Lava Creatures: Elephant Cylon
Ok, next installment of a set of photos from recent visit to Hawaii. As I mentioned in the first photo, I took a day trip to the big island of Hawaii to do a helicopter tour over the lava flows at Kilauea with Kevin Benedict. We were expertly piloted in a dawn "doors off" flight by Paradise Helicopters, and accompanied by expert lava photographer Bruce Omori of Extreme Exposure.
It was one of the best things I've ever experienced, and having a set of interesting photos as a takeaway is just a bonus. As I said with my first photo, I kept seeing faces and "creatures" in the closeups of the lava. This was one of the first I spotted and I actually saw this face from the air (vs. recognizing it in the photo after the fact), so I was very excited to see the photo after I got back on the ground. Fortunately it did not disappoint and what I see here is like some unholy merger of an elephant and a robotic Cylon from the original Battlestar Galatica series (for those of an age to remember that!).
Shot with Pentax K-3ii and Pentax 150-450mm lens at 800 ISO/F4.5/150mm. Now for the final piece of the story that I made reference to in my last post: this was not the camera I wanted to shoot with in Hawaii. Pentax announced a new full frame camera in February, and I immediately placed a pre-order for that and it was expected to be delivered in mid-April. It was finally released just at the end of April and took a few days to make its way to US stores. My pre-order was finally fulfilled on the 4th, overnight shipped on the 5th and arrived on 6th. It was delivered to my home 3 hours after our plane took off for Hawaii. I tried several ways to see if I could get it diverted to Hawaii or re-shipped but none would get it there in time for our helicopter flight. So, after waiting approximately 1800 hours, the delivery missed my trip by 3 hours. I was very bummed about this because I new that the lava shooting would require high ISO and fast focus, both of which the new Pentax K-1 is supposed to do much better than my K-3. Fortunately, the ISO did not turn out to be a huge issue as the texture of the lava seems to hide a lot of noise nicely. And the new Pentax 150-450mm lens I did get in time focused plenty fast and delivered great results. So, now I get to look forward to breaking in the new K-1 on my next photo trip to Columbia River Gorge coming up in a couple of weeks.
Lava Creatures: Elephant Cylon
Ok, next installment of a set of photos from recent visit to Hawaii. As I mentioned in the first photo, I took a day trip to the big island of Hawaii to do a helicopter tour over the lava flows at Kilauea with Kevin Benedict. We were expertly piloted in a dawn "doors off" flight by Paradise Helicopters, and accompanied by expert lava photographer Bruce Omori of Extreme Exposure.
It was one of the best things I've ever experienced, and having a set of interesting photos as a takeaway is just a bonus. As I said with my first photo, I kept seeing faces and "creatures" in the closeups of the lava. This was one of the first I spotted and I actually saw this face from the air (vs. recognizing it in the photo after the fact), so I was very excited to see the photo after I got back on the ground. Fortunately it did not disappoint and what I see here is like some unholy merger of an elephant and a robotic Cylon from the original Battlestar Galatica series (for those of an age to remember that!).
Shot with Pentax K-3ii and Pentax 150-450mm lens at 800 ISO/F4.5/150mm. Now for the final piece of the story that I made reference to in my last post: this was not the camera I wanted to shoot with in Hawaii. Pentax announced a new full frame camera in February, and I immediately placed a pre-order for that and it was expected to be delivered in mid-April. It was finally released just at the end of April and took a few days to make its way to US stores. My pre-order was finally fulfilled on the 4th, overnight shipped on the 5th and arrived on 6th. It was delivered to my home 3 hours after our plane took off for Hawaii. I tried several ways to see if I could get it diverted to Hawaii or re-shipped but none would get it there in time for our helicopter flight. So, after waiting approximately 1800 hours, the delivery missed my trip by 3 hours. I was very bummed about this because I new that the lava shooting would require high ISO and fast focus, both of which the new Pentax K-1 is supposed to do much better than my K-3. Fortunately, the ISO did not turn out to be a huge issue as the texture of the lava seems to hide a lot of noise nicely. And the new Pentax 150-450mm lens I did get in time focused plenty fast and delivered great results. So, now I get to look forward to breaking in the new K-1 on my next photo trip to Columbia River Gorge coming up in a couple of weeks.