We went past the Egg Rock Light (on Egg Rock) which marks the entrance to Frenchman's Bay - the body of water which hosts Bar Harbor, Winter Harbor and others. The haze was pretty heavy for good pics but here's one anyhow.
Later
we went past the Petit Manan Lighthouse on Petit Manan Island (the
consistency surprises me!) This is the second tallest lighthouse in Maine at
119 feet of granite. The tour boat hovers off shore for a while so people
can take pictures, whatever. The island supports colonies of several species
of Terns and even a colony of Puffins. It was the Puffins I was interested
in - more on that later though. I was
disappointed as the Puffin is a rather small bird (larger than a pigeon,
smaller than a chicken) and from a hundred feet or so, just small specks in
a picture.
Here's a close-up of the detail at the top of the light.
All of these pictures were taken handheld on a tossing boat on the water with a 400 mm lens. The lens has what is called "Image Stabilization" to minimize blur from movement of the lens. I'd say it works ok - for the technical person, I pick up better than two stops of exposure - that is, rather than having to shoot at 1/400th to minimize shake, I can shoot handheld at 1/125th. The picture of the Egg Rock Light was taken with the boat at speed bouncing over the swells - I'd click the shutter as the image went past in the viewfinder (The lens was at 400mm, F 8.0 at 1/500 sec)! The harbor picture and the picture of the Rotterdam were taken with a 135m lens - also handheld and also with IS.
"It is not down in any map - true places never are." -- Herman Melville in Moby Dick
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