The Camera

In February of 2018, I switched from a point and shoot camera (the Fujifilm FinePix XP55) to a DSLR (the Canon Rebel T6). By that time, most people were using phones as their primary photographic device, but I was not for a couple reasons – 1) since my first cell phone in college, I’ve had non-flagship TracFone phones with terrible cameras [my current phone is the first one I’ve owned that even has a front camera (that I essentially never use)], and 2) I’m legitimately quite awful at phone photography, to the point where there’s about a 50% chance any given photo isn’t even in focus. From a technological perspective, the XP55 actually has specifications that are comparable to an average phone camera from around 2018, but the point and shoot market has since been more or less obliterated by phones.

Icy grass [117 mm, f/8, 1/160 s, ISO-400]

Since I’m apparently not capable of getting good phone photos, I was still using a dedicated camera in 2018. After getting increasingly dissatisfied with the XP55, I upgraded to a DSLR. At the time, I knew that Canon and Nikon were two of the major names in the DSLR market and that the Canon Rebel series was frequently recommended for good entry level cameras. When I started shopping around online, the Canon Rebel T5 had been superseded by the T6 for close to two years and was getting harder to find. The T7 was, it turns out, weeks from being announced, and I didn’t know that I’d want any of the features (e.g. more megapixels and autofocus points) that made the T6i more expensive, so I ended up with the relatively affordable T6.

Squirrel [157 mm, f/5.6, 1/160 s, ISO-800]

Broadly speaking, a larger camera sensor tends to improve the overall “image quality,” increasing sharpness, how much you can crop or enlarge a photo, and low light performance. Going from the XP55 to the T6 increased my available sensor area by over an order of magnitude, so that was an immediate upgrade, even if I had stuck the T6 in auto mode and left it there. I was, however, also interested in learning about having control over aperture, shutter speed, and other settings, so I spent some time with photography books and dragging my camera a lot of places with me.

Trumpeter swans + ducks [121 mm, f/9, 1/160 s, ISO-400]

I’ve now had my T6 for just over four years, and taken close to 12,000 photos with it. My camera’s ridden with me on Amtrak to Chicago (twice), flown to Houston for the Society of Rheology annual meeting, gone to see family in Singapore, been dragged to Orlando for AIChE, visited Acadia, taken a trip to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, and gotten biked all across and around Ann Arbor. As of late, most of the big players in the field are focusing their development on mirrorless cameras, but I’m still a fan of this entry level DSLR. I paid $330 for it new with the kit lens, so it’s not so expensive that you have to worry about every bump and scrape, but it’s still a nicely built piece of equipment that has plenty of capability, though not all the bells and whistles of a flagship camera.

The T6 doesn’t have in-body image stabilization, though all the lenses I have do. The general rule of thumb is to keep shutter speed faster than the inverse of the focal length, which I find works fine to get acceptably sharp photos, especially with my lenses rated for 3-4 stops¹ of image stabilization. The T6 also isn’t weather sealed, so I wouldn’t put it in a puddle or go out in a downpour, but it’s been fine in light to moderate rain and snow as well as cold. It further lacks a touchscreen, a tilt-out screen, and a live histogram (though does have live view, which I use on occasion), but I’ve never had any of those features so I’m fine without them.

The T6 has a bunch of photo modes, but I used auto for about one night to try out the camera, then it’s been in manual since then, and I’ve never taken video with it. I also don’t use burst mode, which is important for sports/action shots. I prefer shooting in full manual mode, but I use it very similarly to aperture priority a lot of the time, and I’m currently in a months-long trial of back button focusing², which I think I like. Although above around ISO-800, the noise starts being not great in certain situations, it’s a huge improvement over my point and shoot, so I’m not complaining too much. Overall, I’m very happy with the T6. It’s not the most brilliant camera out there³, and sure, I’d like to have the latest and greatest equipment, but the T6 is a more than capable camera for my adventures, and I’ve enjoyed my time with it so far.

[This post features photos from my newest telephoto lens. I also have a new-ish ultra wide-angle lens, which a lot of the photos from my Acadia and Upper Peninsula trips were taken with.]

¹Camera stops are a measurement of how much light the camera is seeing. One stop is half or twice as much light as the stop lower or higher than it. You get more stops of light by opening up the aperture, lengthening shutter speed, or increasing ISO. Image stabilization helps to eliminate blur caused by motion of the camera, which allows the shutter speed to be increased.

²Instead of half pressing the shutter to (auto) focus, you focus using a separate button on the back of the camera (hence back button focus). This decouples the actions of focusing and taking the picture, which allows you to set the focus where you want it, compose your photo, then take the shot instead of constantly having to refocus, assuming the focus point isn’t changing.

³It’s maybe just a little short on megapixels compared to newer cameras, and the lenses often aren’t the sharpest in the world, but since most people apparently only look at photos while scrolling through Instagram on their phone, no big deal, right?

Project Recap [Monarch butterfly]

Next up on the cross stitch project list was a smaller pattern with a short list of colors, another request from a Cornell friend. There were 7 colors total, 2 of which were black (310) and white (blanc) that I already had, and I picked up the remaining 5 colors for this monarch butterfly by Gentle Feather (Etsy) during my Michaels field trip.

Monarch butterfly

I stitched the pattern on 14 count light blue Aida leftover from my turtle and whale. At its widest and tallest, it’s 87 stitches by 61 stitches, or 6.2” x 4.35”. Mine turned out 6.25” wide and 4.25” tall (before washing), so every project I’ve checked has had its dimensions be somewhat off. At this point, I’m not sure if the Aida is very slightly off or if I stitch in a slightly uneven way that distorts the Aida. Anyway, the circumscribing rectangle contains over 5,300 stitches, but the pattern wasn’t full coverage and I’d estimate the actual stitch count to be closer to ~3,500 stitches. Time to completion was about three weeks, for an average of a little over 160 stitches per day, but this was done during my most intensive thesis writing phase so I was stitching less consistently.

Out of all the patterns I’ve done so far, I think this one had the most jumping around between colors and could have benefited from gridding, which I did not do. I completed the black and brown outlines of the wings first and then filled in the rest of the colors from dark to light. I did end up skipping a square on the right wing that I eventually discovered when the wing didn’t meet up correctly with the center section, but I blame that on stitching while simultaneously waiting for/arguing with my internet connection when I was trying to watch Cornell Thanksgiving weekend hockey (I eventually had to give up on the Wi-Fi and go sit next to the router with an ethernet cable plugged in). Because of the symmetry of this pattern, I did go back and do a lot of unstitching and restitching to get the wing outline correct instead of trying to adapt the rest of the pattern to a missing column.

Unfortunately, this pattern was not the most well designed. (Also note that it’s not perfectly symmetrical, but that may not be a major concern to anyone but your friendly neighborhood lepidopterist.) There was no one page version, which is fine since people stitching from electronic devices is a fairly recent development, but the two page version doesn’t have any overlap squares (usually shaded in grey to help transitioning between pages), making it difficult, particularly if you haven’t gridded, to move between pages if you don’t want to cut off your stitching right at the page line. I had printed the black and white version of the pattern to bring along on my Upper Peninsula trip in case I needed something nonelectronic to do, and I ended up taping it together and using it as an additional reference while also consulting a pdf in color.

The color pdf was okay to read, but symbol choices made the black and white version harder to read than it could have been. Although there were only 7 colors, 4 of the symbols were triangles, including right triangles in the bottom right and bottom left corners, one of which could be shaded or unshaded (see the symbol key below), and the two unshaded triangles were often right next to each other. I’ve also heard that darker colors should have symbols with heavier visual weights. This pattern had black as an unshaded diamond and white as a solid triangle. Admittedly, my stitching style caused some of the difficulties with the 2 page pattern, and the symbol problem was mostly solved by using the color version. In the end, I like the final result, and I definitely wouldn’t blacklist this designer or anything else that extreme, but depending on the complexity of the pattern, I might look for other options.

Symbol key

Copper Harbor & Mackinaw City

On our final full day up north, we had plans to travel to the northern tip of the Upper Peninsula before crossing back over the Mackinac Bridge to the Lower Peninsula to spend the night in Mackinaw City. In the morning, we decamped, cleaning up the cabin and repacking the car before heading on our way. We drove up to Copper Harbor to see the Copper Harbor Lighthouse and the Devil’s Washtub. Unfortunately, the land that the Copper Harbor light is on had been sold to a private owner and could only be viewed from across a bay and I’m not sure if we ever found the Devil’s Washtub. However, after planning our activities for the first three days of the trip, I was not responsible for this leg’s itinerary, and what we did end up doing was still good.

Baraga State Park mini cabin

With the lighthouse under private management, the main way to see it is now from Astor Shipwreck Park. This park is across the street from Fort Wilkins State Park, which we didn’t have time to check out on this trip. There’s a small parking lot and a few steps down to a rock beach with a view of the Copper Harbor light. We spent some time on the beach, where we enjoyed the sun and bright blue skies for the first time on our trip, and ended up having an early lunch by the beach.

Copper Harbor Lighthouse

Clockwise from top left: Astor Shipwreck Park, rock beach at Astor Shipwreck Park, Eagle River Timber Arch Bridge, shore of Lake Superior near the Devil's Washtub

On the way back from Copper Harbor, we stopped right on Route 26 to try and find the Devil’s Washtub, a rock inlet on the coast of Lake Superior that’s supposed to be bathtub shaped, I guess? We walked along the coast for a bit and found something that looked vaguely bathtub-esque, but I’m not convinced we found it. But the sun and views and rock scrambling were nice.

Continuing on our way back, we paid a visit to the Eagle River Timber Arch Bridge, from where we also saw the Eagle River Falls. Across the street the Eagle River Museum was closed, but there was what appeared to be a public park next to it with sports fields, playground equipment, a garden, and a pavilion. When we saw that they had a merry go round, we had no choice but to try it out, because how often do you see a merry go round nowadays?

Eagle River Falls

From there, we finished the long drive across the Upper Peninsula to Mackinaw City. After some hotel drama, we managed to check into our room. Before bedding down for the night, we went out for one final adventure of the day to stargaze at the Headlands International Dark Sky Park just outside of the city. When we arrived, the parking lot was busy (and we could already clearly see the big dipper), but as we set out on the paths, we hardly encountered any people. We found an empty beach to admire the sights from and looked up.

Tripod-less astrophotography (the handle of the Big Dipper is the bright stars in the lower right of the sky)

The moon was blazing bright, close to full if not full, so we didn’t see as many stars as we could have, but at least the sky was clear, and there were more stars than I’ve seen for awhile. With the help of an app (of course there’s an app), we identified several constellations. I also tried out some tripod-less astrophotography that pushed the limits of my hobbyist camera and only ended up a little blurry.

In the morning, we collected our sad Covid hotel breakfasts consisting solely of bottled water, an apple, and a single granola bar; checked out of the hotel; and drove to the Mackinac Bridge to enjoy breakfast in sight of Mighty Mac. From there, all that was left was the drive back to Ann Arbor. All in all, it was a great trip. I’m glad I got to see some of the Upper Peninsula before graduating and likely moving away from Michigan, and after a year and a half away from the office, getting to spend time with my labmates.

Sunrise over Lake Huron

Mackinaw Bridge

Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park

Day three dawned grey. Again. But it was not raining. Following a cold breakfast featuring shelf-stable ultra-pasteurized milk and granola bars, we drove the final hour to the Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park. This park is managed by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, so requires a Michigan Recreation Passport, $17 for the year for instate vehicles if you buy one at a park entrance but less ($12) if you get it when you renew your license plates.

I planned for one not-too-long hike by the Lake of the Clouds, the one place everyone goes if you go to the Porcupines. When I asked my coworkers, they all said they’d be okay with some hiking, but I am aware that most people don’t casually go for three mile romps through the woods in all kinds of weather on an average evening, possibly after a full day of work. The internet told me that the Escarpment Trail, leading away from the Lake of the Clouds, had some of the best views in the park, and if we hiked it as an out and back, we could choose how long we wanted our hike to be.

When we arrived, it was foggy/misty/cloudy (again) with clouds rolling across the landscape. We went first to the Lake of the Clouds Overlook where we got our first look at the lake and surrounding mountains. Although it was supposed to be late in the season for fall colors, there were still a lot of yellow and even green leaves on the trees and the view, when not covered with clouds, was lovely. The overlook is located at the west end of the lake, facing east down the length of the lake with mountains sloping upwards from the north and south shores.

 

Clockwise from top left: Lake of the Clouds upon arrival, Lake of the Clouds partway along the Escarpment Trail, the Escarpment Trail, close up of trees

From the overlook, we found the Escarpment Trail that leads east along a ridge on the north side of the Lake of the Clouds. As I’ve mentioned already, it was pretty quiet because we were there past what’s considered peak timing for the fall season, and it got even quieter on the trail away from the overlook. At times the trail winds through trees, at others it comes out onto rocky ridges with spectacular views of the lake and surroundings. Would highly recommend this trail.

Upper Carp River east of Lake of the Clouds

Clockwise from top left: View from our lunch spot, Upper Carp River, Lake of the Clouds post hike, view looking west from the Lake of the Clouds overlook

We ended up hiking somewhere over two miles down the trail past the eastern end of the lake and a little ways up the Upper Carp River. We stopped for a snack/lunch break right by the eastern end of the lake where we could enjoy the sights. As we hiked out, the weather cleared up a fair bit, but as we started on our way back to the parking lot, the clouds began to thicken yet again. At one point I think we walked through a cloud, but any rain held off.

 

Big Carp River (from the Lake of the Clouds overlook)

From the Lake of the Clouds, we moved to the Summit Peak Scenic Area for a different view of the park. The trail here was 0.9 miles one way to the top of Summit Peak, the highest point of the park. The lower half is a nice walk through the woods that transitions into a wooden boardwalk and steps ending at a 50-foot observation tower. The views weren’t amazing, but it was worth a quick look and now we can say we’ve been to the park’s highest point.

 

View from Summit Peak

Observation Tower

Like the previous day, because of our limited time in the area, I opted for visiting a few places for a shorter amount of time rather than spend more time in one or two spots in order to get more of an overview of the park. That said, our last stop of the day was the Presque Isle Scenic Area to see waterfalls. This hike reminded me of some hikes through the gorges in New York’s Finger Lakes region. The trail wound through a gorge right off of Lake Superior with several waterfalls, smaller than the ones we saw the day before, and was a nice end to our day in the Porcupines. I think this area was where we encountered the most people in the day, but still nothing compared to some of the summer crowds I’ve seen.

Presque Isle Scenic Area

We made the drive back to Baraga State Park, where we prepared another camp dinner (oatmeal and a banana for me) before enjoying a second night in the mini cabin. It was definitely cool at night, but the cabin with four people in it never even got cold enough for me to put on pants. (I wore shorts for the entirety of the trip.) There was a space heater provided, and at one point we turned it on to see if it worked, but we didn’t need it. The shared bathroom block was nice, and there were individual shower stalls, with nice hot water, at the back of the building. Overall, even with the traffic noise, $52 a night split between four people was well worth it for a fun experience that requires less vital equipment than tent camping.

Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore [part 2]

Barring the combination farewell present of possible heatstroke and/or getting hit by lightning that Cornell gave us at my graduation, most of my travels have not been strongly adversely affected by the weather. We had a couple marginal days at Acadia, and I have all sorts of transit stories, but overall it’s been awhile since we’ve gotten caught in a full on downpour in the middle of an outdoor activity. The forecast for our U.P. trip wasn’t great, and that combined with a fairly tight schedule and companions who probably didn’t want to trek 10 miles through the woods, led me to pick a few shorter/less involved sights to see at Pictured Rocks.

After hotel breakfast, we set out to our first destination, Miners Falls, a 1.2 mile round trip from a parking lot near the east end of the park. It was damp, misty, and a little drizzly when we set out on the short hike, but overall conditions weren’t too bad. There were a few cars in the lot when we arrived, and more arrived later, but because we were there late in the season, it was pretty quiet. The trail to the falls is more or less flat is it winds through the woods and leads first to an overlook by the top of Miners Falls where you can see the falls but they’re somewhat impeded by trees. There’s a second viewing area further down several flights of stairs with clear sightlines to the falls. Miners Falls is about 50 feet high, so not super tall, but a nice waterfall with a good amount of water falling down it. Including the walk to and from the falls, taking photos of the falls and misty trees, and discovering and observing various slugs, we spent about an hour at Miners Falls before heading further down the road to Miners Castle.

Miners Falls

Slugs, misty trees, and lichen

Miners Castle isn’t a castle building but a rock formation that looks kind of like a castle turret, I guess. There are also two viewing areas for Miners Castle, one off of the parking lot where you look over the lake at the cliffs and the whole rock formation, and one a short walk down some steps where you get to see the turret up close. This was a quick stop, just about half an hour for some photos as the mist rolled in.

Miners Castle

Our last destination in this area of the park was Miners Beach, where you can get some views of the cliffs from the shore. By this time, it had started to rain more heavily, and the mist thickened, but we still spent about forty five minutes wandering up and down the beach enjoying the wet sand and lake.

Miners Beach

Also Miners Beach

Before leaving Pictured Rocks to head further west, we stopped for lunch sandwiches (that I made at the hotel before checking out) in the Munising Falls parking lot. We then made the short walk, all paved, to Munising Falls. The 50-foot falls are located in a sandstone cliff U of a canyon. The rain had let up a bit by this point so we were a little less wet as we explored the area around the falls.

Munising Falls

Between the cruise the previous day and our stops on day two, I think we got to experience most of the big attractions at Pictured Rocks. There are plenty of other sights we didn’t get to see across the 42-mile lakeshore but we hit up some of the major locations with our limited time. Entry to the park was free when we went, but with increasing numbers of visitors and their accompanying environmental impact, Pictured Rocks, managed by the National Park Service, is soon to start charging entrance fees.

Our lodgings for the night was the mini cabin at Baraga State Park, and on the way we made a stop at Laughing Whitefish Falls State Park for one last waterfall for the day. Still slightly damp from the morning, we took another short half-mile hike through the trees to the falls. Finally, we finished the drive to Baraga State Park, about an hour east of Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park, and got settled into their mini cabin. When we booked the cabin, I didn’t realize the park was right off of Route 41, with its accompanying traffic noise, which was the main negative comment people had, but it didn’t end up being too bad with the windows and door closed.

Laughing Whitefish Falls

A couple of my coworkers had never been camping in any form, and it being the middle of October 4 degrees further north from my usual environs, the camper cabin was a better decision than tent camping, which we very briefly considered. But without much equipment and night temperatures starting to drop towards freezing, we would not have had as good of a trip. The cabin was pretty small, maybe 12 feet square, and had some counter space, a microwave, a mini fridge, a queen bed with a twin lofted over it, and a cot. I slept on the cot (in my sleeping bag). After unpacking bedding and food, we prepared a ramen dinner, then settled in for the night.