Too Much Desk Work, Time for the Mountains!
I’ve been working at a furious pace in July and in a day or two it’s time for some R&R and some field work in a place I love: the White Mountains of California, in which I also do occasional photo tours once or twice a year. Perhaps with a little luck I’ll get some decent stars this trip— never a sure thing.
I’ll be schlepping Nikon and Canon and Olympus and Zeiss and perhaps Leica for a variety of purposes for this site’s publications and guides.
New research
I have a number of questions to answer, such as:
- Do my D800 and D800E autofocus accurately now that both have been adjusted by Nikon service?
- How do all the Zeiss ZF.2 lenses behave on the D800E? More exploration of how they hold up on 36 megapixels.
- How do the new Canon EF 24mm f/2.8 IS and EF 28mm f/2.8 IS lenses perform (very disappointing that both ship without a lens hood!).
- Can the Olympus E-M5 do decent night-time photography?
- How does the new Olympus E-M5 stack up against the new Sony RX100 and stalwart Fuji X100 and diminutive Panasonic GF3?
- Nikon 14-24mm zoom against the Zeiss 15mm f/2.8 Distagon and Zeiss Milvus 18mm f/2.8 Distagon and 21mm f/2.8 Distagon. That is, if I can manage to do a proper comparison, given frustrating focus shift of the Nikon 14-24.
- Well, how does the Canon 5D Mark III stack up on landscape against the Nikon D800E? Especially with dark shadows and conifers?
- How does the Olympus E-M5 with the Olympus SHG 7-14mm stack up against its equivalent on the Nikon D800E, the Nikon 14-24/2.8G, especially where depth of field is a challenge?
- How much of an issue is field curvature with the Zeiss wides? (see field curvature with the 25mm f/2 ).
I won’t get this all done, but I hope to gather enough material to answer many questions before the Leica M Monochrom shows up in a few weeks.
Cycling
I also plan on repeating my Trek to the Summit of White Mountain Peak on my Moots MootoX YBB 29er titanium mountain bike, as biking is my other passion.
