Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2002/09/09
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]I was in Yosemite in late Sept. & early Oct. 2000, then drove through Tioga Pass over to Mono Lake for a few days. Practical matters: There is NO GAS in Yosemite Valley. The closest gas is 35-40 miles away, which is farther than it sounds, since you can't drive very fast on the roads around there (unless you have a death wish). Be sure you're full up before you get to the Valley or plan on killing a couple hours round trip to get gas. The road through the park to Tioga Pass also isn't particularly long, but it took me about six hours to drive it. Some of this was taken up with photographic stops, but I suspect that only added two hours at most. Again, this is not a fast road. There isn't a lot of light after dark in the Valley, and, of course, even less elsewhere. I didn't have a flashlight and wished I did. Photography: Unless you're planning to photograph wildlife OUTSIDE the Valley, you don't need any lens longer than 50mm. The shorter the lens, the better. (The wildlife in the Valley is *very* tame and you don't need long lenses to photograph the critters; you can walk right up to them.) Everything at Yosemite is on a grand scale, more so than you can possibly imagine if you've never seen it in person; even Ansel Adams at his considerable best is but a pale shadow of the reality. That's why you need wide angle lenses. Afternoon and sunset photography, particularly in color, can be quite effective, with the red of the setting sun reflected on the faces of many of the formations (e.g., Cathedral Dome). When I went there I took a non-AI Nikon rig (because I thought, on another part of the trip, that I'd need to copy some documents and didn't want to carry two complete outfits) with 28mm f/3.5, 55mm f/3.5 Micro-, and 105mm Nikkors. I didn't need the 105. I also took my trusty IIIc with the Voigtlander 15mm f/4.5 Heliar. Most pictures--certainly all the best ones--were taken with the 15 and 28, and a few with the 55. If I had it to do over, I'd leave the 105 at home. Mono Lake is pretty much the same business, for the same reasons, though the scale is not quite so grand as Yosemite. You might want to take some fairly close-up pictures of the sand tufa, but you won't need to get closer than a DR Summicron will allow to do this. I used ASA 100 color print film and T-400CN at ASA 400, with the Nikons' built-in meters and a Gossen Pilot for the IIIc. Worked fine. As long as you're more or less in the neighborhood, drive out the dirt road to Bodie, too, if you have time. Good luck. Howard Sanner flagstad@mindspring.com - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html