Wide Apertures: 2008

Sunday, December 14, 2008

Point Reyes, CA

Trip Destination: Point Reyes National Seashore
Location: Northern California, about 40 miles from the Golden Gate Bridge, CA

Time of the year: Dec 2008

Season: Autumn
Duration of the trip: 1 day

Weather of the day: Sunny, Windy

Point Reyes is a national seashore close to the SFO bay area. Its a small piece of land that juts out into the pacific. At the tip of this land is a magnificent lighthouse that was built sometime in the 1800s.

We reached the visitor center at about 1 PM. Were late because we stopped at the golden gate bridge view point. What a sight..!

You get there after a 30 min ride on CA 1 highway, once u take the exit off CA101. The road twists and turns beautifully through the hills, with the sea following you on the left.

After getting the maps and directions at the visitor center, we left for the Lighthouse, which is a 17 mile ride, and a 1/2 mile trek. This drive was beautiful, with rolling green hills on either side. The place feels so isolated, with no trees, no barns or anything. Just hills everywhere you see, and the calm pacific beyond them, put all of us to silence. The day was bright and sunny, added to the beauty of the place.

The lighthouse was a beauty. Can you believe that that the lighthouse's mechanical gear system had to be wound every 2 hrs for it to keep rotating?? That meant that there had to be a person at the light house 24/7. Loneliness, Silence, Fog all the time. Thats a perfect recipe for madness.!! Hats off to the people who sat there keeping the light burning.

Here is another snippet: The speed of rotation of the light on the lighthouse is unique to every lighthouse. This one would complete 1 rotation in about 6 seconds. Sailors would note the interval between the flashes to determine which lighthouse it was...! Amazing isnt it?

From there, we went to Chimney rock, which is about 5 miles from the lighthouse, where you have a lookout to see some seals. Checkout this fat guy..!

There are also about 6-7 trails that we couldn't go to, because of lack of time. There is also another place called Tamales bay, where you can get to see some Elks, seals, and maybe some great white sharks.

A trip definitely worth it for the nature lover.

Rating: 5/5

Friday, October 31, 2008

SLR

Calling an SLR camera, an SLR camera is a misnomer. Because, it gives undue importance to the SLR feature, while not mentioning the rest. The SLR part of an SLR camera only adds about 10% of the value to a real professional camera.

I mean, lets face it. What does the SLR functionality really do? It makes your optical view finder look through the camera's lens. When the shutter button is clicked, the lens flips, and lets the image fall on the film (or sensor matrix, in the case of a digital camera). And we have our picture. The SLR capability eliminates the user and the camera looking through 2 separate view finders. Thats it.

But there are a lot other things that sets a professional camera apart from a point and shoot, apart from the SLR function. A professional camera lets you adjust a lot of parameters that would be set automatically in a point and shoot. Features such as lens zoom and focus, aperture and shutter speed, exposure locking, exposure bracketing, depth of field, metering, etc. And its all these manipulations that allows space for our creativity and brings out those awesome snaps. The SLR function alone cannot do that. So there is more to an SLR camera than just SLR. Thats all I'm sayin'.