I recently read that the in the continental United States, farthest one can get from a road is about 20 miles. (I’ll fact check later today about it). In California, it can be very difficult to see any stars, so much so that many people grow up with out seeing the Milky Way at all!

While I was at Lake Powell, I was able to capture these images:

Both were taken a few minutes apart. Now compare the first one with a few hours later:

As the sun was thinking of coming up. There was nearly a full moon that night, however, it was blocked by the canyon walls. Every other night, we had a great view of the moon, but could see very few stars. Funny thing is, the night I shot these photos there was a meteor shower, and I could see a few individual meteors, but I still didn’t capture a single image of one!

Why is this a big deal? Because Canon bumped their schedule by 18 months. For the past few years the XXD line was a new camera every 18 months, and I felt secure in that.

Now, my formerly good top of the line camera will only take crappy photos, and all my existing ones will begin to fade and blur and age prematurely. I’ll have to go back and reshoot everything!

Seriously though, there’s not that many advantages over my existing set up:

• 5 more Megapixels (15 over 10, yawn)
• ISO 3200 native instead of 1600
• Digic 4 instead of Digic 3 for image processing

So why the yawn over more megapixels? For most things, we probably don’t need them. Unless it Canon did something to really brings out the clarity and sharpness, I can’t tell the difference between an 8 and 10 MP print unless it’s more than 16×20, or maybe 20×30 in resolution. There will also be some bigger diffraction issues that will crop up with smaller aperture lenses. Supposedly ( and I can’t see this myself, but I haven’t looked hard), my 40D starts having diffraction issues about f/11 or f/12. This is solely due to the size of the sensors elements…. I’ll have to wait and see what the theory says. 

Either way, I’m not rushing to stores to pick it up just yet. If I didn’t have a 40D, I might to upgrade from the XT…. but I just don’t see the need yet.

I think I’ll shoot some more photos real soon.

At Lake Powell, I decided to experiment with several panoramic photos. Here are a select few:

Wahweap Marina on the afternoon we arrived. A decent sized thunderstorm had just passed us by, leaving the rainbow in the middle center of the photo in the distance.

San Juan River with the Rising Moon.

Hole in the Rock, looking east and South over Lake Powell and Colorado Plateau

I’m less happy with this shot of the San Juan River. I climbed up on top of one layer of rock, about 100 feet above the level of the lake. In the time it took to take all the individual sections, the clouds moved a lot, and I have some obvious blending issues with the sky. But you get a great view of the cut off in the gooseneck that we water skied through.

I’ve met her a few times, mostly on shooting trips organized by the Cal Poly Pomona IME department and related clubs. She’s had an in with the Safari Club of Rancho Cucamonga, of which one of my professors was a member. I’m not sure of all the specifics there, but she did run the clay pigeon range on one of those days, and I did get two clay pigeons with the same shotgun shell one time. Pure luck, that the clay pigeons were so close together….

I’ll find a picture tonight or two tonight from one of those trips!

With so many people in town, all the family had to get together.  So for those of you who could not attend, here’s a photo of us all! Many had just arrived in town the day before, from such strange and far off places as Washington State, Virginia, Italy, and Japan! Those last two are people who were just visiting those countries, but it shows how very well travelled we are as a family.

Professor Phil Rosenkrantz

David

Hodgeman

Ladyhiker

Smugmug seems the most full featured, but the pro set up is 150 a year (but if you use the discount code “flickr” you get 50% off). Smugmug charges 15% commission.

Zenfolio is 100 a year, but I can’t find their base photo pricing. It’s highly recommended online, but I can’t find any real information on their site, so I’m a big hesitant there. Zenfolio offers international shipping. Zenfolio also charges a fee of $3 each time they send out a payment. That seems iffy to me….

Exposure Manager is 65 or 100 dollars a year depending on the storage and bandwidth I’d plan on using. I could also order photos at cost from them, which I don’t easily see on Smugmug or Zenfolio. They also charge a 10% commission. Sutterbug is another site that is owned by the same company. Same core software and prices, just a different appearance and most likely core audience. It’s also a magazine, so it’s a bit more commercialized. Exposure Manager also supports international shipping.

Smugmug offers the cheapest 4×6 photos ( but I can find them cheaper if I order elsewhere, like with Kodak), but their prices increase over Exposure Manager at the larger size. Smugmug will have your photos available in photobooks that are done by Blurb, up to 11×13 in size.

Both Smugmug and Zenfolio have direct plugins from iPhoto, Aperture or Lightroom, but Exposure Manager requires you to upload via ftp. Somewhat simpler, but you lose a lot of control.

So what would I actually sell? Mostly scenery and landscape photos. I’d not plan on making any profit on family photos or similar, but I might have those available to order. I haven’t made any decisions yet, but I’m thinking about it. Hopefully I’ll have lots of good shots from Lake Powell, and that will work well with my photos from the Sierras

Sadly though, since we have about 20 some cousins and family members converging at my parents home tonight! I have my older camera, which will suffice…. but this basically defines an “argh” moment.

It’s not really that bad, but timing is everything as they say.

Verizon cell phones are out for now, as their service is overloaded. Probably too many people calling home, but it shows why it’s nice to have a land line around.

Been a while since we had a good sized shaker here!