Rodney Campbell's Blog

My family all decided to go for an early evening stroll down to the banks of the Shoalhaven River and have a little picnic for dinner there. They needed someone to drive the food down and I wanted to take some photos so…

It was still almost two hours till sunset but there was a bit of movement in the sky and I know what I could do with the water here so it was time to get out the dark glass and see what we could extract from a long exposure panorama.

Seven frames with the 24-70 at 50mm and f/16 with the Lee BigStopper stacked with a 3 stop Lee ND and ISO 50 to allow me to extend the exposures as much as I could.

Teaching Point:
I had to adjust the exposures as I went around to adjust for varying light (shutter speeds ranged from 89 to 123 seconds). I also waited on the left (where the sun was directly in the three frames on the left) for the sun to go behind heavy clouds before taking those shots so as to further reduce the light levels.

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.

Converted the final result to monochrome and adjusted to taste (especially the water) and we have

Old and New

NIKON D600 + 24.0-70.0 mm f/2.8 @ 50 mm, 123 sec at f/16, ISO 50

I was looking to do some more graphic shots with the interesting lines and shapes underneath the twin bridges and was bracketing exposures that I was expecting to later process into HDR’s. However I got a little luck late in the day when the sun went behind some heavy cloud cover and the giant softbox in the sky evened the light for me – filling in the dark shadowy areas under the bridge and controlling those highlight areas which were in direct sun. So this is a direct monochrome conversion of a single exposure

V

NIKON D600 + 24.0-70.0 mm f/2.8 @ 62 mm, 1/2 sec at f/16, ISO 100

Finally a single 13 stop ND long exposure of the twin Shoalhaven River Bridges – apparently this grand old one nearest us is not long for this world and will be demolished soon – I for one will be sad to see this icon of my childhood here gone

The Old Iron Bridge

NIKON D600 + 24.0-70.0 mm f/2.8 @ 24 mm, 244.00 sec at f/13, ISO 50

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