Actually borrowlenses.com. This great camera equipment rental company came by the Palo Alto Camera Club meeting last week for a few hours to let us play will all sorts of fun toys. I spent most of my time at the extremes – from 400mm (the Canon EF 400mm f/2.8L IS) down to 15mm (the Canon EF 15mm f/2.8 Fisheye).

Leonard checking out the 400m cannon.

Here’s an example of what you get with an expensive 400mm lens (on my Canon 40D). This is a picture of an Avocet up to his knees in mud in the Palo Alto Baylands. Below that is a 1:1 crop (showing you the actual pixels) – check out the detail in the feathers, and of course how dark and thick the muck is.

Avocet in Mud – full image

Avocet in Mud – tight 1:1 pixel crop

Now some 15mm Fisheye silliness. I couldn’t help but aim it at myself. For these pictures I think the front of the lens was only a couple of inches from my face. These two were taken with the lens on a Canon 5D Mark II.

Lots of room for a brain.

Lots of room for other stuff.

And finally, this one of the hood badge on my Porsche. Taken with the 15mm Fisheye on my 40D.

Suddenly my blog is becoming a travelog of cool museums. Last week I was in Pittsburgh and spent an afternoon at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History – recommended because of their great dinosaur exhibit. It’s worth the trip there just for that, but I found myself pulled into the dioramas on North American mammals.

Wapiti Diorama

I’m not sure what attracts me to them – whether it’s the dioramas themselves or the flashbacks to being a kid on a school field trip again. Either way, there is something fascinating about being in a dark, quiet museum environment looking at a 3D piece of nature frozen in time outside (and inside) a big picture window. It’s like getting to be an alien visiting your own planet.

Bighorn Sheep Diorama

Stuffed animals with beautifully painted backgrounds – realistic, but not overly so. The paintings work much better than giant photographs ever could.

Dinosaur Bones

The dinosaurs, on the other hand, have their own twist on reality. Clearly, without flesh there is no believing that you’re observing a snapshot of their world. But the skeletons are in dramatic poses – you understand much more about them than just their size by seeing them hunting, fighting, swimming or grazing. I worried about this guy – already dead for millions of years yet still having to evade the toothy beast bearing down on his neck.

Don Marinelli and I spent last Tuesday afternoon at the California Academy of Sciences, getting a behind-the-scenes tour of the building, the planetarium, and the aquarium. If you haven’t been there before, you need to go. Now.

Four of my favorite shots:

Portholes on the Roof (learn about the living roof here)

God Rays in the Aquarium

Looking up through the Aquarium

South African Penguin Display