james_r_babb

Bob--

Best moose viewing is along the Kokadjo road, which runs between Greenville and the Golden Road (the road to Baxter splits off the Golden Road), and also up into the Roach ponds, the road to which splits off at the ville of Kokadjo. Next best is up the other side of Moosehead toward Rockwood. The hitch is, moose-hunting season is open in the northern zone from October 4 - 9, and after that the moose are apt to be pretty squirrely and keep to the deep woods.

 

The foliage is 100 percent in the Greenville area now, but just barely starting to turn down here on the coast--although the Winnebagos full of leaf peepers are clotting route 1 big-time.

 

About the moose sanctuary in Gray, mentioned by a later poster: As best I remember this is a state-run site comprising a clump of chain-link fences with a few bewildered animals (usually orphans or urban-intruder offenders) of various species incarcerated within.

 

J.R.Babb

We're having a dry spring here in Maine and the blackflies aren't bad; because we're also having an early spring, I'd expect to see blackflies in the Sandy Stream Pond area by early June this year. Moose may be harder to spot in the ponds until the blackflies start flushing them out of the woods. The Kokadjo area and the Roach Pond Chain (just east of Moosehead) are also prime viewing spots for moose, maybe better than Baxter because there are more nearby five-year-old clear-cuts to support their browse.

As for repellents, I've backed off from high-test Deet mixtures like Ben's and find about the same protection with Deep Woods Off, which at 40% Deet is slightly more benign and in my experience less likely to drive you nuts over an extended period.

Long sleeves, pants, and boots are essential; the fabric should be woven from something very tight: mosquitoes drill easily through the loose weave of blue jeans, and teeshirts don't even slow them down. Tuck your pants into your boots and pull your socks up over the outside of your pants; sure you'll look like a Monty Python escapee, but you'll also look like those of us who live here year-round and have learned to deal with these little buggers.

The ultimate defense is a bug jacket--not the all-mesh kind, which are so easily penetrated by mosquitoes as to be almost a joke--but the tightly woven cotten kind with a built-in mesh hood and mesh ventilation panels under the pits. Up in the Arctic, folks wear these from frost-out to freeze-up. And with good reason.

And wear gloves for photographing; Deet is a universal solvent for cameras.

Bob--

Baxter is the anti-national park; it is, after all, a state park, a

gift to us Mainers from a former governor with deep pockets.

 

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Baxter's moose population is kinda sparse compared with other nearby

areas; clearcuts, ugly though they may be, are prime moose habitat,

and climax forests, as in Baxter, are not.

 

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The best way to see moose in that area of Maine is to base in

Greenville at the bottom of Moosehead Lake (Indian Hill Motel is

about $32/night after October 16) and either (or alternately) drive

north on Route 15 up the west side of the lake about an hour before

sunset; the road from Greenville through Kokadjo to the Golden Road

and the Baxter Park area has just as many moose and maybe a few more,

if you take the sideroad just before Kokadjo that leads by First

Roach Pond.

 

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Stop in any clearcut area and glass with binoculars, or head down any

logging road running off the main road.

 

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And be careful. Twenty-something people died in moose/car collisions

up here last year. Moose don't reflect light, they like to hang out

along roads (particularly in the spring, when they're attracted by

residual road salt), and they're at precisely the right height to end

up in the front seat with you.

 

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Happy moose hunting--with fill flash.

No doubt Velvia produces unreal images, exactly as does a polarizer or a split-neutral-density filter. But among magazine photo editors, Velvia has become normal, not unreal. I've shot identical scenes at exactly the same time of day, using the same lens (and different bodies), one on Velvia, one on other emulsions, and sent them off to the art director in the same sheet of chromes. The Velvia chrome is always their choice.

My own quest for more POP and Intensity translated directly into more sales, and drawing back from that quest in search of ideological purity would translate directly into fewer sales. Doubtless that's made me a liar, but then for better or for worse, I've fallen into the business of selling to liars, as have most of us. Which is why I never go anywhere without a body or a back loaded with Velvia: It's a buyer's market.

I can't find any mention in the Calumet catalog about recessed lens boards for the Tachihara/CalumetXM/Osaka 4x5 field. Are these available? Will recessed lensboards for the Linhof Tech fit for, say, a 55mm Grandagon?

And can a recessed lensboard be used reversed for more bellows draw on a 300??

Thanks

Is there a FAQ or listing somewhere that might show what boards fit what cameras? I.e., Sinars seem to fit Toyos; Linhofs fit lotsa stuff, etc.

 

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On my quest for The Right Camera, meaning enough movements to tie it in a knot for the close-up product photography I have to do, but enough portability so that i don't invent excuses not to stuff it in the backpack for things I want to do, I'm finding that one camera to do it all translates into muy $$$$$, and maybe I'm better off with a generic low-ball monorail for the studio/close-to-home stuff and a lightweight field camera for lugging into the sticks.

 

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If, of course, they both take the same board.

 

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Comment?

Don't put Deet on your hands if you'll be handling plastic (as in most camera bodies). Even if you keep it on the backs of your hands, it'll find its way onto your equipment.

 

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Wear gloves. The LoweProw photographer's gloves work perfectly for black flies and no-see-ums (which are chewers) and are OK for nondetermined mosquitoes (which drill through the fabric). If the skeeters are really bad, wear a pair of surgical gloves beneath them.

Like most magazines, OP is in the business of selling advertising; subscriber fees in the $15/yr range generally either barely or don't quite cover the costs of plant, manufacturing, and distribution, and any profit (the reason for a business to exist, after all) comes from ad revenues.

 

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Really good magazines (Atlantic Monthly, say) have always maintained an inviolable wall between editorial and marketing. In average magazines these days, that wall has become very porous, and marketing often overly influences editorial content--often by going over editorial's head to the parent company's CFO (and since most magazines these days have a parent company, this is usually successful).

 

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In the worst magazines of all, though, the editors have marketing backgrounds. I've been in publishing 15 years (books and magazines), and I've yet to see a marketing person who didn't feel he or she knew precisely what people wanted to read or see and in truth--as shown by the only true meter of a magazine's value to its readers: renewal rates--didn't have a clue.

 

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They sure know what the advertisers want, though, which is product placement and just enough editorial/art content to troll up new faces from the newstands. OP fits my definition of a magazine run by a marketing person.

 

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Despite its flaws, OP's better than nothing, and sometimes it accidentally runs good articles, as do Pop Photo and Shutterbug (but not Photographic, as near as I can tell--OP's Editor du jour's alma mater). Collectively, however, most of their content is dross.

 

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Nature Photographer I've seen once, and it wasn't bad but it looks like a shoestring operation--one that should be encouraged, I think, lest it go the way of most struggling magazines, not to mention do dos and passenger pigeons.

 

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Has anyone seen Camera Arts from the guy who publishes View Camera? Trying to find a copy here in rural Maine, but so far no success.

I've been using this lens for about 8 months and love it--with some caveats (slow speed being most noteworthy; big filter size--72mm--being another). I use it a lot for backpacking and landscapes, because it has enough range so that I needn't carry other lenses. I carry a PK11A extension tube that turns it into a fair-to-middlin macro lens. However, the lens' slow speed means I'm almost always working off a tripod; this may not be a problem for you if you're planning to shoot negative film, which holds its quality at higher speed. For low-speed chrome, however, you're in the shaky-shutterspeed range when you stop down one or two stops, especially if you're using a polarizer.

 

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Under extreme magnification, the 24-120's images aren't as sharp as with my 105 macro, but they're definitely of publishable quality; the 24-120 is extremely sharp and brilliantly contrasty for a lens of its range.

 

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If you use high-speed print film (ISO 400) or shoot mostly in bright sun, it's an excellent all-around lens. You mention wildlife photography, however: It's way too short for that; you'll need a 300 at least if you're serious about wildlife shots.

Anyone have experience with these Galvin babyviews they'd care to share? I need swings and tilts for some specific jobs but can't use larger than 2x3, and these things look like just the ticket--provided I can find a used one.

Vibration analysis theory is all well and good, but a tripod light enough to be carried everywhere you go always produces sharper photographs than the heavyweight tripod you leave back in the tent because you don't want to walk eight miles with it banging against your back.

As far as the relative vibration properties of carbon fiber composites versus aluminum, anyone who has sailed similar boats, one equipped with an aluminum mast and the other with a carbon-fiber composite, notices the difference right off: compared with the constant thrumming and microvibrations of the aluminum mast, the CF mast is almost eerily silent and feels dead as a doornail.

It aint' scientific, but it's good enough for me to pop for a gitzo carbon fiber as soon as next tax year begins and my Schedule 179 depreciation clock resets to zero. I've lost too many shots 'cause the tripod stayed back at camp.

Well, I live, fish, and shoot in Maine and spend a lot of time doing the same in places like Labrador, Ungava, and NWT, and the best avoidance system I've found is a bug jacket made from tight-knit cotton with mesh ventilation panels combined with thin gloves and 40% Deet (all the Inuit I know seem to like Deep Woods Off). The all-mesh bug jackets, I found to my sorrow on a week-long float trip down the Levefre River in Ungava PQ, don't work; they tear, they rip, and wherever the mesh stretches across you body, the skeeters bite right through.

Wear long, tightly knit pants (skeeters bite right through blue jeans) with your cuffs tucked into your boots. After a few days you hardly notice them.

I guess I have less an answer than a further question. I don't use anything bigger than a 300 f4.5 and don't ever expect to. What I do, however, is travel into outback places in small planes with an extreme weight/size limit on baggage. A 1228 is two pounds lighter and several inches shorter than a 224, meaning it can go in a carry-on for a commercial flight then right into the Beaver or Otter and into the bush, all in the same small bag.

Lots of people seem to offer cautions against the Gitzo tripods with four-section legs (vs. three-section). The 1228 has four-section legs yet it seems immune, mostly, to this criticism.

So do people who've used this tripod on lenses of reasonable size find it does a better job of holding a camera rock-steady than other tripods of similar portability? If so, then at least for my purposes it doesn't matter what it costs.