My "New" Toy

Yes, that's an 18-200 mm zoom.

This isn't really a new camera, but it's new to me. It's old, probably from 2006 or 2007. I inherited it from Alaska Al. You saw some of my first photos from this DSLR a couple weeks ago.

I struggle some with accurate color balance when posting on the web. Cameras in general don't shoot accurate color by themselves, hence enhancement or editing. Hence white and gray cards, e.g., this one. Maybe I'll get one. (Any white balance setting on a digital camera is a type of programming—except, perhaps, the PRE or custom setting. Any choice you make is, imo, a type of editing.)

So far with this camera, I've been using auto white balance (AWB), although I know the camera will shoot warm under indoor lighting, and so it will usually require a change to tungsten or something else when indoors. With AWB, the color on the LCD screen has, so far, fairly well matched the color of what I see when shooting, or maybe it's too reddish or bluish on occasion. Of course, when using a DSLR one can't actually see anything on the LCD screen until after taking a shot, because the process of DSLR is different, and one looks into the viewfinder to see exactly what the camera is seeing.

These first pictures below were taken from 395 north of Reno on a fairly gray day. I've enhanced the photos such that they look to me the way they looked on the LCD screen, although they are all probably off, in color, by a hair. I think the next picture could be slightly yellower, but my opinion of it seems to vary depending on what I looked at last.

Sunlight hitting the west part of Seven Lakes Mountain, the part that's in California.

The next photo was shot from a moving vehicle with ISO 800 (not really fast enough for the conditions) at 200 mm zoom (35mm equivalent of 300mm). It was slightly unsharp, though not from the motion; I've since modified the D80's sharpness settings. I've cropped the photo slightly to suit my idea of best composition (hence, it's been enlarged very slightly).

Some rocky crags on Petersen Mountain (MyTopo location).

Petersen Mountain, on the crest of the range not far to the right of the photo, is the site of active quartz crystal mining.

Petersen Mountain from a little farther south.

The photo was taken from about here (Google Maps location), looking southeast toward the high point of the Petersen Mountain (range): Petersen Mountain (summit).

And here's a shot of one of the northern peaks on Peavine, looking southeast from about the stateline near Bordertown.

The camera shows quite a bit of vignetting at 200 mm.

I have, in the meantime, taken a lot of nice photos, particularly some zoomed-in photos of birds. But I'm still figuring out the many settings and possibilities, and am finding the color a little odd in shadowy settings.

And Even More Ice!

On our third snowy, icy hike in mid-January, we came across even more ice crystals near the lower, rocky section of our Water Canyon trail, where the creek had frozen almost solid.

Ice and hoarfrost in frozen creek bed, two boots for scale.

Needle ice crystals on ice, with rocks poking through,
located in the upper left of the first photo.

Ice blades or feathers are like petals in an icy rose,
from the lower right of the first photo.

Gradually, the weather changed, overall temperatures warmed, and the ice fog left. Since then, we've had warmer days, more snow, a little more ice on one or two mornings, and most recently, some very clear, sunny days. Some think that winter is over, but it's only mid-February, and I really doubt it.

Another Hike...More Ice

It was another icy, foggy morning, with hoarfrost covering everything in sight, and the Pogonip barely lifting from the ground.

Splotchy-pattered frost on the window, and the tree from the first photo beyond.

We, of course, headed up to Water Canyon as soon as the temperature warmed a bit. (The high for the day is listed at 13°F, so I'm not sure how much it warmed up, but it least it was warmer than the official low of -21°F!)

This time, rather than snowshoeing, we hiked, possibly using chains on our boots. This may have been the trip when our chains iced up, making walking awkward, and causing us to revert to just boots.

Partially frozen creek.

At the rocky area in the lower part, we found some unusual ice patterns, apparently caused by intermittent freezing and thawing of the creek.

Flow patterns in ice.

Intriguing flame-like structures in ice, with flowing water beneath.

Side trail into snow.

We came to point-three-mile canyon (which I have, in the past, erroneously called half-mile canyon), and didn't take the trail, although some intrepid snowshoer had been up and back at least once (a trail goes around the deadfall).

The creek and frozen waterfall at third-mile creek crossing was covered with ice thick enough to walk on. (Photo below: compare to this photo from my last post.)

I can see at least five layers of ice in this photo: the first is a broken one around the edge, the second is the one the surface hoarfrost is growing on.

Little, dark bubbles of air moving beneath the ice were almost the only clue that the creek wasn't frozen solid. A second clue was a faint gurgling sound.

A layer of needle and feather ice crystals (hoarfrost) on a thick, transparent layer of ice, with  less shapely ice and snow on a deeper, dark-looking layer of ice.

Sagebrush and shadows on frosted snow.

My feet finally froze, and we turned around.

Icy Snowshoeing in early January

It was early January, the inversion was still heavy and snow was thick enough for snowshoeing, so off we went, out of the city and into nearby Water Canyon.

Snow and aspens in Water Canyon.

The rocky area, not quite covered with snow and ice.

After trudging a ways up the canyon, we came to third-mile creek crossing, which had a narrow snow bridge packed across it's downstream side.

We stopped for a few photos.

Standing on the snow bridge, looking upstream at the small, frozen waterfall.

Closeup of the waterfall area, frozen and covered with hoarfrost.

Frost crystals were growing here and there across the iced-over creek, especially near the edges where feathery and leaf-like crystals were growing outward from the snow.

Frost crystals with snowshoe for scale. Crystals in the next photo are located in the left center of this photo.

Enlarged frost crystals, shaped like leaves or flower petals.

Hoar frost "leaves" and ice needles or spikes.

Where these frost crystals had grown upward from their ice base, they looked like flowers to us, but they are not the same as frost flowers (which is what we wanted to call them).

Delicate feathery ice around the edge of larger hoarfrost formations.

And finally, we looked off downstream at more snow, ice, and hoarfrost, and set off back down the canyon.

First Snow, 2009

We had our first snow yesterday and last night. This is what our garden looked like at about 1:00 pm yesterday.
This is what it looked like at about 2:00 pm. Snow kept falling off and on through the day and night, with maybe an inch more of accumulation.
Clouds early this morning were mostly wave clouds (lenticulars) stacked over the mountains - Duck Creek Range shown above - with smaller lenticulars scattered over the valley.
The view from our hiking hill, looking south of town toward the southern Egan Range, showed raggedy lenticulars, and a fairly light snowfall, except on the higher peaks.

Cheatgrass in the snow.

A nicely hexagonal ice crystal.

More ice crystals.

It's now clouded over nearly completely, although skies are supposed to clear. Hopefully the snow will mostly melt over the next week or so.

This first snow of 2009 has beat the first snow of 2008 by 6 days and the first snow of 2007 by 1 day.

Ice and Snow Words

I've been thinking about ice, because although it warmed up yesterday, it froze over again today. In the photo above, the black blob in the lower center is a boot for scale, about 2 inches wide (in the mining industry, I do metric mostly when overseas). This little batch of large and small ice crystals got me to thinking about the supposedly hundreds of words in the Inuit language for snow.

Snow is a form of ice. Once, while visiting a cold, oft-frozen northern state (oh, alright, that would be Alaska), I came up with a long list of ice words used in the English language, although admittedly, many of the words are from other languages (like sastrugi; also see sastrugi here and here). The list got into glacial words and terminology, including processes, formations, and deposits, and it also got into various meteorological words, skiing words, and ice-climbing words. For example, if you've ever skied in the western U.S., you probably know what "Sierra cement" is. If not, be glad you don't!

Anyway, I don't have that list handy - it's on another computer, and it may be in some Old Mac format, still compatible with Word, I hope. I found, however, a list that at least shows that English isn't too spare in the snow and ice categories, afterall.