Tag Archives: stability

Propping Up Poulsbo’s Shoreline

An elevated walkway has been built along the shoreline in Poulsbo.  It runs from one of the parks in the center of town along the water to another park.  We went along it during one of our visits on a delightful, sunny, spring morning.  The hillside beside the water climbs up quite rapidly and there were many logs lying up the slope all well aligned with each other.  It was hard to tell whether they were integral to the stability of the slope because they weren’t deeply embedded.  However, their position seemed to suggest more of a motive, so I wonder if they are reinforcing the slope.

Go With The Long Lens

For quite a while I have been shooting almost exclusively with the 100-400mm lens while photographing aircraft.  Recently, I knew I had a couple of smaller aircraft inbound and I picked up the 500mm which hadn’t got a lot of use for a while.  While it is a fixed focal length and therefore inflexible for things getting too close, with something small, it works out fine.  When I checked out the images later, I noticed that I had a far higher keeper rate at low shutter speeds than I have got recently with the 100-400.

I decided to stick with it again on another day of shooting and had similar results.  I decided even to sacrifice the closer shots and work with the long lens to get framing I wanted further away and to then go for close ups of details when things got too large.  I was overall very happy with the results.  I think the weight of the 500mm is such that it is a lot harder to disturb it with small twitches.  The 100-400 is so much lighter, maybe it is more sensitive to my lack of smoothness.  The inertia of the big lens is a benefit.  I think I shall be using it more again going forward.  Besides, it is so sharp when you get it right!