a nice long lens.

So it came today, a nice, long *lens.

In New Zealand on honeymoon, it became clear pretty quick that my setup of primes - a 24mm, 50mm, and 100mm - was lacking the length I desired, to capture the mountains and their essence. Especially while K enjoyed the setup I used to - my old 55-250mm stuck on a 7D crop body (so an 88-400mm range) - and zoomed tight into glacial details, cloud shadows, ridgelines, and the like.

Yes, the 100mm length is still spectacular, and was perfect for a number of different compositions throughout our couple of weeks tramping and camping around the South Island...

(This shot of the West Matukituki River valley, with the hint of the valley in the background... )

(And this shot of waterfalls across a valley under the Treble Cone ski field... )





But images I had in mind, like this one up the Tasman Valley (on right) towards Aoraki/Mount Cook (hidden in Nor'wester clouds on the left)...

(I would have loved to have been able to reach much closer to Aoraki/Mount Cook and capture it - with all the wonderful bokeh and compression of a longer-than-100mm-lens - buried in weather... )



Or another, in particular, of the glacier on Mount Bonar above the Liverpool Hut where we spent a night in Mount Aspiring National Park...

It's fine. I mean, yeah, I still came home with close to 2,000 frames - of which about a quarter were taken with the ol' 100mm. And as I scroll through them, edit them, I'm brought back to the moments they captured, of K standing against the thick, solid glass window of the Liverpool Hut, her reading in the Mueller Hut, the Hooker Valley glacial moraine, Aoraki/Mount Cook itself in all its astounding and sheer epic grandeur, fog-filled valleys, sunlit valleys, waves on Lake Wanaka, moments in the camper van, and on, and on, and on...

But it'll be exciting (albeit it means I'll have to carry it) to have twice the reach, for those details that get lost even with a 100mm.





* I have still held true to my having never purchased a new piece of camera gear, sticking to only (only, only, only) shooting with primes, and keeping weight at the top of my consideration list for the treks in that my equipment must be carried... The Canon 200mm f/2.8 was an awesome option and an easy choice - significantly more affordable (around $500 used vs. $1k) and lighter (about 1-1/2 pounds vs. 4 pounds) than the stupidly-ridiculously-heavy-expensive 70-200mm f/2.8 zoom...

cameras.

A few years ago I blogged about this Australian band Cameras. A song of theirs came on the other evening whilst mudding sheetrock, and I thought it'd been a while since I'd listened to anything of theirs.

Fast-forward to a regular old Tuesday at the office. Putting on headphones, logging into Grooveshark and looking them up. Not much there, and the quality sort of sucked, so over to Youtube it was. Which is where I found this...

I've always loved Placebo's version of this song. Until I heard Cameras' just now. Sweet F.A.

rice = magic.

I thought I may have lost it, my beloved 5D. What should have been maybe a three-hour (at absolute most) descent from Hidden Lake lookout last weekend, turned into a nearly-seven-hour, somewhat epic, definitely treacherous, return... Waking up in the morning to a whiteout, and sideways-blowing snow, we gathered our things, cleaned and sealed the lookout, and headed down. In my excitement and embracing of winter, and the snow, and wanting to photograph it, I thought to still attach my trusty 5D to my Peak Design clip (that, in turn, attaches to the shoulder strap of my pack) instead of stuffing it in my pack. I had brought a waterproof stuff sack, and so shoved that over and around the camera.

At one point, while we were sort of lost, trying to find our way to the saddle between the two peaks, I looked down and noticed the stuff sack had come off. Bloody h*ll, I think I mumbled, and shoved it back over the camera. On the way down, I did actually fire off a few shots...

Five or six hours later, as we collectively breathed a sigh of relief to be back under trees in the forest, and on the homestretch (and soft, woodsy trail), I tried to shoot a few more frames. Something was up, though, I could tell, and the photos ended up looking eerily soft (as in, not-in-a-good-way soft)...

By the time we got back to the truck, it was dead-dead. I knew it had gotten wet, and hoped airing it out during the four-hour drive home would do the trick.

It didn't.

That's when I decided to remove the card, battery, and lens, and shove it into a Ziplock bag full of rice... and pray for the best.

I knew it might take a few days. After the first day, it powered up, and the displays came on, but the shutter fired erratically (as in, not when I pressed the shutter button, just on its own) and it wasn't recording any images. Back in the rice it went.

I ignored it on day two, starting to look into my options. Like, the photo above was taken with my trusty 20D I pulled off the top shelf of my bookshelf, thinking I may be using it for awhile. I called CameraTechs and talked to a guy who I felt understood my pain (he also confessed to owning a classic 5D), but also admitted that it may not be repairable, and that - if it was - it would probably cost about four hundred bucks. Ouch. And I researched other options, other cameras, and checked out used 5Ds (as in plural '5D,' not to be confused with Canon's latest offering, the 5Ds, which is kind of ridiculous). And waited.

I finally checked on it again on day three. In went the card and battery. I attached the awesome 40mm pancake lens. Held my breath and... It worked! Images recorded, the shutter didn't fire unless I wanted it to, and... yeah - it was good to go.

Phwew. As in, phwew!...

A couple of years ago, one evening whilst camping deep in Kings Canyon National Park at Evolution Lake, J dropped his Canon SX120 into Evolution Creek. We grabbed it instantly, emptied the card and batteries, and shoved it in a used ziplock bag with some desiccant packs (you know, the things that come with shoes and such) - I always, always carry a handful of those things in my pack - and let it sit in the sun. Halfway through the next day, it miraculously worked again as if it were new.

So yeah, water is not good for cameras, but also (hopefully, hopefully) not the end. Oh, and rice is magical.