Islas Ballestas

The tour of these islands takes you past the “Candelabre”, which is an ancient glyphy etched in some fashion into the side of a hill. It was hard to see, possibly due to weather conditions. It was raining; or more precisely a very light drizzle. Any precipitation in this area is quite rare. I guess we’re just lucky.

The boat ride out to the islands takes about 1/2 hour. The boat circles the islands for about an hour then returns.

The main attraction to these islands are the birds, penguins and sea lions. I got tagged once (i.e., with bird droppings); others were it several times.  Wear a hat.

My only “long” autofocs lens is my 14-45mm (28-90 equivalent). I took that lens plus my 400mm, 200mm, and 135mm. I shot most with my 200mm lens and just a few with my 14-45. The 45mm was too short. While the length of the 200mm (400 equiv) was ok, it’s manual focus, which is hard to do on a rocking boat. I took most of my shots with center-point metering. An area metering scheme would have been better to reduce the number of blown out areas. To compensate for the lack of autofocus I shut down my aperture to around f8 or so. Given the subject distance that gave me a little tolerance along with a reasonable shutter speed. If I’m going to do this type of shooting more often, I need auto focus.  I’m not sure I’m ready to commit to that at this point.  

Boat ride out to the islands

Candelabra
Birds on Islas Ballestas
Birds on Islas Ballestas
Seals on Islas Ballestas
Birds on Islas Ballestas
Seals on Islas Ballestas
Birds on Islas Ballestas

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