not to mention the Sony NEX camera's flip up screen, which allows to get the camera down low, with out subjecting myself into lying down in the mud, or shooting blind.  You must forgive me, I'm getting older, and unlike my co-host from Shutter Time with Sid and Mac podcast, who likes to get muddy and dirty on her wildlife shoots, I like to stay relatively clean and dry.  Call it lazy, or lack of dedication, but I say why get dirty if I don't have to :)

So here are the shots from the last two days.  Enjoy the sunsets!

Mac

Two Sunsets - Alberta Landscape Photography

Sunsets and Comets

Last couple of days we had this fairy big snow storm in our area.  All the snow that melted during last few weeks of nicer weather, came back with a vengeance.  Dan Jurak, a great local landscape photographer, whose writings I follow regularly, was stating that we are in that transition, where the winter landscapes are not very good to photograph.  I completely agreed with him, and then we got dumped on by mother nature.  So the first chance we got, my wife and I headed out to Elk Island.  First was because I wanted to get a particular shot, second time we wanted to see the Pan-Starrs comet, of which we completely forgot the first time.  Knowing our luck, the skies clouded over, which gave us a beautiful sunset, but obscured the comet.

Lens woes

Since we were in the park, and it was getting dark, we wanted to do a few night shots.  This is where I run into problems.  I currently shoot with Sony NEX, and Fuji cameras.  The normal lenses on these cameras are great, if you have enough light in the scene to focus on something.  They are absolute utter crap for night photography.  I was expecting this going in, but I thought I could over come this somehow.  Not a chance.  The problem is that these lenses, have an electronic focusing system, so the focus ring does not have limiters at infinity and the closest focus point, like normal lenses.  You can turn that ring and turn and turn and turn.  Since I'm taking a photo of the sky, with a wide angle lens, I can't see anything in the view finder or the LCD screen.  I have no idea if I'm in focus.  At least with the manual lens you could set the focus to infinity, close down the aperture, and all would be great.  Next time I will have to bring my manual lenses for night photos.

Enjoy!

Lake Louise

Coming back from a wedding in British Columbia, we managed to get to Banff National Park, just when the sun was going down.  We stopped at one of the most pictured lake, Lake Louise, to stretch our legs after a 8h drive.  I figured that since we are here, might as well add some more images to the huge collection already on the internet.  Why not? :) This time I decided to leave my Fuji behind, and try out the Sony Nex-7 with a Canon adapter and a 70-200 F2.8.  This setup, looks quite funny.  It's like placing an LCD screen on the back of the big white Canon lens.  Even though the setup looks ridiculous, it works quite well.  The lens is very easy to manual focus, with the Sony's focus peaking function.  The only minor problem is that because the Canon lenses aperture control is done electronically through the camera, mounting it on an simple adapter makes changes to the lens aperture impossible, it's stays wide open.  It's not a huge problem for me, as I like to shoot wide open, but it is annoying at times.  Next I tried my 8-15mm Canon fish eye lens with the Sony Nex-7.  I think both combinations work exceptionally well, even though the aperture stays open at the widest setting.  Here are some images from that evening.  Enjoy! Mac