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Big Tujunga Canyon Bridge near the dam  

Sun setting under hazy clouds over Malibu mountains from Mt. Lowe trail. I didn’t see a single other person on my hike which seemed weird given how great it was.  

From the Mt Lowe railway tunnel looking towards Mt San Antonio. Also displaying some of the power of this 28-300mm lens  

Welp. I made a significant investment into this photo hobby of mine that I've been gradually learning since the beginning of last year. You might remember how it all started, last winter I dug out a Pentax film camera from storage and shot a few rolls. This camera had some risks of losing precious film in the mail and limits to 24 and 36 exposures that must be perfectly done or were a waste of money. I loved taking pictures and that shutter click, though. So I got the most sensible bang-for-my-buck entry-level camera in June which is the Olympus OM-D EM-10 mark II. Many good reasons to justify that, but it left me wanting a couple of things. Better photo quality from a larger camera sensor, better feel of the camera and quality of images. Now that I've taken some more trips and learned a lot more about photography, and thanks to my brother for an Adobe subscription, I kept rolling my eyes at the limitations of the micro four-thirds mirrorless system. I missed the cler-chunk feel of a real shutter opening and shutting and how much more information a full-frame camera can gather. There are pros and cons to everything and I was tipping the scales back and forth for a long time to determine if I should get a full-frame DSLR.

Sunday’s walk around the Redondo pier area. I just had my earphones in and tried to find a creative way to compose the place.  

I finally did. The Nikon D750. It's been around for a few years but it's a workhorse and powerful camera with solid reviews and the right price range. A user can use an endless variety of lenses to it and it's likely not to change for a long time. The other front-runner was a new Sony A7iii which is a mirrorless camera but it's full-frame and offered a ton of technology like my Olympus. Some of that worried me, because I feel like the mirrorless cameras are kind of delicate, but what worried me more is the cost of native Sony lenses... most are more than the camera itself and it would've brought a bundle out of my budget. I could go on, trust me I was fully engaged in thinking about these two cameras for weeks.

For now I still have the Olympus and if nobody wants to buy it then I guess I'll keep it. It's funny because the complete setup I had for that is less money than an *inexpensive* lens for the Nikon. So I guess you could say this hobby is getting serious. I am excited to learn even more as I go on.

Other pictures from around Redondo as well as the result of “operation hoist kayak so I don’t have to keep cleaning the bottom” by using extra dock line to suspend it out of the water. I’m please with the result and hope no more really strong winds come through for awhile. Center is a picture of the new Nikon D750 and 28-300 lens. I probably won’t use the lens hood that Often as it makes it seem even bigger and caused some minor vignette when at the widest angle. 

not much of a sunset through the haze 

Does this qualify as street photography? 

I’ve noticed the colors are different on this camera. probably more true and wid-ranging especially the dynamic range between light sky and dark shadows. 

Back to my adventure. Mia was out of town which meant I had some boat chores to do, including hoisting up my kayak on extra dock line and (hopefully) the last time I had to scrub the bottom of it. Midwaythrough SaturdayI was antsy and decided to pack a cooler with lunch and my backpack with some hiking clothes and go for a drive. I went up north of LA into the Angeles Forest on the winding 2-lane roads. These are popular for car and motorcycle enthusiasts who speed around the corners so I found myself pulling aside at turn-outs at least 20 times. I was on an entirely different pace for my day. The point was to see what's up there because I was always curious, and to find some good vantage points to try out my new camera. I eventually made my way to the Mt Wilson summit which overlooks the LA basin and could see all the way to Catalina even through the haze and clouds. I then hiked on a trial that was once used as a railroad from 1902 - 1938 wrapping along cliffs and through tunnels on narrow trestles - It's actually insane that they built this. It looks more like a frightening wooden roller coaster nailed into hillsides from the black and white pictures online. As things go, there was a devastarting wind at the observatory that it served, which knocked it down. So someone turned the land into a tavern to keep people coming up but then that had a fire and was never rebuilt. It was dismantled a few years later.

Sometimes I want to take these far trips to find hikes, views, and a feeling of the outdoors along with some interesting history. I think of Death Valley, Sequoia, Joshua Tree, Big sur, Lost Coast, etc. But this was basically in Los Angeles and checked off all the boxes, albeit they'd be smaller check marks.

Looking down at Pasadena from the tunnel

There were images at the trail head of a railway track and train along this cliff through the tunnel to provide supplies to Mt Wilson. Also I was impressed by the camera gathering the sun hitting the peak on the right while still gathering detail in the tunnel. Unedited.  

dusk view Angeles Crest Highway and long exposure to get some of the cars racing down it.