Saturday, July 11, 2009

San Miguel Fire Update: Visible Flames



The San Miguel fire has been slowly progressing. It is now to the point that I can see the flames from my house as it crawls up toward the Boundary Peak area and towards the Dome Fire of 1996. The photograph above was taken from my backyard with a 500mm lens on a Canon EOS 5D Mark II camera. The fire observation tower is visible at the top of Boundary Peak, as are some flames of course.

The two images below were taken from the same location with a 1.4x multiplier on the 500mm lens...hence at 700mm.



Finally, the image below is with a 2x multiplier from the same location, hence 1,000mm. ISO was 3200 here due to the reduction of light coming through the optics and the setting sun.



The fire itself is advancing toward the Dome Fire mentioned above (and if you look closely burned trees from that fire are visible on the ridge above the current fire) and the La Mesa Fire of 1977. More information on the fire is available here.

I took the image below just now (9:30pm MDT). It is a bulb exposure (9sec), f4.0, ISO400, at 160mm. It gives a better idea for what has burned and which areas are more active. Also taken from my backyard, but in a different location than the previous photographs.

2 comments:

Mrs. Bird said...

I'm jealous of your Canon 5D Mark II :) And, your 500mm lens, someday. I just put a ton of pics up from hiking in Colorado if you care to take a look! We should be up there climbing soon...

Stephen R. Lee said...

Some nice photos. I will be hiking and backpacking in Canada later on, hope to get some good shots myself.