There has been a lot of smoke in the San Francisco Bay Area these past few days from a couple of large forest fires. As a result the sun has been sunset orange hours before it sets, turning to a deep red color as it nears the horizon. The color of the sun in the photo below is straight from the camera:

Smoky sun: 1/800s f/5.6 ISO200 200mm, Canon 30D, EF 70-200 f2.8 L IS, cropped, unadjusted

I took that out of the bathroom window of my house: the only place I could get an unobstructed view through the trees. You can see the haze across the face of the sun. I took it with the camera in manual mode after finding the sun too bright at the metered shutter speed (I think 1/200). I took some more at 1/400 and 1/800 and it was the latter that was the best setting.

Another handy setting I am using at times is Custom Function 4 set to 1. This sets the * (asterisk) button to autofocus and lock and leaves the shutter to set exposure and take the shot. This lets me set focus once -- on the sun in this case -- and then keep taking shots without the focus changing. Since I was in Manual mode, the exposure wasn't changing either.

Tags: Fire, Sunset, Canon, 30D, Custom Functions

Last night at about 8pm I thought I heard fire crackers outside. So I peered out of the window, and saw what looked like fireworks going up into the sky. When I went outside to investigate and looked over the neighbor's fence I saw flames coming out of the upstairs bedroom of a house two doors down at the back. After calling 911 I went back out, saw that the fire department was there and started talking pictures with my Canon S3. I added 18 pictures to the Canon S3 gallery (click forward to the fourth page). As far as I know the house was empty at the time.

Tags: Fire, Canon, S3, Interesting Stuff