Glamis 2017 Sand Duning Motorsports Photos Sony a9 150-600 Lens

Time for another round of Glamis off-road madness, shot with the Sony a9 and Tamron 150-600 G1 lens, on Thanksgiving weekend 2017. These photos were taken at Oldsmobile Hill, and at the sand drags. Many of these rigs are specialized high horsepower sand rails, costing upwards of $100k or more. They move at speeds that are a challenge for any autofocusing system, but the a9 did a pretty admirable job of it. The lens was at it’s weakest at the 600mm focal length, and after getting really hot in the sun at one point, it started giving focus errors. Things got better after it cooled down. The LA-EA3 adapter has been updated, so it allows for 10fps.

The first picture, of the canal, was a stack of several images, shot with the Sony A7r and an old Olympus 28/3.5 lens.

Dan Euritt

Anza-Borrego Desert Park: Fonts Point Sunrise & Sunset, Lower Willows Trail

Fonts Point in the Anza-Borrego State Park is a great place to view both sunrise and sunset. At 1,253′ elevation, it looks down on the Borrego Badlands, and you can even see a sliver of the Salton Sea, to the east. The road in is four miles of dirt and fairly deep sand in spots, so passenger cars do tend to get stuck pretty regularly.

If you are looking for a nice hike in the Anza-Borrego park, there is the Lower Willows Trail, which is located in an area that is fed year-round by the Santa Catarina Spring. To get there, you leave the town of Borrego Springs on the DiGiorgio Road, going towards Coyote Canyon. Here are links for more info.

https://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2014/apr/16/roam-exploring-rare-commodity-anza-borrego/
https://borregohiking.com/hiking/lower_willows.html

These Anza-Borrego desert photos were shot with a Sony a7R and an old Olympus 28mm f/3.5 film camera lens.

Dan Euritt

Sony a9 action sequences, surfing at the Hurley Pro 2017, Tamron 150-600

These surf photos are 10fps short sequences, shot with a Sony α9(ILCE-9), LAEA3 adapter, and a first-gen Tamron 150-600 lens. The camera settings were 1/2500th, baseiso-iso250, 600mm focal length, aperture wide open, choose “PDAF” in the camera settings. The WSL surf contest location was Trestles CA, for the Hurley Pro 2017. These are some of the best pro surfers in the world.

The autofocus field was set to “wide”, but you don’t see all 693 of the OSPDAF focus points lighting up, due to the restrictions of the LAEA3 a-mount adapter interface. Other caveats that should be mentioned include no continuous autofocus when shooting video, like you’d normally see with a camcorder. When you hit a focus button while shooting video with the LAEA3 on the Sony a9, none of the OSPDAF points light up, but the lens will focus slowly; it’s probably reverting to CDAF. The big question is how that performance compares to using a Metabones ef-mount adapter, with a Tamron 150-600.

Dan Euritt

Anza Borrego Wildflowers, Super Bloom, Cougar Canyon

The Anza Borrego desert is about as green as it gets, and there is a super bloom of wildflowers, that is going off in places that haven’t seen flowers in over 10 years. This unusual display of color in the desert has made national headlines in the media, so there are some pretty big crowds, especially on the weekends.

If you have a 4wd vehicle, and the patience to drive around the sightseers, you can avoid the crowds by heading out to Sheep Canyon, which is located in the northern part of the Anza Borrego desert. You’ll have to drive over some pretty rough ground, but as your author saw last weekend, someone did it with a brand-new Toyota 4Runner. You will have to drive through the stream at a couple of points, but the water is nowhere near as deep as it used to be a few years ago. See the creek photo from 2011, to get an idea of how deep it was; the water used to be up to the floorboard of the vehicle, with 33″ tires, and you had to drive through that canopy of trees. Much to the dismay of local offroaders, the park service has filled that in with dirt, and they have also smoothed and graded the road way down.

Right before you hit the end of the line, at the primitive campground, the dirt road forks off to the left, to Cougar Canyon. Park in the turnaround, and walk along the path, beside a brook that should be flowing with water well into the spring. The foot path forks off to the right, to Cougar Canyon itself. More info here: Explore the wilds of Cougar Canyon

If you stay in the primitive campground, Sheep Canyon is directly to your left, see the photo of it below. Once you start up the canyon, there isn’t any defined trail, you are scrambling over boulders and following cairns. You can see the palm tree groves directly ahead, but the canyon also forks off to the right, and there are some small tree-lined areas around a stream. This hike is definitely harder than going up to Cougar Canyon. There is a lot of erosion here, as seen in the Sheep Canyon photo, which means that you’ll be driving over a wide wash area on the way in, that has a lot of deep sand in it. It’s a good idea to air down the tires for that section of the trail, to keep from getting stuck.

The photo of Sheep Canyon is from 2015, and you can see how little vegetation there is on the sides of the hills. The 2017 Anza Borrego photos show much more plant growth on the hillsides.

You might be asking yourself how this Anza Borrego super bloom compares to the Death Valley super bloom of 2016? The latter was far more impressive, but this San Diego county super bloom is a standout in it’s own right. Even if flowers aren’t your thing, the drive into Sheep Canyon is worth the trip, it’s the crown jewel of the park.

All photos taken with a Sony a7R; the wide pictures were done with a legacy Pentax-M 35/2.8 prime, and the longer photos were shot with a Sony Fe90 macro lens.

Dan Euritt