A Visit to Great Falls National Park - 2 August 2003

So, I spent some time today around noon with my camera.  The weather was less than ideal - sticky hot, humid, very hazy, with mostly cloudy skies.   Light was plenty bright but of very poor quality - made everything look kind of sickly and yellowish.

Today's objective was to test the 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM as a general purpose lens.  In summary, it passes with flying colors!  The wide shots were better than expected (even though they were equivalent to a 44mm with the 10D's 1.6x "crop" factor).  The IS did a great job with a couple of difficult shots.  I also played with the "drive" mode a bit.  I did not have a tripod.

Things I'm going to have to learn and remember with the new camera:

• The ISO is adjustable (with the attendant issue of increased noise at high level).  There was a shaded waterfall that I didn't shoot because the exposure time was about 0.4 seconds.  I plumb forgot that I could bump up ISO to take it.
• Change the autofocus mode when shooting moving subjects.
• Wear a hat to keep perspiration off the camera (or stop going outside in this kind of weather)

Aside from that, I am very pleased with the images that came out.  Minor USM was performed on these, with very little additional processing.

One more note:  The EXIF information for these pages provide a "35mm equivalent" focal length - this seems to change (sometimes significantly) if I crop the image in Photoshop.  It is unreliable all around.

ed

PS.  Don't miss the dragon fly image at the bottom!  As we were walking toward the car, one of these landed right next to me, and the sun came out to boot!