F80EXR at the Ornamental Gardens – A Riot of Color

I drove out to the east end of the city for a meeting this afternoon and on the way back I drove the scenic Eastern Parkway along the Ottawa River. Just passed the turn off to the Governor General’s residence, there is a lookout that allows you a nice view of the Gatineau River’s mouth as it drains into the Ottawa River. I paused there to shoot images with the F80EXR and the D700, this article covering only the F80EXR.

The F series has again come under serious scrutiny at DPReview.com as Fuji has announced the F300EXR recently. This tends to bring every Tom, Dick and Nooby out of the woodwork to share their uneducated opinions on how “horrible” EXR cameras are in general and how “horrible” the F300EXR is in specific. Well … I don’t give a sh*t … I like how they shoot so I shoot them.

But I digress :-)

I ended up with only one shot that I found interesting at this location …

If you click through to the 800px version, you can see how detailed that is. The people on that far boat at dock are quite clear. The trees have lots of detail, and you can even see detail in the layers of hills.

I shot lots more with the D700, but those will wait for the next article.

A note: These are all shot in bright sunlight. This is awful light for shooting flowers as it sucks the saturation away … I added a lot back, hence the name of the post. I really don’t recommend shooting flowers in this light … but I felt like it, so there.

The next stop, which is quite a few miles from here, was the ornamental gardens. This being August 1, the gardens are showing right now several impressive stands of spider flowers. There are many daisies too, although I only got bugs on them with the F80EXR.

Note the wasp on the left side of that one. The next couple are shot in the same location from different distances to give you an idea of what perspective does to backgrounds.

Again, the next pair is shot from slightly different perspectives on the same plant …

 

The last of the spider flowers …

A shot of the beetles …

These two beetle shots are heavy crops … belying the rathe rnegative view people have of the pixel image quality of these cams.

The left hand beetle in that last one reminds me of watching a pug trying to pee on the top of a fire hydrant … ambitious little guys :-)