R8 Post-Joaquin Hiking @ Point Mountain – 10/10/15

10/10/15 – Second hiking trip to Point Mountain, Washington in a month.

This time i went with my home church’s (Rutgers Community Christian Church) collegiate small group: R8. It’s named R8 after Romans 8, a chapter in the Bible. Our goal is love God, serve the church, and to impact the community with the good news of Jesus’ love.

“Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death? … No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us.” – Romans 8:35, 37, New Living Translation.

WARNING: Photography Jargon START

After dropping my 50mm f/1.8 prime lens off the cliff last month, I decided to invest in a refurbished lens (low budged). I went with a 30mm f/2.8 macro prime lens.

This 30mm macro lens has slower aperture than the 50mm prime, but it’s much better at close-up pictures because the macro lens has a minimum focus length of around 6 inches, compared to the 50mm prime lens, which focus length of 24 inches. This means that the “new” macro lens that I bought can focus on an object when I hold a much smaller distance than my other lenses. Do you know how when taking a picture even with your phone, once you get too close to an object it won’t focus? Exactly that. In other words, this “new” lens made look pretty funny when I was holding my camera super close to random small objects during the hike.

Being so close to an object makes it really hard to focus on a small object. Any tiny movement of the object, my camera, or my camera’s focus ring could make the image blurry. It takes a lot of patience and it takes many tries. However, when taking close-up pictures of nature, it’s so peaceful that the extended time doesn’t bother me. It does leave me far behind the rest of the hiking group though, haha!

Photography Jargon END

The following pictures were taken along the hike. I used mostly my “new” 30mm f/2.8 macro lens with my Sony a57, but I also used my 75-300mm zoom lens as well.