Elkhorn Slough

Out of town friends were visiting the other weekend and we thought it would be a fun day trip to go Kayaking at Elkhorn Slough, along the California coast near Watsonville. I had been there once before, and knew there would probably be lots of Sea Otters and Seals for us to see. For a while I have been wanting to try out Canon's IS lenses, so on a whim I called Calumet Photo in San Francisco to see if they had any Canon image stabilization lenses for rent. Fortunately the Calumet rental department had just received a new Canon 100-400 IS. I decided to rent the 100-400 IS and a 1.4x converter for the trip.

Most of the photos below are not quite sharp enough to enlarge past 8x10, but I was still very happy with the results and the lens. As you might have noticed from the rest of the web site, I really have not done any wildlife photography before this, but the 100-400 IS, a Kayak and the wildlife at Elkhorn Slough made it easy. The lens is pretty amazing, sharp and the IS feature really does give you at least a two stop advantage at 400mm. This gives you the equivalent, in some respects, of a 400 2.8, on a Kayak!

I must admit that I was a little nervous about dropping $3000USD worth of camera equipment in the water, but I figure what is camera equipment good for if your going to leave it at home. I tried two different types of film. I was not sure what the lighting would be like, and I was concerned that it might be fogged in, so I brought a role of E200. I also brought a roll of Kodak 100VS just for the fun of it. The very saturated blues below are from using 100VS in full sunlight. The blues are actually desaturated a little bit from the original scan, but they are still quite blue. All the pictures were taken with EOS3 and 100-400L IS. For most of them I also used Canon's 1.4 TC.

Enjoy the pictures.