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Well, I went out to another out-of-the-way place to take a look around. This time I chose the antenna complex south of Highway 50 near the El Dorado county line. I’ve only driven by it a million times on my commute, and I’ve always wondered what was there. Much like the Mather forays I used Google Maps to figure out how to get there.

After bouncing along a mile or so of what can only loosely be called a “road” I finally reached the the antennas. It was late and the sun was setting (always the case) and even though you command an impressive view from up there, it was too smoky for any good panoramic shots (and like an idiot I left before the beautiful smoke-reddened sunset).

Much to my dismay I discovered two shortcommings of the D80 and the new lens:

First, the lense vignettes when wide open at long focal lengths. That was a little surprising. It may freak you out if you shoot blank skies at 200mm at f/5.6. Uh, ya think?! You can see just a hint of this in the upper right of the main image above.

Second, I shot some in black and white mode and I turned on the D80’s B&W “filter effects” to mimmic a red filter — to darken the sky and bump the contrast. Ok, this feature just sucks. One, it doesn’t seem to be a very RED red filter (i.e.: it doesn’t darken the blue sky very much at all - but it WILL exacerbate the vignetting mentioned above) and two, even tones (hello! like the sky!) in the resulting image are mottled, like it tries to add Tri-X grain or something. All it accomplishes is making your images turn to shit.

I don’t know if it’s just the “filter effects” mode that does it or if the whole B&W mode is jacked up. I’ll probably test that more tommorrow.

Anyway, I’d like to head back up on a clear day, like the day after a good rain. It might be neat to shoot at night from there too. Or maybe even a decent sunset (d’oh!).

At a friend’s suggestion I headed back out to Mather Field and poked around an old bunker complex out there.

I felt like a spy or something. As for directions, all I had was, “It’s south of the golf course… on the left.” So I pulled up Google Maps and zoomed in on the area. Oh, yeah… those looks like bunkers. I actually printed the satellite images out and had them with me to navigate by.

Hmmm, satellite maps of a military bunker complex — 20 years ago that would have been a ticket to jail.

The road leading up to the complex was barred preventing vehicle traffic but not much else. I ditched the car and walked the few hundred yards to the main gate, or what was left of it. Everything from that point on was either open, unlocked or just ripped apart.

It was all pretty cool. It was clear that at some point in time the area was very high security, what with bullet proof glass everywhere (mostly on the ground) and even firing ports in some buildings.

It was also pretty clear I wasn’t the first person there. Some of the bunkers looked disturbingly lived in. Some pretty funny graffiti too. At one point I startled some kind of owl and it scared the crap out of me. The echo from the bunker doorway was a great effect though.

*SCREECH* Oh crap…ap…ap…ap! Heh…eh…eh…eh Cooool…ool…ool…ool.

All of the buildings were completely gutted. One building, one that looked if possible even more high security than the others, was pretty comical because while the door was still locked with a mechanical punch-button keypad, the bars on the windows were all ripped off and the place smelled seriously funky. I didn’t have the guts to venture too far in.

The whole complex is pretty big and I was on foot. I missed a lot simply because the sun was setting and I had to move fast. You know, those big bunkers don’t look so big until you take a “short cut” over one… or two. Yeah, they’re big… *pant* *pant* *pant*

Nothin’ but hardened, reinforced dumpsters out there now though.

More photos…