Mid Sierra Musings: Photographing In Yosemite On A Hazy Day

Dale Matson

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Half Dome With Cloud's Rest To The Left

This time of year is not optimal for photographing in Yosemite. There is usually not water in Yosemite and Bridalveil Falls and there are ordinarily some “let burn” fires going too. The air quality is not good and there has been little rain to clear the air. Having said that, Yosemite is still a wonderful place to be and to photograph. There were no clouds for framing shots but there was a gentle warm breeze even above 8,000’ on Sentinel Dome.

My friend and former colleague Dave from Fresno Pacific University is an excellent amateur photographer and came with me. He uses a full frame Canon and had two lenses with him. He had the 24-105mm f4 kit lens and a Rokinon 14mm 2.8 ultra wide lens made for the Canon EF mount.

I had my Sony A7RII, a Sony Zeiss 24-70mm f4 native lens and older model Canon 100-400mm f4.5-5.6. I have a Viltrox Canon EF-NEX II adapter for this lens. Because I had the Canon adapter, I was also able to use Dave's Rokinon lens on my Sony. I was disappointed in most of the shots, which were not sharp when viewed maximum size. My final two photographs are with the Rokinon lens. While I get my Canon lens information included in the photograph file, I did not have any information from the Rokinon lens. It is a manual focus lens and I used my Sony focus peaking.

We went to three locations along Glacier Point Road (I have skied this road in the winter much more than I have ever driven it). We started at Sentinel Dome, and then went to Washburn Point and finally Glacier Point itself. Each location gives a different perspective. Even after Labor Day during the week, parking was packed at Glacier Point. We should have gone there first and worked our way back to the other two locations. The sun is best here in the late afternoon but we were back in Fresno by 3pm.