Mt Gambier Sunset

Every so often I go back to Mount Gambier in South Australia where my parents live.  The interesting thing about the town is that an extinct volcano lies on the south side of town and dominates the skyline.  In the centre of the volcano is the Blue Lake, which remarkably turns from a murky grey blue in winter to a brilliant sky blue in summer.  Scientists believe it is because the sunlight reacts with special algae in the water.

My parent’s house is on the side of the volcano, and one of the things to do is walk around the perimeter of the volcano rim, which is about 4km.  On a walk a couple years ago I shot these beautiful sunsets, one on the trail and the other overlooking nearby farmland.  A very pleasant place to be.

Backlighting leaves

There’s only one way to photograph leaves, and that’s when they are backlit.  All the veins are revealed and the resulting patterns are astounding!

The way I do it is put my camera on a tripod with a macro lens and point it straight down at our glass topped coffee table.  Underneath  I set up the flash so it points upwards.  Usually I use a diffuser and often put tissue paper over the top to create more diffusion (a handy tip for those shooting macro with flash on a point and shoot camera) to ensure even lighting.  I then set the aperture (and ISO) so it is exposed correctly.  I usually use f8-f16, which are the sharpest points for most lenses and ensures everything is in focus.

Try it out and see details you’ve never seen before.

How close to a Grasshopper?

I love my Tamron 180mm f3.5 Macro, but it does have one fault that affects all longer tele macros and that is the depth of field at minimum focus distance is like a sliver.  Even at f10, the grasshopper’s back legs and abdomen are way out of focus.  

Here’s the conundrum:  longer tele macro lens let you stay a distance away from flighty critters, but it means you have to shoot at a smaller aperture to get same depth of field.  Compared to a 60mm macro you also have to shoot at almost 2 stops faster shutter speed to prevent camera shake; so effectively you could lose 3 or more stops of light.  Even in bright daylight I am often using my D700 on ISO 3200 or 6400 just to allow decent depth of field and not let the shutter speed drop much below 1/250 second.

Would the grasshopper still be there if I used my 60mm Macro at f16; or would he have been frightened away due to being too close?  Dunno.  The conundrum continues.

Niagara – Old vs New

I love the historical contrast between old and new in this shot.  Digital SLR vs Daguerreotype; and new vs old location of the Niagara Horseshoe falls.  There is such a huge volume of water that rushes over the Niagara Falls (up to 6 million cubic feet per minute) means that the stone cliff is worn back more than 30cm every year.  In the old photo it can be clearly seen how much further forward the Falls were 170 years ago.  Notice that the left hand side edge of the Falls had water rushing over it in 1840, but now no longer does.  Fascinating on so many levels.

Bokeh-licious

The Nikon 35mm f1.4 Ai-S is an interesting lens.  It’s a very fast wide angle lens that focuses to just 30cm away.  Sounds all good, but the older design results in lower than expected contrast at f1.4 and quite an unusual - if not a little disturbing - out of focus blur, or bokeh.

In the last year three different 35mm f1.4 lenses for Nikon have been released on the market.  There’s the very expensive Nikon 35mm f1.4 AF-S, the also very expensive manual focus Carl Zeiss 35mm f1.4 Biogon T*; and interestingly the Korean made Samyang 35mm f1.4 manual focus.  PhotoZone gave the Samyang an excellent review, and at around $500 it’s one quarter the price of the AF-S Nikon and Zeiss, and only slightly more than the ageing Nikon 35mm f2 AF-D.  Better start saving – a comparison is in order.

Sunlit Tulip

Getting the soft sun to land on your subject just as the background is in the shade can really make the subject stand out.  That’s exactly what happened to this tulip when I was shooting in Edward Gardens last year.  The lit tulip really jumps out in the photo, but the light isn’t strong enough to cause significant shadowing.  Just what you want!!

NEX sharp

Recently I was reading Yu Lin’s excellent Blog “Lens Bubbles”, and I noticed that he mentioned a Firmware upgrade for the Sony NEX, with a new feature called “peaking”.  Peaking is where a different colour from that in the photo shows as a highlight on the screen when that portion of the photo is in focus.  This is extremely useful for manual focusing.   So I quickly downloaded as I knew I would soon use it.

The first try out with the new peaking feature was at the recent Acoustic Gig I attended, and it was very useful.  As the singers moved around, I waited for their photos to come into the peaking range, and the snapped the photo.  Overall, while it isn’t 100% accurate when shooting at f1.4, it works very well at f2.8 and greater, and will be indispensible. 

This shot is of the bar, facing the other way from where Dallas and Andrew were performing.

You can take a look at Yu Lin’s blog here:   http://oldlenses.blogspot.com/