The Terra Galleria Blog – QT Luong

Being a large format photographer, I tend to be a bit picky regarding image quality. When using 35mm cameras, since one needs to enlarge so much from the small image capture, everything has to be the best possible in order to yield a sharp print.

Of course, image quality is a minor aspect of photography, compared to all the other factors that go into making great photographs. However, to quote Norman Koren, “the technique you develop in testing cameras and lenses will spill over to your daily photography. Alfred Stieglitz tested film and developers extensively when he discovered photography as a student in Berlin. Ansel Adams performed extensive tests in the development of his zone system. Although nobody would claim that testing is responsible for their unique vision, it certainly contributed to the skill that transformed their vision into prints of transcendent beauty.”

Back in the early 1990s, I was doing quite a bit of lens testing in order to understand which lenses were sharper, and how the choice of focal lengths and f-stops affected image quality. One photographed targets (that had to be carefully labeled to identify the parameters at a later stage), had the film processed, and then squinted with a microscope, struggling to determine which groups of bars were “resolved”. This approach can yield very reliable measurements, including resolution in lpm (the best example of them today is found on William Castleman’s EOS lens reviews) but it was tedious, and I eventually lost interest.

This changed in 2004, when Norman Koren released his first version of Imatest, a software to automate digital image quality measurement. You still need to set up the target shots carefully, but now you just input sets of digital images into the software, and then read measurements. Compared to other solutions, Imatest distinguishes itself by the simplicity of the test targets it uses, consisting of two uniform regions separated by a straight border. Those targets are easy and inexpensive to make.

In late 2005, Canon released the 24-105/4, which was anything I wished for in an all-purpose lens. The only question mark was image quality. To find out for myself, in early 2006, I tested this lens against my 24-70/2.8 and other EOS lenses on a Canon 1Ds mark II. I have previously written a comparative review of the 24-105/4 and 24-70/2.8 lenses. This post summarizes my findings with respect to sharpness.

I won’t detail my experimental procedure here (this may be the subject of a future post) but let me say that tests were done very, very carefully and the results were repeatable. Imatest can provide a lot of information, including, in the current version, 3D graphs and a MTF graph similar to the ones published by Canon in EF Lens Work. This test was conducted with an older version of Imatest. For the sake of simplicity, I am using here a single number to represent image quality. This number is the MTF 50 calculated by Imatest, integrating several measurements over the image area. The larger the number, the higher the resolution/contrast.

Lenses tested:
24-70: Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM
24-105: three copies of Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM
12-24: Sigma 12-24mm f/4.5-5.6 EX DG IF HSM
17-40: Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L USM
70-300: Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM
70-200: Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8 IS USM
24TSE: Canon TS-E 24mm f/3.5L
45TSE: Canon TS-E 45mm f/2.8
50: Canon EF 50mm f1.4 USM
85: Canon EF 85mm f/1.8 USM
90TSE: Canon TS-E 90mm f/2.8
100: Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro USM

@24	24-70	24-105  	17-40	12-24		24TSE
2.8	26.2	na/na/na        na      na		na			      		    
4	29.8	28.2/34.8/35.0	28.3	na     		27  
5.6	31.6	33.6/38.4/35.8	33.3	23.6 		29.8
8	31.7	35.7/37.4/34.6	36.1	29   		31.1
11	30.2	33.2/33.4/32.3	34.6	29   		30.3
16	27.2	29.0/29.1/28.9	30.3	26.7 		26.9

@35	24-70	24-105		17-40
2.8	28.2    na/na/na        na
4	32.3	32.6/36.0/34.0	21.8
5.6	33.7	37.4/38.6/37.5	23.2
8	33.4	36.8/37.1/36.6	29.7
11	31.6	34.3/34.6/34.1	34.3
16	28	29.6/30.0/30.3	30

@50	24-70	24-105				50	45TSE
1.4	na      na				13.7    na
2	na	na				21.4    na
2.8	24	na				32.87	33
4	29.2	24.4/32.7/32.5			40.11	35.6
5.6	31.5	35.8/33.9/37.1			40.7	35.4
8	32	37.2/33.3/35.1			39.7	34.6
11	31.2	35.3/34.2/34.5			36.2	33.2
16	28.3	19.7/31.2/31.4			31.9	30

@70	24-70	24-105		70-300	70-200	85	90TSE
2	na      na		na      na	25.2	na
2.8	20.3	na		na	29.9	28.8	29
4	23.66	25.2/25.1/26.5	27.9	32.2	32.6	34.2
5.6	26.98	32.3/37.6/35.5	32.8	31.7	36	38.2
8	28.77	28.8/36.9/34.6	37.1	31.2	37.2	38.6
11	28.4	34.0/35.4/33.6	35.3	29.8	35.1	36
16	26.52	30.3/31.0/30.1	31.2	28	30.8	31.4

@105		24-105		70-300	70-200	100-400	100
2.8		na		na	32.6	na      29.8	
4		20.1/23.1/26.0	na	34.2	na      34.1	
5.6		26.0/33.3/34.9	34.3	34.1	28	34.6	
8		23.5/35.8/35.3	37.2	33	30.6	36	
11		18.8/34.4/33.3	36.4	31.2	31	35.4	
16		29.4/30.7/30.1	32.2	28.7	28.6	30.5
	

A wealth of information can be found in the table above, but here are a few general observations. Some will be well-known to some readers, but are worth repeating for others.

• There is a significant performance variation between copies of the same lens. In general, Japanese lenses are not individually tested (unlike some German lenses, but they cost three times more). If you want to be sure to get a “good” copy of a lens, buy a few, test them, and keep the best.
  Amazon has free shipping both ways, and an easy 1 month return period, but beware that this does not apply to third-party sellers, which have their own policies. Rather than buying from a third party seller on Amazon, I prefer B&H. They have a 14-day return period and free shipping for some items only, however I have confirmed with their customer service that there will not be a problem to return lenses ordered for testing. Other vendors may charge restocking fees.
• All lenses are sharpest at middle apertures (sharpness is limited by abberations at wide apertures and by diffraction at smaller apertures. In fact, by f16, all lenses perform almost the same, which is why I didn’t bother to make measurements at f22). If given the choice, use a middle aperture such as f8.
• Zoom lenses can be sharper than fixed focal lenses.
• Inexpensive lenses can be sharper than more expensive lenses.
• Zoom lenses are in general weakest at longest focal. If you have the choice between two overlapping zooms, use the one which is less zoomed out.

Key findings about the 24-105:

• 24-105 is sharper than 24-70 at all focal lengths and apertures. This comes as a surprise to some, as the 24-70 is the more “professional-looking” lens, with its 2.8 aperture, better construction and hood, and slightly higher price, but the conclusion is consistent with Chasseur d’Images tests.
• 24-105 delivers excellent sharpness wide-open at wide focal lengths, but needs to be stopped down 1 f-stop at longer focal lenghts

Findings about other lenses:

• The sharpest lens by far, the 50/1.4 is also the least expensive. Excellent lenses in this focal length are very easy to design and manufacture. There is a reason why those “normal” lenses were, in the past, bundled with SLR cameras bodies.
• Of my three tele-zoom lenses, the sharpest one is also the least expensive, the 70-300, which in particular is sharper than the much-praised 70-200/2.8.
• Of the three TSE lenses, the sharpest is the 90, followed by the 45, and then the 24. This is expected, due to the difficulty of designing a short lens with a large image circle.

I’ve posted new images of Portland, Bangor and Bar Harbor in Maine.

I’ll be the first to admit that I spent only a couple hours in each of those places. In general I do not spend extended time in cities, but rather travel through them en route to or from National Parks. For instance, I left Acadia National Park at dark on a Sunday, drove to Portland. On Monday morning, I got up at 5.30 and photographed until 8.00 before driving to JFK airport in NYC to catch a flight home in the afternoon.

In the past, I would just pass through cities without any attempt at photography. However, as of late, I have felt more compelled to create images there, and not only for the challenge of working fast in unknown and new places. Those places are part of the experience of many people who live there. As I went through them, they also became part of my experience. Even through a cursory glance, they didn’t look like the cities closer to home, and the difference intrigued me. So I tried to make connections with something that I saw only briefly, without pretending to understand well what I encountered nor making a faithful portrayal. I see that a bit like an equivalent of travel writing: even if travel writers are often not able to spend the time necessary to become intimately familiar with a place, by weaving words together, they would create something interesting out of disparate chance moments and fleeting encounters. My hope is to create a portrait of America, fragmented but nevertheless true to the diversity of the country.

I am often asked for lens recommendations (although I have already wrote a page of technical comments). For those wishing to make photographs similar to mine, and using a Canon full frame camera, I always suggest the Canon 25-105/4 L IS as an all-purpose lens. I consider this lens to be the best zoom ever made by Canon, when used with the appropriate software.

In 2006, after much testing (which will be the subject of a separate post), I replaced my 24-70/2.8, a highly regarded lens which had been my main all-purpose lens, with the 24-105/4. However, as a recent mishap has ruined my 24-105, I’ve been using again the 24-70/2.8 for a few weeks, which reminded me of how much I prefer the 24-105. I am again trying to find a good sample of the 24-105. I thought that would be a good time to share my observations, based on years of use of both lenses.

The 24-105 (left) is collapsed @24mm and extended @105mm. The 24-70 (right) is collapsed @70mm and extended @24mm.

	24-105/f4 IS	24-70/f2.8
focal lengths	Extra range of 70-105 very useful (for ex. portrait work), or if lens is coupled with 100-400.
max aperture		Extra f-stop of 2.8 useful for moving subjects and blurring backgrounds, brighter viewfinder
close focus	0.45 / 1.48ft, 0.23x magnification	0.38m / 1.3ft, 0.29x magnification
IS	Image stabilization provides 3 f-stops of stability, more than makes up for max aperture with static subjects, useful for getting more DOF or low light shooting
AF	USM.	USM. Faster and more accurate in low light thanks to f2.8 aperture (many AF cross-sensors are disabled at f4)
Size DxL	83.5 x 107 mm only slightly smaller when used without hood	83.2 x 123 mm doesn’t include hood, which adds significant bulk
Weight	23.6 oz (670g) significantly lighter	33.6 oz (950g)
Construction	Sealed. Plastic barrel.	Sealed. Metal barrel.
Lens hood	Shallow lens hood attached to extending barrel of lens, optimal only at 24mm. Easily knocked.	Uniquely deep lens hood attached to fixed body of lens, takes advantage of the fact that lens is extended @ 24mm and retracted @ 70mm. Optimal at both 24mm and 70mm. Very efficient and solid, but requires removal to rotate polariser.
Zoom creep	long focals, in particular pointed down (annoying for close-ups)	24-28 range when pointed straight up (rarely used that way)
Sharpness	Sharper at all focal lengths and apertures. Excellent wide open at short focal lengths
Vignetting	@24mm: strong (1.5) wide open, mild (0.75) by f8 @50mm: mild wide open, very slight by f8 @105mm: slight wide open, very slight by f8	@ all focals: slight (0.5 f-stops) wide open, none by f5.6
Distortion	strong barrel @24, slight pincushion @50, moderate pincushion @105	moderate barrel @24mm, none @50, slight pincushion @70
Flare	Lots of ghosting when bright light source in frame	Little ghosting
Price (11/2009)	$1200 @ BH $1260 @ amazon	$1300 @ BH $1300 @ amazon

Both lenses include features found in L lenses and often missing in lesser lenses such as constant aperture, weather sealing, internal focus, non-rotating filter ring.

For my style of photography, where I often seek a large depth of field, the extra f-stop of the 24-70 is much less interesting than the IS and extra range of the 24-105. In addition, the sharpness of the 24-105 is exceptional for an optic with such a wide range and (relatively) small size and weight. If a wider aperture is desired, it is probably more effective to switch to fixed-focal lenses, which will offer a maximal aperture of f1.4 or f2.

The main drawbacks of the 24-105 are the strong vignetting and distortion at 24mm. Canon would probably have been able to produce a lens exempt from those shortcomings, but this would have come as a cost in size and weight. The lens was released in 2005, when the switch to digital photography was well underway. In digital photography, those shortcomings can be automatically fixed in post-processing by several softwares, including DPP, Canon’s (free) raw digital conversion software, and DxO Optics Pro, which I use. On the other hand, no amount of post-processing can make up for lesser sharpness. This is one case where a newer technology has changed the way one needs to look at an old problem (optical performance).

My main gripe with this lens is that if a bright light source (such as the sun or a street lamp by night) is included in the frame, flare is prominent, under the form of ghost hexagons of the shape of the aperture blades. I cope by switching to my 17-40/4 (much less affected by that problem) in those situations. This applies only to a limited number of situations, so the compromise is worth it.

f/4.0 1/4s ISO 1600 24mm

f/4.0 1/10s ISO 1600 24mm

The combination of IS and high sharpness wide open at 24mm has provided me with new opportunities. In the Elephanta Caves near Mumbai, tripods are strictly prohibited. Yet I was able to produce sharp images by hand-holding at shutters speeds of 1/4-1/8 s, shooting at 24mm wide open. A similar situation occured at dusk inside the capsule of the London Eye.

I’ve posted two sets of new images: Katahdin Region, and North Maine Woods, the final installment of images of the Maine Woods (trip report).

Although there are a number of foliage images, those two series are more about the relationship of people with the land, both recreational (hunting) and commercial (logging).

In a place that is overwhelmingly (94%) privately owned, and therefore unrestricted by environmental concerns, the landscape has been deeply impacted by more than 30,000 miles of logging roads. More than 500,000 acres are logged each year, and the cut is accelerating – with stakes raising with each massive acquisition – although the economic benefits seem to be shrinking at the same time.

Is an alternative possible ?

If you are wondering why I received so many student letters, that’s because the younger generation had a chance to read about my National Parks project in the October 2009 issue of Explorer, National Geographic’s magazine for children. The article was illustrated with pictures from Yosemite.

If you’d like to read the article, here is a larger version in PDF.

Dear students,

Thank you for taking the time to write, and for your nice words about my images. Above all, I hope that the article got you interested enough that you will be inspired to go and see those places for yourself. Ask your parents to take you to a National Park ! If you thought the image of the waterfall was cool, think how much cooler it would be to experience the mist on your face, and see the water flow vary with the wind, maybe producing a rainbow.

It’s great that you sent an actual letter, however I thought that instead of just mailing to you the replies, I would publish them here, so this would give you the chance to be exposed to another medium, the internet blog, which I think will be growing in importance. On the blog, you can follow up with more questions and comments.

I have named this post “Open thread”. This means that any student is welcome to ask me questions here by leaving a reply. I will try to answer here so that everyone can benefit from the exchange.

Note also that prior to starting this blog, I have replied to a few frequently asked questions here.

Gabriela,

The first time I climbed a snowy mountain, I was indeed a little scared. That was a terrain I was not familiar with, and I was afraid that if I would slip and fall I would die, or at the least get hurt. Fortunately I was with good, experienced friends, and nothing bad happened. Subsequently, as I became more experienced, I would be scared only if the situation was really dangerous, which is sometimes the case. One doesn’t need to be afraid to be scared. Experiencing fear is an opportunity to surmount it.

Jennifer,

The light you see in the Mammoth Cave image is under water, in a small pool of water, shinning up. Because the water in the cave is greenish, the light looks green. Brown bears come to the waterfall in Katmai National Park because at that time of the year, the salmon swim up the river in order to lay down their eggs. The bears need to eat a lot before they hibernate. They know that they can catch a lot of salmon there. I have not visited Loriella Park in Virginia yet. I’ve been focusing my travels mostly on National Parks for many years. I did not find sleeping on the cliff scary, because I was attached to the rope while I was sleeping. Besides, do you often fell out of your bed, no matter how high it is ? I use a lot of different cameras. You can read about them in this article, and here are pictures of me with my cameras.

Karen,

How I took the pictures could be the subject of a whole book, so I am afraid I cannot give a brief answer, but I’d encourage you to take a photography class, and you’ll get a better idea of the process. It’s not that difficult, but there is a lot to learn. The bird with the red head was very tame. It walked around on the grass for a while. This was taken in a urban park. You can tell that because the grass is a lawn. In those places, animals often get used to humans, so they are not afraid. You are right, my shoulders sometimes get tired from carrying a lot of heavy equipment, but there is a price to pay for everything, and nothing great has been accomplished without a dose of pain or effort. Don’t you think the pictures make it worth it ?

Rafael,

To take pictures up close of animals, you use special lenses called telephotos. They magnify distant subjects just like binoculars. To take pictures up close of small things, you use special lenses called macro lenses. They work a bit like a magnifying glass. Many mountains are easy to climb, since there will be a trail to the top, so it’s just a matter of walking. Others are covered in snow or ice, in which case you need to wear crampons on your feet and use ice axes in your hands. Some are made of very steep rock, so you climb them using both your hands and feet, like you climb a tree. With so many different mountains, the time it can take them can vary from a few hours to a few weeks. On some mountains, the risk of falling is quite high, as is the risk of being trapped by bad weather. I have been scared in those conditions, but the point is to control your fear so that it doesn’t control you (and make you panic). There was a time when a bear came towards me as I was taking pictures. He did not attack me, but I had to abandon my equipment to hide behind a tree to be safe. It is fairly rare for bears to attack humans. Although they are powerful animals, they are actually afraid of us. The 100,000 miles mentioned in the article that you read were driven in a car. It would take a very long time to walk.

Yareliana,

The lava is flowing down from the volcano crater as it is driven by gravity, just like water. It is entering the beach because the beach is lower than the cliff which is above it. The reason you don’t see a continuous flow (which makes you wonder where it comes from) is that sometimes, it flows beneath older lava. The older lava has hardened and become rock. It then forms a tunnel for the new lava to flow underneath. At Katmai, the distance between the observation platform and the falls where the bears fish is about fifty feet, which is quite close. Normally, you wouldn’t want to get that close to a bear, however there you are standing on a platform. That’s in fact one of the only spots in the world that I know where you can get reliably and safely that close to wild bears. El Capitan is very easy to find. It dominates Yosemite Valley, and you can see it from most places in the Valley.

I’ve posted new images of the Allagash Wilderness Waterway, the third installment of images of the Maine North Woods (trip report).

There are not a lot of places where you can be hiking through a remote forest and suddenly stumble upon huge, rusting, but otherwise well-preserved, steam locomotives, stuck one hundred miles from the closest modern track. One of the things that makes the Allagash so interesting is the possibility to discover remnants from a bygone lumber industry in unexpected places.

The locomotives were part of a short railroad, build by Edouard Lacroix in the mid twenties against all odds, that was used to solve the problem that the adjacent rivers flowed North, to Canada, while they wanted to float the logs to mills in Millinocket. Half a decade later, by 1930, the area was logged off, and the railroad stopped operations.

courtesy Jean Lacroix / www.cumberlandinc.com

When I asked in Greenville and Millinocket, nobody knew the exact location. However, once I traveled North, past the Teleos checkpoint, everybody that I asked (a checkpoint clerk, a ranger, and a forestry worker) was aware of it. Terry Harper, who has personally worked on the locomotives, provides precise directions to the locomotives (including GPS coordinates) in Railroad.net. Since I’ve used a slightly different route, I’ll provide my own below, including coordinates for the locomotives themselves.

You *need* to get the new Delorme Atlas for Maine. Since I respect copyrights, I won’t reproduce the relevant sections here. On the atlas, the site of the Lacroix Locomotives is clearly marked on Map 55 as “Tramway”, on the shores of Eagle Lake. If you have a canoe, you can get from within 100 yards of the locomotives from Eagle Lake. Otherwise, it is a 2 mile hike. I had a rental Ford Focus (a regular car), which was enough to make it to the trailhead, but in the area everybody else was driving trucks. The secondary roads were slightly overgrown, but not overly wet or rutted.

To get to the trailhead, drive Golden Road, then Teleos Road (checkpoint) to Chamberlain Bridge (there is a ranger station there). On the map, it’s quite clear that you need to follow Grande Marche Rd, but on the terrain, since the roads are not marked, it can be a bit confusing. The road through John’s Bridge is longer, and according to the checkpoint clerk, less well maintained. Follow the signs for the “Loon Lodge” until a T-junction where the road to the lodge is on your left, but you’ll continue straight. You will soon cross a bridge over the Allagash Creek. Continue about a mile, then take the first unmaintained road on your right, and then after slightly more than a mile, the first road on your right again. Drive until the road is blocked by boulders, or maybe 1/4 mile past that point if you can squeeze in, and park your car (N46 20.176′, W069 23.948′) before the road becomes too overgrown.

Walk on the road for less than a mile. You will see a trail on your left (N46 19.777′ W069 23.436′). The trail is fairly faint and unmaintained, but if you are an experienced hiker, you will be able to follow it. When I was there, the whole trail was marked with tape, making it fairly easy to follow, but Terry warns you that you should not trust tape. You will intersect railroad tracks twice at a short interval. The second time, make a left. The locomotives are in a clearing (N46 19.360′ W069 22.550′).

If I was to come back, I’d get there earlier than I did, since there are quite a few artifacts to explore in the area. I started to hike in the afternoon, and left the locomotives half an hour before sunset. It was getting dark in the forest, which was kind of scary since the trail was not that easy to see, and despite the short hike, the area felt remote (I didn’t meet anybody after leaving the main road). The North woods are not a place you want to be lost, but with a bit of care, they can provide personal discoveries.

I’ve posted new images from Moosehead Lake in Maine, the second installment of images of the Maine North Woods (trip report).

Moosehead Lake, the largest in Maine, sits in a beautiful area of the Maine North Woods. The lake, bordered by low mountains and rolling hills, features an intricate lakeshore (280 miles long) and more than 80 islands. While Baxter State Park is preserved as a wilderness area, on the shore of Moosehead Lake there is a popular resort, Greenville. Yet so far the developement has been limited.

In 1998, the Plum Creek Timber company bought 900,000 acres of Maine woods, becoming the largest private landowner in the US. Those lands include over 60 miles of shoreline along Moosehead Lake. Although the company initially stated it was only interested in doing sustainable forestry, it is in fact a Real Estate Investment Trust. In 2004, Plum Creek announced its plans for the largest development in Maine history, along some of the most beautiful sections of Moosehead Lake. Those sprawling plans include a thousand house lots and two mega-resorts, a golf course, marina, and RV parks. For an update on the situation, check Natural Resources Council of Maine.

This past Saturday, I dived one of the most beautiful sites I had seen. Although I had done three trips to the California Channel Islands before, I had never gotten into the water there.

Part of the reason was that, being used to diving in warm waters, my only diving experiences in California, near Monterey, were rather unpleasant. I remembered the difficult beach entries, cold water, poor visibility, the feeling of being restricted by the thick suits, hood and gloves, as well as the attendant difficulty to control buoyancy. But now, I had to travel to Thousand Oaks for a photography exhibit opening on Friday night, only half an hour away from the Channel Islands harbor in Ventura, and I knew that October was one of the best times there, with warm and calm waters. The Channel Islands being part of a Marine Preserve, that was an important aspect of the National Park that I had missed.

Bottom photo by Patrick Smith who exhibited beautiful seascapes in an instantly recognizable style at the Westlake Village Four Seasons Hotel.

The week before, I had asked master underwater photographer Philip Colla for advice. Philip, who was most generous with his time, recommended that I had my Nikonos serviced, since it hadn’t been used in a while. Once the workhorse of underwater photography, the venerable camera seems to be well on its way to extinction. Nobody in Northern California doesn’t service it anymore. Since I didn’t have time to send it out, I just greased and replaced o-rings, and then hoped that the body wouldn’t leak. When I was reloading film on the boat, other divers looked with curiosity. On Friday, just before the exhibit opening, I had spent one hour and half trying to find film in Thousand Oaks (In 100 ASA, I had only expired Sensia in my freezer) without success.

I signed up with the Spectre which turned out to be excellent. After the exhibit opening, I drove to Ventura and slept on the boat. At 6am in the morning, the rented diving gear was already there. The crew was most friendly and helpful. Diving from a boat is the way to go ! It was so much easier than diving from the shore. Yet it had been so long since I last dived (at that time 35mm film cameras were largely superior to digital) that I was exhausted from the first dive. It didn’t help that I was missing weights. Fortunately, as the day progressed, I felt more at ease in the water.

The underwater beauty made it all worth it. Diving in the giant kelp forest there was unlike any experience I had before, in its shear three-dimensionality. I had dived kelp before in Monterey, but the visibility was so poor that I couldn’t appreciate the size of the underwater forest, while all I could see was the surge motion that made me feel sick. But there, in the Channel Islands, the visibility was probably 50 feet, and the sight of those tall columns of seaweeds rising deep from the ocean floor to the surface was truly wonderful. As many of the dives were in a Marine Reserve, there were also plenty of fish and a few seals.

As I didn’t have a strobe, my goal that day was just to photograph the kelp forest at shallow depths. My briefing with the divemaster went something like that: “Do you have a buddy ? – No – I can find you one – He might not be happy diving with me, since I want mostly to photograph kelp – When was your last dive ? – It’s been years – Do you still remember skills ? – Maybe, not sure – Hmm – I’m gonna dive to less than twenty feet – OK, Tuan, be careful.”

Although it was a great day, I won’t know if I had been successful until I get my film back. In the while, have a look at Phillip Colla’s images of kelp, which anyways are most certainly superior to anything I hoped to do. Even if you do not scuba dive, I would highly recommend that you snorkel the waters of Channel Islands. You won’t experience moving inside the kelp forest to the same extent, but it will still be a marvelous sight.

I’ve posted new images from Baxter State Park in Maine. This is the first installment of images of the Maine North Woods (trip report). Second installment next week.

Baxter State Park is one of the largest wilderness areas in the North East of the US (the only other comparable area are the Adirondacks in upstate NY). Established as a gift to the people of Maine from Percival Baxter, a former governor who used his personal fortune to purchase the more than 200,000 acres (800 sq km) of the park, with the goal to keep the land forever wild, it has the particularity of having no commercial activities, paved roads, running water, or even electricity, so come prepared ! There are, however, plenty of trails, campsites, and natural beauty.

Access is more strictly controlled than other parks that I have visited. You have to check in during opening hours (the gate is closed from 10pm to 6am), receive a permit under your name that is affixed to your windshield (the reverse of the permit reminds you of the 20mph speed limit). When you exit the park, you return the permit.

The centerpiece of Baxter State Park is Mount Katahdin, at 5,267 feet (1,605m) the highest mountain in Maine, well-known as the northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail. Trails on the mountain are also strictly controlled. Although I was eager to ascent Katahdin, when I was there, the mountain was constantly cloud-capped, with serious chances of rain. Instead of finding myself with zero visibility, I hiked to a shorter peak, South Turner Mountain, whose summit was under the clouds. Before the rain came, the storm conditions created beautiful spots of light over the autumn landscape.

On the way to South Turner Peak, I passed Sandy Stream Pond, considered to be one of the top spots for observing moose in the North-East. The game there is to set-up your tripod on the small observation platform (in order to preserve vegetation, you are not allowed to step out of it), which was near full capacity at 8am on a weekday. You then wait all day for a moose to come out. I went hiking instead.