Night Clouds, Santa Barbara

More Santa Barbara Night Photography

Taken at Hendry's Beach with the D300

9 Platforms, Santa Barbara Channel

D300, 12-24mm

Night Clouds, Santa Barbara Channel

Another one from the full moon. This was taken right after I managed to slip and fall down the side of a hill - I had to dig my brand new Manfrotto tripod into the mud like a pickaxe to slow myself down!

Snow on the Santa Ynez Mountains

After the rain yesterday, there was plenty of snow up on the peaks of the Santa Ynez Mountains that look over Santa Barbara.

Taken around midnight. ~5 minute exposure, D300, Nikkor 85mm f/1.8D at f/6.7

A Gap in the Storm

It was dumping rain for the last 24 hours straight - we even got hail at one point - but around 9pm the sky cleared up enough to go shoot. The clouds that were left made for awesome props in the landscape....

Santa Barbara at Night

D300, Tokina 12-24mm lens, handheld.

Long Exposure Landscapes, D300 + 12-24

Shooting more long exposures with the D300 confirmed my initial findings: there is no need for in-camera noise reduction for exposures up to 10 minutes (the longest I tried) at ISO 200. I took twice as many pictures last night, which was a huge benefit with the changing light and quickly moving cloud cover. Something that occasionally led to ruined images on the D70 - when the battery was too low to complete dark-frame NR - is no longer an issue, either.

I was very impressed with the battery power of the D300 vs. the D70. I had expected less battery life from the huge-screened monster. But in fact for long exposure work, I'm getting even better battery life than the D70! On a fully charged D70 battery, I would average about 12-15 5 to 8 minute long exposures before the battery got too low to complete dark-frame NR. Last night with the D300, I managed 12 5 to 8 minute shots and the battery still shows 3 (out of 5) bars!

I recently sold my Tamron 11-18mm superwide lens and bought a Tokina 12-24mm f/4. There were a few things about the Tamron that annoyed me, and I finally had enough and made the switch. Last night I took the Tokina out along with the D300 to test it out.

The Tamron was a great lens, all things considered. It produced most of the landscapes and night work here on Burnblue. But I was constantly bothered by things like the variable aperture, slight softness in the corners, barrel distortion at 11mm, and the focus ring rotating while autofocusing. The Tokina takes care of all those problems. It still has some barrel distortion at the wide end, but not as much. The only thing I really miss about the Tamron is that extra mm on the wide end. It actually does make a noticeable difference!

Overall, I'm quite happy with both new toys. They are both extremely well built, beautifully functional tools.

Light Painting, More fun with LEDs

LED Lightsaber Photography

Got another new light toy... this one's my favorite so far! It's a smallish lightsaber but with something like 20 blue LED lights in it... it's brighter than just about anything I've played with so far...

The orange glow in the background is the soot in the air - not from the fires down south, rather it's the old ashes from the Zaca fire this summer.

More where these came from!