Sacramento Fall Color Comparisons: iPhone or Nikon?

For a Monday morning live segment on Sacramento’s KCRA-TV3 about CaliforniaFallColor, I spent Saturday exploring Sacramento County.

The color was patchy, though still beautiful with chartreuse sycamore and yellow and lime cottonwood throughout the County. Patchy fall color can be as lovely as full peak. Also, photographing fall color need not be about the grand landscape, it can also be about little places.

For this assignment, I carried two cameras, a Nikon D700 with Nikkor 28 – 300 3.5F AF lens and an iPhone 5S using Ollo Clip lenses (wide angle, fisheye and telephoto with polarizer).  I’ve been experimenting with the iPhone on travel writing assignments.

Images shot with an iPhone photographs are not as sharp as with a full frame digital camera like the Nikon.  Admittedly, I did not use a tripod which would have improved sharpness. And, the softness seen in these is exaggerated, because I used in-app filters.  I use Adobe Photoshop’s iPhone app to filter my photos, as the resulting images are remarkably appealing.

I began Saturday’s trek in Folsom.  While transiting town to US 50, I spotted golden crested cottonwood at Mormon Island Wetlands and pulled over to the curb on Sophia Parkway, shooting these two images with the Nikon while standing inside the Folsom city limits, proving that it isn’t necessary to drive hundreds of miles to find dramatic landscapes. They’re all around us when we’re observant.

Fair Oaks is a gentrified rural village outside Sacramento where roosters crow and have the run of town. None would cooperate for these photos of Plaza Park.

The American River has valley oak and black cottonwood that are still Just Starting.

The Fabulous 40s are tree-lined residential avenues in East Sacramento with landmark London Plane Trees (towering sycamore) creating canopies of leaf-heavy branches.  The scene is lovely though overwhelming, so I sat on the curb to put the scene in perspective by photographing a pile of leaves in the foreground.

William Land Park is Sacramento’s great central park, with a golf course, zoo, children’s fairytale town, ponds, lawns and lots of trees.  There are so many varieties of trees, that the color changes gradually from mid October through Thanksgiving day.

To confuse the conversation further, color spotter Sharon Chew provides this photo shot with her HTC Android phone of the boulevard of near peak liquidambar along Pocket Rd. at Greenhaven in southwest Sacramento.

Patchy – Sacramento County (10 – 50%) – Cottonwood and sycamore are showing lime, yellow and chartreuse throughout Sacramento County.  Still, way short of nearing peak, though lovely none the less.

[weatherlayer country=”United States” city=”Sacramento”]