Carbon Canyon Regional Park

One thing Jamie and I buy every year is the OC Parks annual pass. It allows you to park in many different regional parks and wilderness parks throughout the Orange County. One of those parks is the Carbon Canyon Regional Park. Neither of us had ever been so we decided to check it out. The park functions as one of the entrances into Chino Hills State Park and while dogs are not allowed in that park, they are allowed in Carbon Canyon.

Jamie borrowed a Canon 5D Mark III and a couple of lenses to bring along with our Mark II and our 24-105mm F/4 IS USM L lens. The 24-105 is probably the best walk around lens you can own but it doesn’t let you specialize. Therefore Jamie borrowed a wide angle and a macro lens. These are two types of photography we both like but haven’t spent much time doing; probably because they each require their own special lens.

Carbon Canyon Regional has two sections. One is a large grass covered park with a small lake in the middle complete with fish. The other is a nature trail that ends into and loops around a grove of Redwood trees (Sequoia sempervirens) http://ocparks.com/parks/carbon/. The Redwood grove is small on aerial photos but once you stand in it, you suddenly feel small. These are not the biggest Redwood’s you have seen but they are big enough that the area has its own little sub-climate caused by the shade the grove casts.

Jamie and I took turns using the macro and wide angle lenses in addition the 24-105. We captured a lot of photos in only a two mile hike. In the middle of the hike, we both aimed out cameras at Maxx simultaneously. This is because he is very camera shy so with two cameras, we could trick him into looking into at least one of them.

I think now that I have used the macro and the wide angle lenses, I’m going to have to pick up one of them for myself. The question is, which one?