Rodney Campbell's Blog

Salt and Pepper

NIKON Z 7 + 90.0 mm f/2.8 @ 90 mm, 1/60 sec at f/16, ISO 200

End of the Line

NIKON Z 7 + NIKKOR Z 14-30mm f/4 S @ 30 mm, 1/3 sec at f/11, ISO 64

A week or so ago Gerry posted a few stitched panoramas taken outside (one of) the abandoned Helensburgh train tunnels

I’d never been inside this particular tunnel – only the good one on the other side of the road. That one is conceptually better – it’s much longer (kilometers), still has the train rails in the bottom and has glow worms in it

This one is very short – perhaps a hundred meters long

The first image is taken inside close to the other end looking out to what lies beyond

The second image is part of a 50 frame stitched HDR panorama. I took it just inside the entrance to the tunnel so I used a 5 frame exposure bracket for each shot. I was originally intending to just shoot the inside 180 degrees or so (which you see here). However it wasn’t much more effort to complete the full 360˚ rotation

Tunnel Vision

NIKON Z 7 + NIKKOR Z 14-30mm f/4 S @ 14 mm, 1/2 sec at f/11, ISO 64 x 50 Frames

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

The complete 360˚ view is below in a nice little pano viewer so you can pan around, etc

NIKON Z 7 + NIKKOR Z 14-30mm f/4 S @ 14 mm, 1/2 sec at f/11, ISO 64 x 50 Frames

Cosmic Launch

NIKON Z 7 + 14.0 mm f/2.4 @ 14 mm, 92 sec at f/5.6, ISO 500

Some light painting craziness with Gerry at Hornby Lighthouse on South Head here in Sydney last night

This is actually a blend of multiple exposures from this spot:

• For the Stars and Sky: eight images stacked (or image averaged) in Starry Landscape Stacker for point stars and to reduce background noise for the stars and sky. Because the damn lighthouse light was actually on! exposures for the stars were not ideal. The lighthouse cycled approx 2.5 seconds on and 2.5 off. Thus we could only take exposures for the stars at 2 or 2.5 seconds long (during the off state :)), f/2.4 and ISO 4000-5000 and focus near infinity for the stars
• Two long exposures for the greenish EL wire work kindly provided by Gerry
• One long exposure with Gerry in red silhouette in the doorway
• One long exposure with the red light leaking up and lighting the side of the lighthouse
• And finally one good exposure of just the light at the top of the lighthouse. Where it was only on for the briefest of time during the 2.5 second exposure so that it did not go nuclear and overexpose. This did, as Gerry would put it, require “ninja timing” (and about fifty attempts :))

This was actually the last shot of the evening. I’d ostensibly fully planned (thanks to trusty PhotoPills) to come here to shoot the milky way core reaching up and over the lighthouse shooting out towards the ocean. Alas for whatever reason the light pollution was too high and the milky way barely visible…

Inner Light

NIKON Z 7 + 90.0 mm f/2.8 @ 90 mm, 13 sec at f/16, ISO 400

It has been quite some time (many years) since I last shot fungi (or macro). So it was out with the trusty old Tamron 90mm macro lens that I’ve had since forever. I joined Gerry for a quick session in the Lane Cove Bushland Park

Ostensibly we were in search of the fabled Ghost Mushroom (glow in the dark shrooms) but alas…

… worse we ended up missing shooting the best sunset we’ve seen in… well I can’t remember how long 🙁

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

Edge of the Beyond

NIKON Z 7 + NIKKOR Z 14-30mm f/4 S @ 14 mm, 2.5 sec at f/11, ISO 64

Right on sunrise, tho it is fully blocked out by all that heavy cloud on the horizon