Back from Yosemite, where over the weekend I spent Saturday assisting in teaching a class on bird photography and an introduction to Lightroom for Yosemite Audubon. We had 11 students, and a good time was had by all. Fun day, I was exhausted at the end, but in a good way. More on that when I have a chance to spend some time writing.
After that, I spent a day and a half in the park proper, driving from Oakhurst to Mono Lake via Tioga Pass and back on Sunday, and then on Monday I split time between the valley floor and a drive out to Hetch Hetchy and then home via the 120.
Lots and lots to talk about and show, as I can get it written. One thing I did for this trip was to rent a Fuji X-Pro-1 mirrorless camera and their 15-55 lens to experiment with and try some new things. I’m just starting to edit out the images from the trip (about 250 shots after the initial ding edit, plus three timelapses totalling about 500 images, and two pieces of video to experiment with). here’s one of the first images I took with the Fuji, up on tioga near Olmsted Point:
There is a surprising amount of detail in the image to my eye, and it needed wonderfully little post processing. I tweaked the luminance on the blue and yellow channels a bit (down in both cases) and dropped the green saturation some. Shot in aperture mode the exposure was literally right on, with a bit of boost to shadows and a bit of reduction in highlights, plus some clarity and vibrance.
Oh, and that image had no filter. Not even a UV, much less a polarizer. Just camera.
I can see the attraction of the mirrorless camera systems, and the images they turn out can be stunning. It’s not a perfect camera, though. There’s a lot to say about that camera, but the image quality is really quite good — but is it a quality you’d want to shoot? We’ll get there soon.