Oregon and Northern California Hybrid Road Trip-Day 9 and Update on the Olympus OM-D E-M5

Battery Point Lighthouse in Crescent City, CA

Here is where you can find more of my images.  Please take a look.  Thank you.

Phase II of the trip continued; Exploration of the Northern California Coast via a good old automobile-Day 5; Crescent City, California to Eureka, California

Today, I planned for a short day as, after 9 days on the road, we are a bit weary.  I guess if I were 25 instead of almost 62, I wouldn't need a short day.  But, such is life.  Life is good and I am enjoying it as much as I can--everyday!

The plan for today was to leave Crescent City, California and mosey our way south to Eureka, California.  The distance is less than 90 miles.  A short day allows us to take a bit more time with things we do find, linger longer and still get to our hotel early.

Before we left Crescent City, we drove to the oceanfront to see Battery Point Lighthouse.  The morning was crisp (39 degrees F), not a cloud in the sky but with spotty fog in just the right photographic places.  A beautiful morning to view and make images of a cute little lighthouse.

If you remember the news right after the terrible, terrible earthquake in Japan a couple of years ago, a day or so later, the tsunami hit the California coast.  Crescent City lost 14 boats and one man, who was trying to photograph the tsunami.  They are still repairing the harbor.  All along the California and Oregon coasts, you will find signs warning that you are in a tsunami zone. Not a comforting thought.

We then drove south on 101 and drove right into the magnificent, gigantic, old as the day is long, redwood forests.  What a magnificent drive.  One has to drive slowly just to be able to look left and right and really look at this primal forest.  I had forgotten how big the redwoods were.  I remembered how big the giant sequoias were in diameter, but I saw redwoods that were at least 10 ft. in diameter and over 300 ft. tall.  Magnificent! Did I mention magnificent!

I plugged Redwood National Forest into my new Garmin GPS so we could find the entrance as it was not clear on our maps.  The doggone thing took us down a small road that paralled the Klamath River, got narrower until there were two signs that said "No RVs or Trailers Past This Point."  When the road turned to a one lane gravel roadway, I said to my wife, that was enough. My gut tells me to not go any farther, so I backed up until I could turn around.  We headed out.  We thought we heard banjos in the distance and saw Bert Reynolds in a canoe on the river.  For you young people, look at the movie "Deliverance" and you will know what I am talking about.  Needless to say, we got out of there and back on 101 south.

There is just no way to capture these 300 ft. + trees
This was made with a 14mm-equivalent lens

We drove through Del Norte Redwood Park and saw more of these magnificent trees.  Our next venture off road was the Prairie Creek Redwood State Park.  There we pulled off the roadway in several places to make some images.  But, really, there is no way to capture the grandeur of these beasts of trees.  We did stop at the Elk Prairie Visitor's center and spoke with the rangers, who gave us some good tips on where to go and things to see.  Again, visitors' centers pay off.  Stop and take advantage of them.

From there we drove to Trinidad, California to wait for low tide.  We needed to "waste" a couple of hours doing something while we waited.  I wanted to photograph the sea life in Patrick's Point State Park tide pools at low tide, but that would not occur until 2:02 pm.  So, we spent some time in Trinidad and had a filling lunch.  Too filling.

After we lingered, we drove north to Patrick's Point and sat around enjoying the ocean view from a high point, waiting for low tide.  Unfortunately, it was not a very low, low tide, so photographing the sea life in the tide pools didn't work out.  The ocean didn't recede far enough to create the tide pools today. Maybe next time.  Maybe we will find some more south of here tomorrow.

By that time, we decided to drive south to Eureka to find our hotel, check in, then visit the historic downtown area we had seen in pictures.  It is all very nicely restored and quaint.  We will have an easy rest of the day here in Eureka and then head south in the morning to see more redwood forests and other natural wonders.

Update on the Olympus OM-D E-M5

So far, this camera and the associated lenses have exceeded my expectations.  I have used them in all sorts of weather conditions and under many different circumstances and they have performed marvelously.  Unfailing.

Handheld at 1/3 second at F/14, ISO 400, focal length 33mm for 4/3 sensor or 66mm for full frame equivalent.
This demonstrates the amazing ability of the 5-Axis image stabilization of the Olympus E-M5!

Let me give you an example.  At Hug Point, Oregon, we walked the beach and found a waterfall flowing down the face of a cliff face and onto a pile of black, wet, water smoothed rocks, before the water made its way across the beach and into the ocean.  I didn't have my tripod, but I thought I would try for a "silky" water shot.  You know the kind;  making water blur sufficiently to make it look like silk, rather than using a fast shutter speed to freeze the water.  I was using my Panasonic 12-35mm F/2.8 lens at 33mm, or 66mm equivalent on a 35mm camera.  The ISO was 400 and I stopped the lens down to F/14. The shutter speed was 1/3 second. Yes, one-third second.  I made two three-shot bursts.  Out of the six images, three were tack sharp when looking at them in Lightroom at 1:1.  I was simply amazed that the 5-axis image stabilization was that good that this old man could hold the camera steady enough to get 1/3 of my images tack sharp at 1/3 of a second!  Now, the others weren't quite tack sharp, but they were acceptable.  Unless looking at them 1:1, you wouldn't think there were not sharp.  Just amazing.  The IS in this camera is unbelievable.

Another example.  I was making images into the sun along the ocean front.  I was looking for flare in the images later when importing them into Lightroom.  No flare.  I'm impressed.  I'm used to flare, but again, with the 12-35, there was no flare.

Another example.  I have made over 937 images so far on this trip.  I'm still on the initial battery charge.  I only have 74 images left on a 16gb card.  I thought for sure, I would have had to recharge the batteries before now.  Battery life is excellent.

The last example are the images themselves.  I am fully satisfied with their technical quality.  Each evening, as I transfer them to Lightroom, I look at them closely.  I am really picky about my image quality and demand the highest quality.  The images from the Olympus/Panasonic combination are sharp, highly detailed, have a very high dynamic range, with beautiful color and virtually noiseless.  There is nothing to complain about with using this camera, the lenses or the 4/3 sensor.  No hesitation for professional use.  If you have been reading the blog over the past 9 days, you have seen a few and, as well as you can with small Internet images, judge for yourself.*

*A note about the images I have been posting:  Since I register all of my images with the U.S. Copyright Office before publishing them, the images I have been posting here aren't, in my opinion, the best of each scene.  I try to keep the best for copyright registration and post ones that are not quite as good.  So, you are not seeing my A list images.  You will see them later on my website after I return and then register the images.  Not that the ones I post are technically inferior, but maybe the composition wasn't the best or a wave was not breaking in the right place, etc.

Also, I'm having a bit of an issue judging how bright/dark the images are.  I am working off a laptop and, as you all know, as you change your angle of view, the images lighten and darken.  So, I'm guessing that I'm hitting the right luminance for the images, but some might be a bit lighter or darker than optimum.

Thanks for looking.  Enjoy!

Dennis Mook


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