Category: Beach

At The Beach

Pilings on a Cloudy Day

When I want to try out a ‘new’ film camera, the first thing I do is run a roll of film through it as fast as I can. Usually, I spend an hour or so down on the waterfront, shoot the roll and drop it in the mail on the way home. Lately, I tried out a Pentax 645N. This is a fairly large camera that shoots 120 film (this was Kodak Portra 400). I really enjoyed it, but found a streak on the negative (still trying to track down if it was a light leak, a scratch or an issue with the scanner at the lab). The nice thing about larger size film is you can crop a bunch off and still have decent quality… here, I cut off the left third of the image to eliminate the streak.

Big Seaweed and Tiny Driftwood
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Olympic Sunset

Olympic Sunset 1

These were taken from the boat launch and campground area of Fort Flagler State Park on the north end of Marrowstone Island. The top photo shows the northeast corner of the Olympic Mountains including Mt Constance (the tallest pointy one) … the more rounded summit that looks higher, but is only closer, is Mt Townsend. In the foreground distance is a crane loading (or unloading) munitions from a Navy ship at the Naval Magazine on Indian Island. Below shows the northeast Olympics running west towards Port Angeles. The water in both images is the mouth of Kilisut Harbor off of Port Townsend Bay.

Olympic Sunset 2
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Mt Baker and Beaver Moon

Mt Baker and Beaver Moon

Above you see Mt Baker and the Beaver Moon in the sunset from Fort Flagler on Marrowstone Island with Puget Sound. Notice the patch of rough water along the shore and then an area of smooth water a little farther out. The smooth area is a strong tidal current and the rough water is an eddy line. The tidal current is moving to the left as the tide goes out…. and it is being channeled by the island. It’s moving at over 10 knots … definitely not where I would want to be kayaking or canoeing.

The image below is a clearer shot of Mt Baker … with Mt Challenger to the right in the distance.

Mt Baker in the Sunset
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Cheap Lens Vignetting

Historic Buildings at Fort Casey

This is an example of the vignetting you get from a cheap lens. The same cheap 400mm reflex lens that I discussed on my last post (and from the same trip to Whidbey Island and Fort Casey). You tend to get some vignetting with any reflex lens due to design issues, but I was a little surprised at the amount I got in some of my images. I haven’t figured out why some images are more ‘severe’ than others, but there is some in most images. Vignetting can be intentionally added to some images to focus the viewers attention on the main subject. The image below shows how this might work … and is an example of cropping away a lot of the corner areas of the image to minimize the vignette.

Jefferson County Building Clock Tower

Finally, another couple shots from that trip that were cropped to eliminate most of the vignetting.

Point Wilson Lighthouse at Fort Worden
Fort Worden Historic Buildings

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New Lens: Depth of Field

Wild Rose and Cow Parsnip at Fort Casey

I recently bought a new lens: a Tokina f/8 400mm reflex. It is a wonderful lens for its small form and cost (less than 10% what a Nikon 400mm ‘normal’ telephoto lens lists for). There are some trade offs for any reflex style lens: you get a fixed aperture and some artifacts from the front reflex mirror. I took it on the Port Townsend – Coupville ferry run and while on Whidbey Island, I walked around Fort Casey.

One of the characteristics of long telephoto lenses is relatively shallow depth of field. You can use it to your advantage, but it can be a challenge getting your image to work out. In the image below, I was focused on getting the kite in the image … which I did successfully. But the kite is just about all that’s in focus.

Kite at Fort Casey
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