JHP Newsletter - 2004, No. 3, 23 December

Equipment: Canon EOS 1Ds Mk II

My new Canon EOS 1Ds Mk II arrived at the beginning of the month, and boy is it an awesome piece of equipment! The full-frame 16.6 megapixel sensor creates spectacular image files. They're slightly smaller than a scanned slide (about 19 megapixels), but there's no distracting grain. The 1Ds Mk II has the same physical and menu layout as my EOS 1D Mk II which makes switching between the two bodies a snap. The internal mechanisms must have more differences than just the sensor size and associated electronics, because the bodies sound different when the shutter is released. The 1D Mk II snaps like my old EOS 1v, and the 1Ds Mk II has a duller sound, almost like the mirror moves slower. The mirror mechanism may have been changed because the 1D Mk II can shoot at 8.5 frames per second and the 1Ds Mk II can only shoot at 4.

Travel: Torres del Paine, Chile

I had a wonderful six-day visit to Torres del Paine NP in the Patagonia region of Chile. It was my first visit to southern South America, and I can't wait to go back. I traveled with Joe and Mary Ann McDonald (www.hoothollow.com) and four other participants. We had a local guide who specializes in that park and who is a photographer himself, so the arrangements were perfect for a photo tour. Unfortunately, the weather wasn't very cooperative. We had two days where it rained for the whole morning or the whole afternoon, which is very unusual. Rain showers usually blow in and out quickly with blue skies and white clouds in between.

Because we were so far south (about as far from the Equator as the southern panhandle of Alaska), the days were long. We were up for the 5:00 sunrise, and usually didn't get to bed before 11:00 at night. We usually had an hour or two during the day to rest a bit, but it was still an action-packed, and tiring, trip.

The main attraction of Parque Nacional Torres del Paine is the landscape with 10000 ft mountains rising from the 300 ft plains with almost no foothills. We stayed in a neat small hotel (Hosteria Pehoé) on a small island in a lake (Lago Pehoé) accessible by a 100 yd pedestrian bridge with a fantastic view of Paine Grande (Big Paine) and the Cuernos del Paine (Paine Horns) (See below L.).