Beautiful.

Fabulous! What a treat.

LOL. Your years in the Navy probably coincided with those of my late brother-in-law, Bob Jones who served on the USS Hancock, CVA19. Thank you for your service. Your pictures are great!

LOL. Your years in the Navy probably coincided with that of my late brother-in-law, Bob Jones who was on the USS Hancock, CVA19. Thank you for your service. Your pictures are great!

Larry Jones

Did you take these during the 'golden hour'? One professional photographer advocates only taking pictures during the 1 hour after sunrise and before sunset. The EXIF data seems to indicate you took these outside of that 1 hour time frame. Your pictures are excellent!

Thanks for your service! My son-in-law really likes the Blackhawks. He's been deployed once to Iraq and 3 times to Afghanistan. Our daughter is sending us little hints that he will likely be deployed to Afghanistan again before long but this time for only 6 months. He was a flight instructor at Ft Rucker, AL. for several years. He arranged for me to 'fly' the simulator one evening. That was a gas. I loved the Hueys 'back in the day' but haven't ever flown in a Blackhawk. Again, thanks for your service.

Larry

LOL! If we keep this up we should have global warming (or cooling) solved by sundown.

Okay, I think I got it. With a/c you get 'flare' and with d/c you get sunspots. What happens if you go a/c-d/c? Do you get neither or both? Years ago a man reported that if you go outside and flap sheets the Northern Lights will go away. We may be on to something here! However, the idea of holding something over the tripod mounted camera sounds simpler. Should you hold a box over the camera, a cereal box maybe? Does it need to be organic cereal? Better not use Wheaties. You know what happened to Bruce Jenner after eating Wheaties for 50 years. Now that we've got the issue of avoiding sunspots solved maybe we can deal with the link between digital photography and the heartbreak of psoriasis. This has been entertaining to say the least but I'm sure thankful that there is a long stretch of highway between the two of you.

Thank you Dirtpusher. Long live Rush Limbaugh and go Sooners.

Apaflo upgrading the 18 - 135 is on the list. Maybe that will solve the problem. I shall use your answer to work on my wife's tender sensibilities and convince her that new lenses are truly needed for long life and happiness. By the way, my son-n-law is an Army Blackhawk pilot now at Ft Wainwright by Fairbanks so we will very likely be there again. Where are some good places to go to get pics of snowy owls?

Working through photographs taken in Alaska and Canada I am bummed by the number of sun spots. I routinely use the tulip hood designed for the lens - don't remember the last time I didn't use a hood. There were times when I maneuvered to avoid the sunspot but I'm not sure that was always successful. This trip was over 3 months in length so I don't remember all the details of each shot, but is there something, some technique I need to adopt to avoid this problem? What am I missing? Paying attention might be beneficial but that can be stressful for an old man. So far I've been successful at removing the spots in processing but I don't enjoy PP. As a matter of fact I pretty much hate post processing and wish memory cards could be loaded into the computer with professionally finished photos ready for viewing moments later. What a dream huh? Is sunspots just the price you pay for taking pictures when the sun is close to the horizon?

Equipment is Canon 7DmkII, 100 - 400mm L mk I, 18 - 135mm kit lens and 10 - 18mm 1:4.5 - 5.6. The sunspots are almost certainly from the last 2 lenses on the list. It's hard to imagine a sunspot getting through that hood for the 100 - 400mm.

p.s. I searched UHH on the topic but only found advise on correcting the problem with PP.

Also, I do have the 1.4 III extender. RRS - following the advise in a How-To book, I set the camera up to not fire until focus is achieved. There have been many times when the camera didn't fire for a moment, but that is often due to my failure to get on target. Other times the failure to focus might have been attributable to the lens not focusing quickly enough since the bird was 'in the zone'.

Blurryeyed - great pictures. That's what I'm hoping to achieve.

Thanks very much for all the help, it is greatly appreciated. I have the Canon 7D Mark II camera. The 7D replaced a Rebel T2i and it catapulted the quality of my photographs a large margin. Getting photographs of flying birds with the Rebel was difficult. With the 7D mk II I come home with pictures that really make my day. Now the idea of pairing the 7D with the newest 100-400 lens is peaking my interest. My son-in-law is a Blackhawk pilot in the Army. He has been assigned to Alaska for 3 years beginning in August. We may be spending much of the next 3 summers up north.

Thanks y'all for the help. Thanks Haydon for the link to a very interesting article.

In anticipation of an extended trip to Alaska later this year I'm thinking of upgrading my current Canon EF 100-400 4.5-5.6 L lens to the new II model. The current lens works well but some shots have been missed because focus was not achieved quick enough. Was that the lens fault or my fault or no fault? No one will ever know. All the reviews indicate the new model has superior focus speed and accuracy.

Those of you who have made the upgrade, what do you think? Are the improvements worth the cost? Getting photographs of grizzlies, snowy owls, etc are worth a lot but if the improvements are not that noticeable then perhaps it would be wiser to upgrade my wide angle to an L lens.

Yosemite is said to have been carved out by glaciers. If that is true then California was at one time much colder than it has been in our lifetime. That of course is a good thing since California produces enormous amounts of food due to the warm climate. Global warming has been a trend for generations and life has flourished as a result.

Why do we need weather forecasters? If the weather followed the exact same pattern day-to-day, year-to-year we would only need to look at the weather report for a given date in history to know the weather for that date in the future. But the weather is constantly changing. It warms up, it cools down and meteorologists appear on TV to tell us what to expect. Most folks call it weather but tyrants are trying to make it into something ominous for the purpose of instilling fear into the hearts of their intended victims.

Science is not united on this issue. Even global warming promoters call it 'consensus'. That is just a way of saying that the scientists who are 'living large' off government grants are willing to sell their integrity for another grant.

It is strange that meteorologists have a difficult time making completely accurate forecasts of tomorrow's weather but global warming promoters can tell us what the weather will be like 50 years from now if we don't do what they tell us to do. What do they have to lose? Who will remember - 50 years from now - that they are wrong?