[Toshi]

as many of you know i'm a seattle resident, but i'm somewhat of a nomad this year. on july 2 i took off for fairbanks, alaska, and will spend 6 of the upcoming 12 months away from seattle in places including pocatello and boise, idaho, and jackson, wyoming (unfortunately not in the winter for the last). anyway, the point is that i'm in fairbanks, and thus in a great location to check out Denali National Park, one of the big ones remaining on my list after my 7345 mile national park-hopping road trip of summer 2003.

denali natl park website: http://www.nps.gov/dena/

without further ado, onto the photos:

link to all photos: http://tinyurl.com/qqgmf

me looking goofy with the antlers. there were a couple of "old people" taking photos like this, but it was mostly the domain of the 5 year old crowd

a vista from polychrome pass, 56 miles iirc into the park. the interior of the park is only accessible via buses, btw -- no private cars!

the light was rather flat and dull so i ended up snapping a lot of macro/flower shots. for the photo-monkeys out there these were with off-camera flash, at f/22, 1/250, ISO 800 typically, with the weapon of choice being the sigma 180 macro. here are three, then onto the next post since there's a 5 image limit?

 

[Toshi]

once again, the link to all photos:

http://tinyurl.com/qqgmf

beasties big and small were seen, albeit not too many of them given that i was in the park all day (arrived at 6:15 am, took the 7:30 bus, arrived at my destination about 62 miles into the park at 2 pm , hiked until 4, got back to my car around 8:30 pm).

here are a few that are hopefully self-explanatory, the last few of which were snapped with my old canon S30 after the big rig ate all its batteries in the cold:

 

[stevew]

Are you still driving the wrx?

As if you need to be told, nice pics.

 

[Skookum]

Unfortunately for me when i made it to Denali it was clouded and drizzly. So i didn't see nothing but a cloudy valley while i was there. Cool shots of the bear and cub.

 

[narlus]

cool prelim shots, i'll check out the gallery soon.

question re: macro settings. is it worth it to get such a small aperture (f22) at the expense of higher ISO? would there be much of a difference between say, f11 and f22 regarding detail and/or DOF?

and is the 5 image limit imposed from the site you are linking from, or is it a new RM dictum that i horribly overran w/ my rome thread?

 

[valve bouncer]

Toshi, cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey or not so bad? Always wanted to go to Alaska.

 

[Skookum]

Toshi, cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey or not so bad?

Summer isn't bad at all, winter is harsh.

Neverending daylight right now...

 

[Brian HCM#1]

Nice pics, however I don't see any Denali's

 

[Qman]

Summer can be horrible. I've been in Fairbanks when it was 100-120 for the week with 80% humidity. My apt had no A/C either.
It's a great place though. If you're heading back north, try to get to Dawson City. One of my favorite places. Will you be riding? Johnson Pass near Anchorage is supposed to be a great ride and there's some fun trails around the Yukon River in Whitehorse.
For food stuff, go to Speedy's Sub's in Fairbanks. Is this a road trip? Don't miss the Liard Hot Springs.
I try to get up to AK at least once a year.

Some snapshots from last summer:

 

[Toshi]

cool pics, Qman. now for a massive combined-reply:

Are you still driving the wrx?

As if you need to be told, nice pics.

thanks, and yes, i'm still driving the wrx. however, i flew up here so my car is living in the microsoft parking garages, being moved (and hopefully just that ) every few days by a friend who also bestowed it with an official permit.

cool prelim shots, i'll check out the gallery soon.

question re: macro settings. is it worth it to get such a small aperture (f22) at the expense of higher ISO? would there be much of a difference between say, f11 and f22 regarding detail and/or DOF?

and is the 5 image limit imposed from the site you are linking from, or is it a new RM dictum that i horribly overran w/ my rome thread?

i think there's a limit here on RM -- 10 maybe? i didn't want to run into it and have to split up a post after the fact. as for macro settings stopping down is absolutely essential. at the subject distances seen when shooting macro (45 cm in the case of my 180mm macro -- 1:1 is generally achieved at 1/4th of the focal length of the lens) depth of field is tiny:

for a 20D at 180mm, f/22 and 45 cm subject distance depth of field is from 44.84 cm to 45.16 cm. at f/11 this falls by half to 44.92 to 45.08 cm. as you can see it's not a lot to work with!

you do bring up a good point, that diffraction starts to limit the resolution once you stop down to a certain point. however, this seems to affect different lenses in different ways: i try to avoid stopping down beyond f/13 with wide angle lenses but regularly will shoot f/22 and f/32 with the macro (and don't perceive any loss due to diffraction).

Toshi, cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey or not so bad? Always wanted to go to Alaska.

Summer isn't bad at all, winter is harsh.

Neverending daylight right now...

yep, Skooks has it. at this time of year there's dusk technically from 12:30 am to 3:30ish am, but that's hardly noticeable, and temperatures have been from 50 to 85 so far.

Nice pics, however I don't see any Denali's

:looney:

 

[valve bouncer]

So are you like Al Pacino in "Insomnia", you know wondering around like a zombie cos ya didn't sleep for 3 days?

 

[macko]

Nice shots, Tosh! I just took an un-planned trip to Denali/Alaska a few weeks ago ... when I get back on my personal computer I'll add some of my photos as well.