Rodney Campbell's Blog

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NIKON Z6_3 + Viltrox AF 16/1.8 Z @ 16 mm, 10 sec at f/1.8, ISO 5000

After dinner in Katoomba we headed back to Lincoln Rock to try our luck with a little light painting and hopefully some astro

The clouds were kinda mostly blown away to the east (behind us) however it was the rediculous wind that was proving to be a problem. It was insanely strong and gusty. So much so we could barely stand up, and our tripods were easily blowing over with each gust of wind. So the only way to take any shots was to crouch down low and hold down our tripods with both hands and take shots, all the while trying to wave your head around like a lunatic trying to light paint the foreground with your head torch… I know… the mental imagery doesn’t do it justice….

All in the vain hope the wind wouldn’t gust too much and move your body or tripod and ruin the shot. This was made particularly bad as I was trying to shoot frames for focus stacking to blend later (a shot at infinity for the stars and one or more shot(s) focused in the foreground)

This one is a two shot blend (stars + foreground)

I was using my new Viltrox 16mm f/1.8 ultra wide angle native Z lens for it’s first static milky way outing

Shooting wide open at f/1.8 it’s actually amazingly good. It also has a number of very useful features for night and astro photographers including:

• a OLED display which shows useful things like the focus distance, aperture and depth of field scale
• two function buttons – one of them allowing you to program two specific focus distances in manual focus mode (e.g. one at infinity and one at the hyperfocal distance) and at a button press switch between the two

Anyway after 25 minutes of fighting the elements, the Tik Tok tourists (seriously), and nearly being blown off the cliff, Gerry and I called it a night

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