Some fellow photo enthusiasts from work (1, 2) and I drove up to the Muir Woods early Sunday morning to spend seven hours wandering around and blocking paths with our tripods.
This shoot was a great learning experience. It was the first time I used a tripod in public, and the more-interesting material required a lot of work to be framed properly Many pictures have a lot of clutter; it was hard to take pictures of giant redwoods without the noise of the forest floor.
I spent most of my time with the Tokina 12-14mm and a little time with the Nikkor 50mm macro. Both of these lenses allow me to accurately capture what my eyeball sees, and I love ‘em for it.
The unexpected hero of the day was the Kaiser Opaque 2 Axis Flash Hot Shoe Bubble Level, featured below. For someone with an inexpensive tripod like me, this was an amazing time-saver. I could fix the camera on the axis I wanted, set up the tripod to be relatively level on the ground, and then tweak the setup so that the picture was level. Never again will I squint at the horizon in an attempt to line it up against the focus-area selecters. Never again will I perform extra iterations of looking through the viewfinder and then tweaking the tripod. This 2-axis level was so useful—go to B&H and buy one right now.
Of course, who would I be without an obligatory insect macro shot? Worry not:
You can see all of my Muir photos as a tiny Flickr slide show.
© Ian Langworth