Mad River Beach

Humboldt County Park

Click for location.

I finally did something about the fact that the dSLR (Nikon D3100) has a number or problems (main lens clouding up in the cold, vibration reduction sometimes becoming vibration creating, odd light metering, probably a number of other small things I've forgotten about) by the purchase of something new. Fixing it is likely to cost just as much since it is a dSLR, even if it was about the cheapest such. I've really never used it in a way that justified having a dSLR, so I have reverted back to a superzoom. It's still a step up from my last superzoom and not just because technology has marched on in the years since I purchased the last one. I went with a Panasonic Lumix FZ300. It can run from 25mm to 600mm (35mm equivalent), which isn't quite as wide as I would like on the wide end. On the other hand, I should be able to judge the correct exposure compensation better because the view finder is fed by a LCD and not a mirror. It shouldn't get foggy any time soon as it is hardened against the environment. Hopefully that means something good, especially as I am quite hard on cameras. I will definitely miss the near instant response to pressing the shutter and the battery life of the dSLR. I will not miss having to carry a second lens and switch it and still not having all that much more zoom for it.

In order to experiment a little with the camera, I took it down to Mad River Beach. It is on the spit of sand as the river flows north just before emptying into the sea. The river is on the east, the ocean on the west, and dunes run down the middle. I've hiked around the area before. I didn't bring the GPS, but one just pokes around the bits that one is interested in. Quite early on I found some signs of the coming spring.

Signs of the coming spring... or it should be.

And then I had a fight with the new camera. It likes focusing on the majority of items. I almost got it to focus near once, but it seemed like it was closest to the twigs behind at the start of focusing and so went there. The manual focus is actually quite accessible and it pops up a rectangle to see the location pixel for pixel. This can even be moved to locations other than the center. Still, I find my focus isn't quite as good or certain and definitely not as fast as the machine if I can make the machine do it.

There's the sign of the coming spring.

I walked along getting near to the river and played a bit with the zoom. There's a switch for it on the lens and around the shutter. I think the one on the lens might be a more comfortable one to use if I can get over the initial weirdness of doing something differently than I have done it before. For now, I sometimes find the camera zooming without me asking it to because I've gone and leaned a finger on that second switch.

Sea gulls on a sand bar near the far side of the river.

A little bit of the trail among the sand dunes. There's not much sand dune here.

Full zoom to the trees at the center of the photo above. So that's a lot of change in a couple seconds.

I found that some of the dunes had burned sometime in the recent past. That was surprising. I decided to sneak over the tall layer of dunes that separate the beach from the grasses and play among the waves. Well, get the point of view of the camera in among the waves because it can zoom that far. I stayed dry.

Little waves out on this lovely day. There's an electronic level, so I should have a much better chance of getting a flat horizon. Clouds and land mass and fog are making it difficult to percieve if that is working out.

Getting a closer look at the waves crashing furthest out makes them look a bit larger.

Of course, I had to do a little more experimentation with exactly how big that 24x zoom is. They go larger, but it's not always better. This one boasts better vibration reduction which is very necessary on a long zoom.

Looking down the beach. Not my footprints as I came over the hills to the left.

Zooming in along those footprints and there's actually quite the crowd out there. That is the area that is a straight shot across the dunes to the beach from the parking.

I then proceeded to take a lot of photos of the flow of foam across the beach. The harsh light toward the sun is, of course, difficult to deal with.

A larger wave fights the little bit of backwash remaining from the wave before.

The line of foam comes in.

There are other patterns to elicit and exquisite joy. The wind was blowing cold and constant out of the north and playing with the sand among the rocks. That was my favorite subject.

The paterns made by the wind in the sand are the best.

As I got back to the parking lot, I decided to have a little more battle with the focus in a situation where there were many focus levels possible. Once I put it all the way to a point focus, it could focus on a central item leaving much of the picture out of focus. There is still a little tendency to focus on the twigs behind, but I managed a much better success rate.

Ack! No no no no no!

See? Now doesn't that feel better?

Zoomed out has more in focus.

It was actually a little cold for trying to stop and focus on a new toy from time to time, but it's always nice to get out and see the park a little.




©2020 Valerie Norton
Written 7 Mar 2020