RadiantView PhotoBlog

I acquired a Canon 5D Mark II during December and have been slowly trying it out. I am quite amazed with the image quality and the advances in the features over my older 20D.  I debated long and hard between the new Canon 7D and the 5D Mark II.  Both seem to be excellent cameras and each have their advantages.  In the end, I decided I wanted the higher image quality and the extra image width offered by the full frame 5D Mark II over the higher frames/second offered by the 7D.  Canon didn’t make the choice easy.

Douthat State Park

Douthat State Park

Shortly after Christmas, we had the opportunity to visit some good friends in Lexington, Virginia. While there, I made a short predawn drive to Douthat State Park, arriving about an hour before sunrise. As this first image shows, it was cold, with a good bit of ice on the lake.   The extra image width of the full frame camera helped me to capture the full vista of the frozen lake with my 24mm lens — something that would have been much more difficult with the crop sensor on the 20D.  Below is another view of the lake taken about 40 minutes later.

Douthat State Park

The ability to “go wide” really shows itself when you get close to an object in the foreground, as I did in this image below of a stream at Douthat State Park. In reality, the stone in the foreground was pretty small, but the wide angle lens makes it appear much larger in the image.

Douthat State Park

Virginia Military Institute

My first morning in Lexington, I got up early to take predawn pictures.  I was hoping for a foggy morning and was not dissapointed.  The image below of a Civil War era Cannon at the Virginia Military Institute has an entirely different feel on a foggy morning than it would on a nice clear day.  Unlike the images at Douthat State Park that were taken at the wide end of my 24-105 lens, here I zoomed all the way out to the longest focal length (105mm), which compresses the fog and enhances the feeling of loneliness.

Cannon in the morning fog at Virginia Military Institute

Another image I captured that morning was of the four training cannons known as “Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.”  Noticed how much the fog had lifted in the 30 minutes since I captured the previous image.  The feeling of loneliness is gone.

Cannons at Virginia Military Institute

Early Morning Frost

The last image I’ll share in this post really highlights the great image quality I’ve seen from the 5D Mark II.  It’s an image of early morning frost on some grass by the pond at Claude Moore Park.  Even in this small web version, the clarity of the frost crystals on the grass is amazing.

Early Morning Frost at Claude Moore Park

A couple notes.  You can find more of my recent images on my flickr page.  Also, taking pictures in the cold carries with it some extra concerns for both yourself and your camera equipment.   So dress warmly and make sure you have a large plastic bag with you.  Before going back inside, wrap your camera in a plastic bag, then place it inside it’s camera bag.  Let it warm up slowly for several hours before removing it once you get back into your warm house.  You can read more tips at this Digital Photography School link.

As promised, here is a panoramic of VMI’s Barracks.  As mentioned in my previous post, this was taken in the evening while I was waiting for the moonrise.  I’m not sure this will replace by original panoramic as I hoped — I think I’ll need to go back when the light is better and there aren’t so many orange cones and cars in the scene.

Panoramic of VMI Barracks, Sept 2009

Click on the image for a “zoomify” version.

Full Moon rising over VMI Old Barracks

Full Moon Rise over VMI Old Barracks

My family decided to take advantage of the long Labor Day weekend and visit special friends in Lexington, Virginia.  Since this would cause me to miss the full moon rise over DC, I did some quick research on Google Maps and figured out where I needed to stand so I could capture the full moon rising over the Old Barracks of the Virginia Military Institute.

My daughter and I got to post about 30 minutes before moonrise to allow us plenty of time to setup.  I used the time to capture a series of images to create a panoramic of Old Barracks, New Barracks and the “New New” Barracks which was completed this past year.  Once I get it the series of images processed into a panoramic, it will replace the image currently in the panoramic gallery of my web page.

Full Moonrise over VMI Old Barracks

As it turned out, we had a 15 minutes or so longer than I expected.  When you capture the moonrise over DC from the US Marine Corps Memorial, you are essentially looking down on the city.  So, you see the moon almost immediately when it breaks the horizon.  At VMI, the moon came up behind Old Barracks, so we had to wait another 15 minutes before we could actually see it from our position on the Parade Ground.

Full moonrise over VMI Old Barracks

Capturing the full moon over Barracks proved to be a little more challenging than in DC for a couple reasons.  One, the front of Barracks is not as well lit as the monuments in DC.  Two, this combined with the 15 minute delay between moonrise over the horizon and moonrise over Barracks further increased the intensity range between a good exposure of the moon and a good exposure of barracks.  Nevertheless, I was pleased with a few of the captures.

VMI Parade

VMI’s 1st Parade of the 2009-2010 year

Another photographic opportunity presented itself when I learned that the 1st parade of VMI’s 2009-2010 school year was scheduled for the morning after the full moonrise.  My wife and youngest daughter joined me to watch the parade.  They seemed to enjoy it and I was glad to be a  spectator taking pictures rather than standing in the ranks as I was many years ago.  A few more images from the parade can be seen on my Flickr page.

Any guesses why this image is titled "five demerits"

I chose my last image for a couple reasons.  One, you will not find another image like it from a parade by any other military school, including West Point.  Why?  Because VMI, being the only military school in the U.S. to fight as a unit during combat, is the only school authorized to “fix Bayonets” during a parade.  It’s also interesting for another reason.  One of the cadets in this image deserves five demerits.   Any guesses why? You can click on the image for a larger view.  I hope to hear from you.