Rodney Campbell's Blog

Spacial Anomaly

NIKON Z 7 + 14.0 mm f/2.4 @ 14 mm, 629 sec at f/8, ISO 100 + 41 sec at f/8, ISO 800 x 70 Frames

Well… It’s a day later than we’d planned and a completely different location… but…

Here Gerry and I are at Middle Head Fort… and well… it appears some sort of spacial anomaly has ripped the fabric of space… again…

We’d ostensibly come here to shoot star trails with the fort along with some light painting. This is the second last composition of the night. The last contains a pretty epic single shot steel wool spin by Gerry. More on that later…

So the shot… This is me doing the orb with the new LED Umbrella. I’ve also added some “fairy dust” sunstars using my new Anduril 2 based Emisar D4V2 in momentary party strobe mode. (which only arrived earlier this day). Many thanks to Stephen Knight for the tip on this. All the extensive aqua/green EL wire goodness courtesy of Gerry. For a crazy long single 629 second (over 10 minutes) light paint

This is my second session with the LED Umbrella. I’m definitely refining my use of the tool – this one a different technique to the ones from the previous weekend

We’d ended up spending many hours doing other orb and dome light painting in another good location at the fort. Again more on that later 🙂

So it ended up being after midnight before we’d even started the foreground light painting shots for this composition. Let alone the actual shots for the star trails. Ideally I’d have liked 2 hours worth of star trails shots. Alas we weren’t going to wait around that long in the cold and dark. So we had to make do with a much shorter set of 70 x 41 second frames (about 45 mins worth). All up we didn’t finish till 1:30AM! sigh… Happy Mothers Day indeed…

Bursting with Pride

NIKON Z 7 + 14.0 mm f/2.4 @ 14 mm, 400 sec at f/8, ISO 100

We attempted this light paint compo for one of my daughters. Alas Gerry fully admitted he’d messed up the pride ribbon :). Plus I think he was hesitant to put my arm through another 5 minutes of orb creating torture 🙂

My daughter still thinks it’s very cool tho – so it’s all good mate 🙂

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.

Green Grove

NIKON Z 7 + NIKKOR Z 20mm f/1.8 S @ 20 mm, 307 sec at f/11, ISO 3200

When we were moving between light painting locations out at the Malabar bunkers Gerry and I stumbled across this grove of ghost fungi

When we were done with the light painting we returned to see if they’d glow

In hindsight we probably should have focused stacked a number of frames at a lower ISO and aperture. But at 5 minutes an exposure at around midnight who could be stuffed waiting around for that long 🙂

The sky looks almost daytime in this long exposure; that’s just Sydney city light pollution

Battery Down

NIKON Z 7 + 14.0 mm f/2.4 @ 14 mm, 454 sec at f/8, ISO 100

Gerry’s red dome in the gun emplacement at Malabar

The coastal defences on Malabar Headland (Malabar Battery) were built in 1941-42. On the orders of the Australian Army and manned at combat readiness in the period 1942-1943

This was designed for a counter-bombardment role and could also perform a close defence role. It was sited to fire into a gap between the Signal Battery (South Head) and the Banks Battery (at Cape Banks, the northern headland of Botany Bay)

It was equipped with two breech loading 6 inch calibre guns with a maximum range of 20,400 metres (over 20 kilometres)!

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.

Unholy Plasma

NIKON Z 7 + 14.0 mm f/2.4 @ 14 mm, 430 sec at f/8, ISO 100

Gerry and I out at the Malabar bunkers on Sunday night. Continuing our light painting extravaganza with this unholy construction

It was looking like a promising night for this. We had the new moon at a remote and dark seaside location so it would be as dark as it could be in metro Sydney. Gerry’s cloud predictor was also looking somewhat promising with the offer of minimal cloud and thus some milky way action

Alas the clouds did not hold off and by around 9:20PM we had significant cloud cover

This final image is a composite. Some milky way frames taken before 9PM when we had minimal cloud.  Nine short (15 second) milky way exposures (ISO 1600 @ f/2.4) stacked to reduce noise. The long exposure light painting session provides everything else

Here I’m trying out a new light painting tool I just purchased. It’s actually a LED umbrella with all the umbrella bits removed. Leaving just the clear acrylic shaft with it’s built in seven colour torch. This is my second attempt at a plasma ball with the “umbrella”. (my first attempt was on a ledge up near the top of this three storey bunker so it gets the danger factor :))