Tag Archives: Fujinon 18-135mm

Ohiopyle State Park after 24 hours of rain

In an uncommon occurrence this Winter, we have had roughly 24 hours of steady rain and storms.  Creeks and rivers all around were rising and overflowing their banks.  Once the worst of that finished, I drove over to my favorite local hiking spot at Ohiopyle State Park to scope things out.  Normally, this park has quite a few awesome waterfalls, streams and a nice river, but with the amount of rain that fell, I figured those would be well above normal levels.

Knowing it was currently raining, I grabbed the only brand of bag I trust in any kind of weather, a Billingham.  It doesn’t matter how hard it might rain, the bag would protect my gear without messing around with clumsy rain covers.  Sure enough, even after being out in the rain for a few hours, nothing inside the bag got wet.  The same could not be said for myself.  The gear in the bag was my usual landscape setup consisting of my Fuji X-Pro2, Rokinon 12mm f/2, Fuji 18-135mm and a Fuji 23mm f/2.  I can cover pretty much anything with it and is still compact enough to fit in the Hadley Small.  The other gear was an AmazonBasics carbon fiber tripod and a Variable ND filter.

The water levels were way higher than normal and you had to be very careful moving over the rocks, as one incorrect step could lead to an untimely swim.  Thankfully, my footing held sure and I was able to return home to process the pictures.

Macro’s of Cicada’s

The Cicada’s are coming out of their long hibernation in force and they are just about everywhere.  The buzzing has started and as soon as you step outside, you’ll see them.  I wanted to get a closer look at a few, so I clipped my Raynox Macro lens adapter to my 18-135mm lens, grabbed a flash and small softbox with TTL cable and mounted the camera on a small tabletop tripod to go in the backyard.

I didn’t get into focus stacking or anything like that.  Shutter speed was 1/180, Aperture at f/13, ISO 400 and the flash was firing via a TTL cable into a small Rogue FlashBender softbox about 4 inches from the bug.  Since the tabletop tripod sits 6″ off the ground, it was the perfect height.