This is a pretty good example of typical Olympic Coast weather. Lots of clouds blowing in off the Pacific.
It can be disappointing to those looking for a sunny day at the beach. You can get those, of course … but this is more typical. Sun breaks can happen and then leave again. And the result of this weather is the temperate rain forests of the Bogachiel, Hoh, Queets, and Quinault rivers.
I walked onto the ferry in Port Townsend and rode over to Whidbey Island (the Coupleville dock). On the island, you get off and are right next to Fort Casey State Park. Walking along the beach, I found this nice collection of pebbles that someone had assembled. A temporary art installation.
When I want to try out a ‘new’ film camera, the first thing I do is run a roll of film through it as fast as I can. Usually, I spend an hour or so down on the waterfront, shoot the roll and drop it in the mail on the way home. Lately, I tried out a Pentax 645N. This is a fairly large camera that shoots 120 film (this was Kodak Portra 400). I really enjoyed it, but found a streak on the negative (still trying to track down if it was a light leak, a scratch or an issue with the scanner at the lab). The nice thing about larger size film is you can crop a bunch off and still have decent quality… here, I cut off the left third of the image to eliminate the streak.
I recently bought a new lens: a Tokina f/8 400mm reflex. It is a wonderful lens for its small form and cost (less than 10% what a Nikon 400mm ‘normal’ telephoto lens lists for). There are some trade offs for any reflex style lens: you get a fixed aperture and some artifacts from the front reflex mirror. I took it on the Port Townsend – Coupville ferry run and while on Whidbey Island, I walked around Fort Casey.
One of the characteristics of long telephoto lenses is relatively shallow depth of field. You can use it to your advantage, but it can be a challenge getting your image to work out. In the image below, I was focused on getting the kite in the image … which I did successfully. But the kite is just about all that’s in focus.
These are both images of grass along the beach. The top one has the grass growing almost on a vertical bank with just a few green shoots coming up through the yellowed remains. It was taken with my iPhone, while the bottom image was taken with a film camera. You can see the film grain pretty clear in it, especially in the sky. Also, the wind was blowing the grass below … but in both you can see the effects of the wind.
