Cougar Point is one of the hidden gems in British Columbia. Located east of the town of Clinton, in Edge Hills Provincial Park, Cougar Point lies alongside a gravel road. If you’re on the right road, it is hard to miss, especially since continuing along the road past the point is… discouraged.
From Cougar Point, there is a spectacular view of the Fraser River flowing almost a kilometre below.
It was a hazy day when I took these photos in 2016- I had plans to come back this summer when the weather was good, but… you know. It wouldn’t be the first fire in the park- notice the blackened and dead trees in the foreground. I have been there other times, but this was the only time(so far) that I had my full spectrum camera with me.
So, I’ll start off with the usual; the above visible spectrum photo broken into the red, green, and blue channels.
The haze is definitely bad at the shorter wavelengths- In the blue channel the mountains are extremely faded, and even the mid-range hills look ‘washed out’. The red channel is the most aesthetically pleasing to me- there is a good level of contrast, and the haze is minimized. No surprises- it is pretty much what I’ve come to expect from the individual channels.
Other than the colour of the trees, the full spectrum photo looks similar to the visible spectrum one. The haze has less of a blue tint, and more of a greyish one, and the fields in the distance are more visible.
I think 680 the nm infrared(from my Zomei filter) is my favourite picture from Cougar Point. The blue trees provide a good contrast to the neutral colour of the brush and soil, and the field in the distance is clearly visible. My favourite part is the brown river- it seems to be perfect contrast to the trees. The haze in the sky isn’t noticeable at this spectral range.
On to 950 nm!
The fields in the distance are very visible- I think they’re the brightest objects in the photo. No colour contrast- with the 950 nm Zomei filter, the camera is too deep into the infrared range to detect colour variation.
At the other ‘end of the rainbow’, I took photos with my homemade short pass filter(blue, violet, and ultraviolet wavelengths). This was taken with my original filter, lost last spring. It has a narrower field of view than my other filters, so I focused on the river.
The haze is definitely stronger in this photo. Like usual, I couldn’t set the white balance properly- the camera doesn’t know how to react to the violet light. The green at the bottom is caused by unfiltered light leaking through the edge of the filter… a problem I fixed with my V2.0 short pass filter.
Finally, into true UV, with combined Schott UG11 and BG40 lenses(and possibly a small amount of leaking IR light). Prepare to be amazed!
Or not…why do I take UV photos again? Oh yeah… curiosity.
Admittedly, the photo is slightly out of focus. With an 8 second exposure and too little light to use the viewscreen to see the focus in real time, it was hard to get the focus exactly right. I don’t think it would have made much difference, though. The haze obscures details on even the nearest hills. If you look closely, you can see some of the ridges ascending the hill on the left, but, if my other UV photos are any indication, even if the focus was dead on, I think that it would be hard to see the details. The atmospheric haze has covered everything, even affecting the view of the Fraser River at the bottom of the photo. The sky is extremely bright compared to the terrain(as expected), but even with the heavy haze, the clouds can still be distinguished… sort of.
All these photos were taken looking upriver, to the northwest. I also have some photos taken downriver, and will post those next week. Maybe I’ll finally be able to show a good UV landscape photo then(spoiler-No, I won’t).
The above photos were taken with a modified Canon T3i rebel camera.
Parallel Views 