Rodney Campbell's Blog

Wandering along the flower beds in the Botanic Gardens I was looking for a nice flower to shoot which wasn’t being drastically blown in the breeze. This small specimen was barely 5 or 10cm above the ground and the petals had yet to unfurl – it looked like a tiny cylinder of white with a purple heart dangling from it’s tiny stem and facing directly out towards the path.

Note: These images (especially the wider shots) look much better when larger – so click any of the images below to see larger versions in an inline overlay slideshow gallery viewer.

The result of 22 images focus stacked [1/160 sec at f/4.5, ISO 100] using the LED macro ring light and the tri-grip diffuser to soften the hard sun (and reduce the breeze) this is my favourite image from the day

Eye on You

NIKON D7000 + 105.0 mm f/2.8 @ 105 mm, 1/160 sec at f/4.5, ISO 100

and for comparison the single frame – 1/160 sec at f/8 and ISO 400 – in this case I didn’t even get enough depth of field to reach from the stamens inside the flower to the centre of the flower

NIKON D7000 + 105.0 mm f/2.8 @ 105 mm, 1/160 sec at f/8, ISO 400

Gerry and I returned to Malabar for a sunset and evening session this time. The intent was to shoot sunset and twilight and then some star trails and light painting whilst waiting for the trails to complete.

On the way there it was looking “interesting” with a mass of dark clouds (which basically killed off any hopes of star trails) and well… pouring rain 🙁

The clouds were moving over very fast (which was great for some long exposure work) and was mostly moving along the coast.

Thankfully the rain died off just as we arrived at the car park and we had no troubles on the 20 minute walk out to the location. We had pretty good weather for sunset itself with some nice cloud action and great colour in the sky and even some rainbow action (which I unfortunately missed capturing :()

Note: These images (especially the wider shots) look much better when larger – so click any of the images below to see larger versions in an inline overlay slideshow gallery viewer.

Here’s a shot setting the scene with Gerry – king of the world 🙂

NIKON D7000 + 12.0-24.0 mm f/4.0 @ 13 mm, 20 sec at f/11, ISO 100

We then settled in for the evening with some steel wool action whilst there was still some light and colour in the sky towards the end of twilight. We had some real issues with the steel wool (Gerry was finding it impossible to light) but we got a few almost decent images…

Steelworks

NIKON D7000 + 12.0-24.0 mm f/4.0 @ 17 mm, 240 sec at f/5.6, ISO 400

It started to rain fairly heavily in short bursts as dark rain filled clouds moved overhead – we moved inside the bunker to wait it out each time. The only major problem was all the water on the filters and lens

The real action started once we got the EL Wire out – it was a full moon so we had great ambient light – lighting our fast moving clouds and the general landscape during long exposures, so we didn’t have to paint any of the scene with torches

Here’s a test shot from inside the bunker with some EL Wire whilst we were waiting for the rain to pass

Cylon Base

NIKON D7000 + 12.0-24.0 mm f/4.0 @ 12 mm, 191 sec at f/8, ISO 100

Each time it stopped we’d go outside and setup some shots and go to work (long four (4) or more minute exposures whilst we’d walk through the scene with EL Wire painting the ground with “fire”) and when it rained again we’d retreat back inside to wait it out. The rain was actually beneficial to the photography however since it wet down the rocks giving it a nice reflective sheen.

We got about three different compositions done before we called it a night. This first however was the money shot – it looked great straight out of camera and we knew we’d gotten what we came here for (two different takes and these are pretty close to SOOC)…

Mystic Fire

NIKON D7000 + 12.0-24.0 mm f/4.0 @ 12 mm, 270 sec at f/8, ISO 100

River of Fire

NIKON D7000 + 12.0-24.0 mm f/4.0 @ 12 mm, 270 sec at f/8, ISO 100

All in all I’d call it a successful outing and we plan to return again – probably to some of the other buildings on the headland – for some further lightpainting and/or star trails action.

I recently purchased a new Samsung Plasma Smart TV (E8000 Series 8) to integrate with my existing home technology setup – I inevitably came across a number of “teething” problems so I thought I’d write down some notes on problems and solutions for others who might experience the same issues.

I have a combination wired and wireless home network with a wired ethernet connection available to me where my home theatre (and this large screen Samsung TV) is located. I also have an iomega NAS (the iomega Home Media Network Hard Drive – Cloud Edition) on my home network which contains all manner of media including Music (an iTunes library), Pictures and Movies (mostly in avi, mov, flv or mkv format).

In addition to the normal CIFS/SMB/AFP/Bonjour/FTP/HTTP access methods the iomega NAS has a UPnP DLNA Audio/Video media server which supports streaming content to compatible clients. I’ve been using this capability in the past to stream content to my Popcorn Hour and WDTV Live network media players and since the Samsung Smart TV advertised DLNA compatibility I figured I’d be all good – just plug my ethernet cable into the TV and stream the content using the built in media player.

Problem #1: Streaming worked out of the box for Standard Definition AVI files but try and play a High Definition file and you just get a message “unsupported format”

Strange thing is if you plug a USB hard drive directly into one of the TV’s USB ports it plays everything fine – it just didn’t work over the network!

Some Google searching and there are many other comments indicating that the Samsung TV can only play these files from a local USB hard drive but not streamed over the network, others mentioned what I thought may be an answer – many suggestions about renaming the files from .mkv to .avi and they’d work – this did not work for me – in fact the Samsung TV wouldn’t even show those files anymore in it’s media browser.

Solution #1: Twonky Server

The solution is that the iomega NAS uses the Twonky Media Server software and you can directly configure this on your NAS if you go to it’s hidden management URL on your NAS and you can set it up so it works compatibly with your Samsung TV

– turn on your Samsung TV and go to the media player client and have it connect to your NAS (this is just so the NAS see’s your TV and it’s IP)
– on your computer go to http://YOUR-IOMEGA-NAS-IP:9000 in your web browser (e.g 192.168.0.XX:9000)
– select Twonky Media Settings -> Media Receivers
– in the list which appears you will need to find the entry for your Samsung TV (by it’s ethernet MAC address/IP Address – you can find these in your Samsung TV menus if you need to find out)
– for this entry change the menu item from “Generic Media Receiver” to “Samsung TV”
– click “Save Changes” and Restart

You should now be good to go – High Definition MKV’s play fine streaming over the network

Problem #2: No multi channel digital audio out on the SPDIF (optical digital audio) output

I have a home theatre receiver in my setup so I generally have all source components directed into it and then a HDMI output from the receiver to the TV. The Receiver handles all the audio/video switching and the playing and control of the audio. This has worked perfectly for me in the past and I’ve used an external standalone media player. With the Samsung Smart TV however I have the ability to play content directly within the TV (the AllShare Play DLNA media player component above along with the abundance of other streaming media apps it has access to – e.g. Foxtel, ABC iView, YouTube and so on).

The TV does however have an optical digital audio output (SP-DIF) so I connected this to one of the inputs on my home theatre receiver and I assumed I’d be good to go.

This works – however the TV appears to only send two channel linear PCM down this connection to the receiver and not the original 5.1 DD or DTS streams!

In the Samsung manual for the TV in the Digital Audio Out (Optical) section it notes:
• 5.1 CH (channel) audio is available when you connect the TV to an external device supporting 5.1 CH
• When the source is a digital component such as a DVD player/Blu-ray player/cable box/STB (Set-Top-Box) satellite receiver and you connected it to the TV via HDMI, you will only hear 2 CH audio from the home theatre receiver. If you want to hear 5.1 CH audio, connect the digital audio out jack from your DVD/Blu-ray/cable box/STB directly to an amplifier or home theatre

OK I get that – if I connect an external device to the TV (via HDMI) it only sends the audio out the optical digital out as 2.0 (so you should connect the digital audio out from those devices straight to the receiver – that’s what I do) – but what about the internal sources in the TV (like the free to air tuner and the built in media player) – shouldn’t it send 5.1 for those?

The only sound setting that is accessible on the Samsung display is ‘SPDIF’ (Menu -> Sound -> Additional Settings -> SPDIF Output) and this appears to be permanently set to PCM. There is a Dolby Digital option in the menu but it’s ‘greyed out’ and you can’t select it.

Solution #2: Wait till the source is actually playing before trying to change the settings

You’d think the TV would automatically switch the optical digital audio output to match the source being played but alas…

What you need to do is actually play the content in question (e.g. watch a free to air show which has 5.1 DD or play a media file with 5.1 DD or DTS content). Whilst it is playing hit the Menu button on the remote and go to Sound -> Additional Settings -> SPDIF Output. When you are there you will notice additional options become available in the menu including one which matches the audio being played (e.g. Dolby Digital or DTS) – you can then select that and that is what will be output on the optical output and your receiver should automatically switch to match.

I’m not sure if it was user error or not but I found I had to play a 5.1 Dolby Digital file first and enable the Dolby Digital option in the menu and then try another file which had 5.1 DTS and then enable the DTS option. I didn’t seem to be able to do the DTS one first.

After our sunrise session atop the cliffs of Malabar (where mad fishermen were once again in action on the wave swept rocks below) we headed back along the coastline towards where we had parked near South Maroubra Surf Lifesaving Club.

On the way Gerry and I checked out another inland graffiti laden bunker as well as trying some quick run and gun macro and floral landscape work (now that we could actually see what was there during the daytime – when we came in it was pitch dark :)) – there was a huge abundance of native flowers out all along the coastal scrub.

Note: These images (especially the wider shots) look much better when larger – so click any of the images below to see larger versions in an inline overlay slideshow gallery viewer.

The inside of this two room concrete bunker had been nicely painted in “floral” designs in preparation for our visit…

Artists Palace

NIKON D7000 + 17.0-50.0 mm f/2.8 @ 17 mm, 1/60 sec at f/3.5, ISO 800

I would have liked to have focus stacked the buds portion of this composition but alas didn’t have time

Buds and Bloom

NIKON D7000 + 90.0 mm f/2.8 @ 90 mm, 1/125 sec at f/16, ISO 400

The flowers were out in show everywhere so we had switched to macro lenses for some close up work – however when I came across this scene I actually wanted to do a compressed landscape where only my foreground subject matter was in focus and my entire landscape background would be a soft but recognisable blur – I stuck with the Tamron 90mm macro for the shot anyway – I hope it’s worked as I’d envisaged…

Floral Scape

NIKON D7000 + 90.0 mm f/2.8 @ 90 mm, 1/320 sec at f/5, ISO 100

I didn’t quite get this how I’d wanted (I was swaying around way too much – tired probably :)) and couldn’t get the plane of focus how I wanted it whilst also having the background I wanted, plus I wanted more depth of field – however I still liked the result…

Lemon and Lime

NIKON D7000 + 90.0 mm f/2.8 @ 90 mm, 1/125 sec at f/11, ISO 100

Headed to Malabar (South Maroubra) on the weekend for a very early morning shoot on the coast with Gerry and Mj. Sunrise was at 6:20AM and it was a 30 minute walk through the scrubby bushland along the clifftops to our destination so we needed to meetup at 5:20AM.

When we arrived there was a very cool bunker built right on the clifftop which had some interesting graffiti on it, we also got a little cloud action and some nice colour in the sky but most of the more interesting cloud was over the land and came after sunrise.

Note: These images (especially the wider shots) look much better when larger – so click any of the images below to see larger versions in an inline overlay slideshow gallery viewer.

Eye on the edge of Nowhere (about ten minutes before sunrise)

NIKON D7000 + 12.0-24.0 mm f/4.0 @ 14 mm, 10 sec at f/16, ISO 100

Smoke Signals (a few minutes after sunrise)

NIKON D7000 + 12.0-24.0 mm f/4.0 @ 14 mm, 1/2 sec at f/11, ISO 100

It was then Bigstopper action time…

Stop the Ocean (25 minutes after sunrise)

NIKON D7000 + 12.0-24.0 mm f/4.0 @ 14 mm, 210 sec at f/6.3, ISO 100

then since Gerry and I have screw in 10 stop ND filters with all the lee filter gear screwed in front of that we started doing guess the composition, grad setting and exposure when we moved our cameras around for various different bigstopper compositions by “feel”

which resulted in what is probably my personal favourite of the morning…

Turbulence

NIKON D7000 + 12.0-24.0 mm f/4.0 @ 13 mm, 150 sec at f/9, ISO 100

and

Weeping

NIKON D7000 + 12.0-24.0 mm f/4.0 @ 13 mm, 283 sec at f/13, ISO 100

On the way back out along the coastline Gerry and I checked out another graffiti laden bunker inland as well as trying some quick run and gun macro and floral landscape work (now that we could actually see what was there during the daytime – when we came in it was pitch dark :)) – there was a huge abundance of native flowers out all along the coastal scrub – I’ll post a couple pics later.

The coastline was very nice and I’d like to return in better conditions to try some landscape compositions with all the flowering flora…