I just had the best backpack trip of my life in the Grand Canyon a couple of weeks ago. Since we were hauling seven days' of food and fuel, and since I wasn't working, I brought my tiny Canon point-n-shoot instead of my big work camera (a Nikon D2H).

And the photo quality shows it. Sigh...

The most obvious deficit of the little cameras is their lack of dynamic range. That's the range of brightnesses that the camera can capture.

For this shot I had to take great care to get the exact perfect exposure, then still had to spend about 20 minutes in Photoshop making it look good.

I had to put some tones back into the highest hills that were "blown out" because they were in the direct sun. Then I brightened the shadow areas a lot. And, like many consumer cameras, this one has some flare problems, so I had to suppress some of the blue glow that surrounds the sky.

It just would look a lot better if it were shot with the D700 that I covet. Not that I'd want to haul such a big camera.

I was reminded that the Sound to Narrows 12K is just around the corner, so I resurrected the preview from last year. Still a good reference for anyone thinking of running it this year.