Thursday, March 24, 2011

Mini vacation in Palm Springs and Anza-Borrego Desert with Pentax K-5, K-7, K-x and K-r.

 Email: brqyvn@gmail.com

Hi
Pentaxian friends.

My brother and his wife visited us this past week. We took advantage of their visit and spent four days in Palm Springs and visited the Wind Farm.. While there we also drove to the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. We had a good time, although I broke my K-5 by dropping it on the ground, with the telephoto lens hitting first and tearing the k-mount completely off the camera.

I will write more about the vacation, the K-5 and pictures we took, but I thought I would just post some pictures tonight.


First morning in Palm Springs, on our way to the Wind Turbines.
© Yvon Bourque - K-5
 
The sun peeping through the clouds and dark skybehind  gave us some unique opportunities.
© Yvon Bourque - K-5

How lucky can we get, a rainbow to top it off.
© Yvon Bourque - K-5


Second day, 7:00 A.M, entering the Anza-Borrego Desert State park.
© Yvon Bourque - K-5

The cactus were in bloom.
© Yvon Bourque - K-7


And so were most of the wild flowers, however, we had to get off the paved roads.
© Yvon Bourque - K-7

Look at what we found; The famous  "Great Road Runner", roaming around for food!
© Roland Bourque - K-x

I'm not a "Birder", but this one was pretty. Anyone knows what it's called?
© Yvon Bourque - K-7
it's an adult male Bullock's Oriole. More info here:
http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Bullocks_Oriole/id
Contributed b yMiserere...Thank you.

What a nice Church, in the middle of the desert.
© Roland Bourque - K-x

We were being watched. These are wild dogs that people just leave behind. We couldn't approach them.
© Roland Bourque - K-x

P.S. The AlettA DSLR Stabilizer will be available sometime early April. I have my first big order scheduled for delivery to me next week.  I won't advertize it again before I get them in my hands.

Coming soon...

Best Regards,
Yvon Bourque

11 comments:

Henry Kisor said...

Hmph. So you have been fooling around instead of getting the Stabilizer to market . . .

But those are great photos. I especially like the one of the wind farm -- never saw those things from such a perspective.

Unknown said...

Henry,
My first big order of Stabilizers should be ready sometime next week. This time I want to make sure I have them on hand before I post their availability.
Palm Springs has thousands of these wind turbines. Somehow, they have a certain beauty of their own.

Patrick said...

Very nice! Got lucky with the clouds and rainbows, and you captured them well.

Unknown said...

Patrick,

Thank you for your comment. Sometimes you get lucky and I certainly think we got very lucky with mother nature in Palm Springs. I went to that same place dozens of times in the past and never had such luck with light.

Henry Kisor said...

Yvon, back in the mid 90s when I had a small plane, I flew over Palm Springs and into Banning Pass. I was astonished to look below and see all those thousands of turbines on the flats and hillsides. It looked as if the whirling propellers were causing the earth to rotate on its axis.

Dan P said...

post pictures of the K-5 carnage!!

(man, totally sucks that happened. :sad face)

Unknown said...

Dan,

I didn't waste any time and shipped the camera to Pentax this morning. The metal ring to which your lens attaches to came off with the lens. Six screws are used to attach the ring to the camera. All six tapped holes in the plastic body of the camera were damaged when the six screws were pried out. Under the metal k-mount ring, there is some kind of spring that fits in some predetermined bosses. I reinstalled the whole thing and thought it would work, but it damaged something inside to where the AF lenses couldn't focus at a distance over say 25 feet and certainly not at infinity, It did work in manual focus but who wants a K-5 with manual focus only? The external body of the K-5 was not damaged. The lens hood broke but the lens is okay.

Unknown said...

must say all the images are good but the k5 images really stands out...that camera can really capture an image like no other from the samples I've seen.

Unknown said...

fRANK,

I agree. The K-5 is in my opinion, the best DSLR in its price range and then some.I sent my broken K-5 for repair this morning. Life will be tough while my K-5 is gone.

Henry Kisor said...

Oops, I missed the sentence in your original post, Yvon, about the damage to the K-5. What a bummer!

I know exactly how you feel about missing your K-5. I'm missing mine, too. It's gone back to Pentax for replacement . . . the dread sensor stains showed up after 1,050 photos.

So it's back to the K20D, which is still a great camera, but . . .

Miserere said...

Sorry to hear about the K-5 accident, Yvon.

As for that pretty bird you posted, it's an adult male Bullock's Oriole. More info here:

http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Bullocks_Oriole/id