Rodney Campbell's Blog

One from a lunchtime photowalk with Francis Gorrez through Hyde Park in Sydney’s CBD

Note: These photographs (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.

Birdland

NIKON D600 + 35.0 mm f/1.4 @ 35 mm, 1/1250 sec at f/1.4, ISO 100

In the lead up to an epic evening of light painting at Forresters beach on the NSW Central Coast I got out the Lee BigStopper for a long exposure seascape.

It was very overcast and dull anyway so even the “normal” exposures were relatively long even though it was still twenty minutes till sunset. So I pumped the ISO a bit and opened the aperture a little so I didn’t have to wait for an insanely long exposure to complete in the dropping light.

Here we have a four minute LE with a Lee 0.6 Hard Grad ND, Heliopan CPL and the Lee BigStopper for a really dreamy seaside look

I Dream of Blue @ Forresters

NIKON D600 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 19 mm, 240 sec at f/9, ISO 400

Just so you can see the comparison to a “normal” shot at the same time – here is the frame I took immediately before the above (with just the Lee 0.6 Hard Grad ND & Heliopan CPL)

Day Dreams

NIKON D600 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 19 mm, 2.50 sec at f/16, ISO 100

A continuation of the panosphere theme – a conversion of a stitched panorama taken at Long Reef during sunrise (7 vertical frames at 35mm with the Nikon 16-35 f/4) – originally from this post – Long Reef Panorama Visions…

Note: These panospheres look much better when larger – so click the image below to see larger versions in an inline overlay slideshow gallery viewer.

Stepping Stones – Panosphere

NIKON D600 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 35 mm, 1.30 sec at f/11, ISO 100

Our photography weekend adventure nearing a close, my daughter and I started our long drive back to Sydney mid afternoon on Sunday.

Note: These photographs (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.

Whilst driving back along Jenolan Caves road which winds it’s way along the top of the ridge we were struck by this vista and had to stop to take some shots

Rolls

NIKON D600 + 70.0-300.0 mm f/4.5-5.6 @ 70 mm, 1/160 sec at f/8, ISO 200

and a little further along our drive we had pockets of beautiful light coming down through the heavy overcast skies with rain off in the distance and my daughter wanted us to stop and do a panorama here – me with the D-SLR and tripod for this 160 megapixel stitched pano monster and she was done in seconds with the iPhone in sweep panorama mode :). To be fair she did say she wanted it done “properly” with the D-SLR when we were stopping.

Cloud Burst

NIKON D600 + 70.0-300.0 mm f/4.5-5.6 @ 70 mm, 1/80 sec at f/8, ISO 220

In the grounds of Sydney’s Royal Botanical Gardens – I was directed by some friends to check out this absolutely enormous spider (a Golden Orb) in a web hanging out in the open area (perhaps it was trying to catch bats or a small bird :))

I killed ambient by shooting a fast shutter (1/125th) and with a tightly closed aperture to gain some depth of field this close (f/45) and then lit the spider from the side to highlight it’s shape and the fine threads using an off camera flash with a kiss of light from the front using my LED macro ring light.

Converted to monochrome ’cause well it looked cool 🙂

Threads

NIKON D600 + 90.0 mm f/2.8 @ 90 mm, 1/125 sec at f/45, ISO 200