January 2, 2011
Egg Factory at Bisti and Live View

There were some clouds building on the afternoon of Christmas Day over the Bisti Wilderness, so we decided to hike out to the Egg Factory, an area with a nice concentration of concretions. By the time we got there, the clouds had moved out and we were left with clear skies. There was some nice late-afternoon light, but I waited until after sunset to do most of my photography. I like photographing right after sunset because the harsh shadows are gone, including the ones cast by you and your tripod, and there's usually some wonderful pastel color on the scene. I used my favorite landscape lens, the Canon TS-E 24mm f3.5 L II, to capture the image above and used the tilt motion to align the plane of focus along the eggs.

Live View

I also used Live View for the first time in the field on that afternoon to help me focus. The 24 TS II is a manual focus lens, and DSLR viewfinders aren't really designed for focusing manually. In the past, I would get most of my images taken with the 24 TS II and 24 TS in focus throughout the image, but occasionally the focus and/or tilt were off. Since switching to setting the tilt and focus with the help of Live View, I no longer have to wait until I get back to my computer to find out if an image is in focus — I can get it right in the field by zooming in at key points of the image to check focus before capturing the image.

My partner, Jan Forseth, provided the key piece of information to let me start using Live View in the field. I had set everything up on my camera beforehand, but forgot that it was the Set button that turned Live View on and off on my 1Ds Mk III. Jan was able to look up the directions that she had entered on her iPhone. Thanks Jan!