Camera on the mountains 01-25-10

I could not get online last night late, or at 3:30am when I tried again. Do you suppose there are just too many bloggers on line at those hours?

On Sunday I drove off early to see if I could find some better viewpoints of the snow covered mountains. My intent was to try out the new Canon digital camera to get a feeling for the range of settings.

This and the next two pictures were taken at a spot about three-quarters of a mile from Bastanchury Hill. Here the barriers are more challenging due to the plexi-fence that completely surrounds the housing development below. After the fact, I thought I should have toted along a stool to stand on! This picture is the normal setting on my camera.

Turning on the telephoto option gives a closer view.

Turning the telephoto all the way on magnifies 16X the normal setting. Although the instructions say 10X is the max.

I drove south and east to try to find a better viewpoint. But this is the best wide angle shot I could take - at the intersection of Hwy 91 and Tustin Ave it is quite close to my house. Anaheim Lakes are just behind the white building on the right. Try clicking on the image to see the full wide range of the mountains.

I found a spot in Anaheim Hills that has a rather good view, but there is no parking on the main thoroughfare and trees/building block the view once I turned off that street. So, I parked in the median strip! The traffic was very light - I suppose a lot of good Orange County Christians were in church at that hour.

This area is all rolling hills and upscale housing developments - lots of gated communities, walking paths, luxury vehicles. I like the symmetry of this picture with the mountains arching overhead and the street dipping down in the middle.

The mountains look imposing here - rather like the front range of the Rockies. Now they even have the dense housing in Colorado. Hope they can control it better than SCalifornia has done. I had hoped to find an orange tree to show against the snowy peaks, such as the postcards showed fifty years ago, but no luck. There are very few orchards left - they have all moved to the central valley or Imperial valley. Mostly we just have backyard citrus trees and they are getting fewer and further between - much easier to buy one's sunshine at the market.