Roadtrip Astoria with the Sony and iPhone
I finally decided I was ready to take some time off and go out and explore a bit. Since this is (no, seriously) the first time I’ve stayed in a hotel room for any reason not involving actually moving to Washington, it was to me a pretty big deal. I have so far avoided Covid and I hope to keep it that way if I can, so I’ve been hesitant to go travelling or wander into areas of strangers where I can avoid it.
To be honest, this has its drawbacks as well, and isolation is a thing, too, and it can become more difficult over time to “break the streak” and move one. As a society we are clearly past the “Covid as pandemic emergency” phase of life and to a good degree I think we’ve figured out “Covid as a thing we just have to deal with”, and I felt it was time for me to start thinking about what my own personal new normal is going to be, and that does include both hotel rooms and restaurants. At some point, you do just have to get back on the horse and see how it goes.
For me, it went pretty well. I ended up scheduling a short trip, as much to test out how well my travel gear was set up (overall: pretty well). I ended spending 3 nights in Astoria, a place I really like and which is now about a three hour drive from the house. It is a nice base camp for exploring an interesting chunk of the Northwest coast, and I ended up driving almost 800 miles in four days, going as far north as Tokeland, Washington and South to the Cape Meares Lighthouse.
I kept the trip casual, with a focus on exploring with no real commitment to “getting that shot”. I did end up doing both birding and photography, but in both cases it was really more about seeing something interesting and exploring it rather than planning any destination or composition.
Over the four days, I shot only with the Sony A7IV with the 28-70 lens on it, so I could start getting a feel for composition with that lens, and with the new iPhone 14 pro, because I thought it might be interesting to compare the same location/composition between the two. I ended up shooting 65 images on the Sony and about 30 on the iPhone, and once I did my cull and edit, I ended up with 12 images from the Sony I felt were worth processing and showing off, and 9 on the iPhone.
First, my favorite image of the trip, of the Cape Desolation North Lighthouse in Washington:
Everything was shot handheld — no tripod or filters — and I limited myself to about ten minutes at any location exploring compositions. This one, if it’s not obvious, was really easy to find but a bit complicated to frame well, and then it was about trying to time some good wave action. I will admit up front that I had the camera set in aperture mode for the trip, which wasn’t a problem, but I then more or less forgot I could change the aperture, so most of the trip was shot at F5.6, and this shot especially would have benefitted from a bit more depth of field. All part of the process of learning both the new camera setup and how to take photos that aren’t 600mm bird shots again.
I shot this location on the iPhone as well, and processed those images in the Photos app, and this turned our rather well, I think:
I took a much wider shot on the iPhone, and I’m fascinated how the Photos app accented the blue in the sky. I do really like it a lot.
Here are the rest of my Sony images:
I’m not sure any of thse are “portfolio worthy” but ‘m pretty happy with the set. the two daughter trees on the fallen log definitely need more depth of field, and I needed to get down on the same plane as them, but where they were, I had no way to scramble down from the roadbed, but it was still a worthy experiment (and the berry vine on the fallen log was a happy find at the same location)
Here are the iPhone photos:
The first shot was out my hotel window, the Best Western in Astoria. You’ll notice a shot of the Cape Meares Lighthouse in the iPhone batch and not on the Sony. To be honest, half way down the trail to the lighthouse the raindrops started, and I bailed from the walk.
Overall, some nice shots. I’m a sucker for a nice lighthouse, and I’m happy with the Cape Desolation images. I think I prefer the two daughter trees in the iPhone image, and I found in general I was shooting wider with the iPhone than with the Sony — not sure why.
Mostly, though, it was just nice to go out for a few days, unplug from the day to day, and see what I and the camera could do together.
