We all know how photographer’s dislike sunny days - for photography at least. Howling winds and sideways rain are no fun either. But something in between can be quite satisfying. During a break in the rain a trip to the beach turned out some moody textured images.
Stanwell Park
Towradgi beach
Whilst I love a detailed eyeball as much as the next guy, I also like to see a little personality thrown in. I pulled out the Olympus (EM5 MKIII with a teleconverter = 420mm) to take some more bird shots. This little fellow was asking to be photographed as well. He was missing some body parts but largely unfazed by my presence.
Noisy Friar bird
In all likelihood I probably would not have got this shot with the manual Pentacon though I will attempt it on another occasion just to compare the images. A slight overcast condition made for more subdued tones.
Rainbow Lorikeet
Troublesome Raven destroying a wagtail nest and being attacked for his efforts.
Red browed finch in Jacaranda tree
I occasionally like to make use of a longer tele lens than the Nikkor 180mm f2.8. So, I bought a Pentacon 300mm f4 which weighs a ton - to capture the occasional bird or other wildlife shot. This came in at under AUD200 so was not a big investment. And I figured I would also take for travel shoots where I had the car available for transport as there’s no way I’m going to carry this with the other lenses in a camera bag. I have previously used both Canon and Nikon teles upto 400mm as well as the 300mm equivalent Olympus. I have to say I love the images this lens produces. That wonderfully soft and somehow still quite sharp result together with beautiful colour rendering makes the images from this lens worth the exercise.
Wattlebird in Grevillea bush - handheld.
I’ve really enjoyed coming here over the years. Although its only 10 minutes off the main road that goes through the Blue Mountains, you can, as I did only come across one other person the whole day. I don’t live here anymore so the trip isn’t as predictable as it used to be. Weather forecasts can’t be relied on…
A lot can change over time and this area was strewn with fallen trees and likely subject to some flooding. Nevertheless there were cool little spots for testing a Zeiss 18mm f3.5 lens (on a Sony A7RIII). Some superwide lenses with leave you with stretched corners which I find particularly unpleasant and distracting in a landscape scene. Not to mention very difficult to correct in post. Most photographers don’t seem to even bother. The photo below as with others in this blog were edited with the ‘auto’ selection and ‘Adobe landscape’ profile in Camera Raw. I found I had to reduce the saturation a little though. For the most part they were shot at f11. Although I focus stacked many of them I can’t see the necessity of using the other exposures.
It was overcast for most of the day so exposures were upto a couple of seconds. For these a tripod was used of course. I’ve gotten used to working with manual lenses and not having much info at my disposal. I don’t find it matters much although I don’t always remember which lens was used. On this day though - was the Zeiss 18mm and another piece of Zeiss glass which doubles as an excellent close up lens - 35mm f 2.4 Flektogon. The reason I like traveling to this location is that all these features were within a 500metre radius.
BTW, I would have moved this log resting on the tree root if it wasn’t so heavyand quite long.
This one is quite bizzare…
Its been a while since I’ve had a weekend off or even a full day outing. But I wanted to have a closer ‘look’ at the Zeiss 20mm f4 while at Minnamurra Falls. Some of these beautiful locations are hidden away in National Parks and require longer visits to explore that I could afford. So, I considered this a recon trip with a view to going back to do the job properly. I’m a fan of 5 x 4 format where possible and certainly if its a vertical image. Much more pleasing to the eye than a 3 x 2. This shot was taken with the Zeiss 20mm f4 Flektogon on a Sony A7III. It was handheld around 1/20 sec @ f11. I’ll return here with the A7RIII and a tripod in the coming weeks.
Below is an image of a vine taken with the Sirui 24mm Anamorphic lens on an Olympus EM5. I’m growing to like this combination more and more. The edge to edge sharpness is excellent and it makes a panorama style image after setting the camera to 9 x 16 format then adding an extra 1.28X factor to the width when the anamorphic image is expanded to its proper proportions. If you’re using a MFT camera this is an excellent option for wider landscape photos. I would rather describe this as intimate landscape as its more of a close-up rather than scenery at a distance.
…and finally a few roadside shots taken enroute. You can see how you need to be aware of how you’re filling the frame as it can easily appear that some cropping should have been applied.
I would usually swim here but a combination yesterday’s weather and timing made it a little impractical. What’s only partially visible but not obvious is the wind that was blowing. It was moving the sand over the surface of the beach and created a wavy effect just in front of the shoreline. Combined with the stormy clouds above and two sand mounds in the foreground it provided quite a good multi toned b&w image.
A longer view of the beach with sand drift lines drawing the vision into the frame. An ND filter would have been useful for these two images to slightly blur the breaking waves but a long exposure wasn’t really possible under these conditions - even if I had a tripod handy.
Below, a colour shot for context.