Eureka Dunes in December
Twas a promising approach to Eureka Dunes today, just gorgeous.
But... after scarfing lunch, half way up to the summit the clouds had other ideas.
Still, I made some “blue” images with the Phase One IQ4, I just cannot stay up past midnight yet another night processing raw files... Capture One 20 is all well and good, but it is so slow to work with compared to Adobe Camera Raw, and it has bugs that are slowing me down too. But see the Moonrise shot further below.
If you like such stuff, conditions now and impending look fanastic. Except for the heavily tracked dunes—with little wind and high water content, tracks have been accumulating.
A major deluge hit this area a few days ago, and I’m guessing that might mean a super-bloom come late February or so. So much water that there is road damage for miles (cuts through the road as seen below), and standing water in places. And the sand of the dunes is heavy with moisture.
I’m stunned by how bad the image quality of the iPhone 11 Pro Max is—most of the panos I took have severely mutilated pixels, with heavy noise with heavy-handed compression, posterization and pixellation. Raw files are better, but can also suffer from extreme noise if the dynamic range is high. Of the images I’ve taken with it, 90% are total crap in image quality terms.
iPhone 11 Pro Max + iPhone 11 Pro Max 6.0 mm f/2 @ 6mm
ENV: Eureka Dunes, altitude 2881 ft / 878 m, 55°F / 12°C
[low-res image for bot]
iPhone 11 Pro Max + iPhone 11 Pro Max 6.0 mm f/2 @ 6mm
ENV: Eureka Dunes, altitude 3499 ft / 1066 m, 45°F / 7°C
[low-res image for bot]
Phase One IQ4 + Schneider Kreuznach LS 240mm f/4.5 IF + polarizer Zeiss
ENV: Eureka Dunes, altitude 3500 ft / 1067 m, 50°F / 10°C
RAW: LACA corrected, vignetting corrected
[low-res image for bot]
