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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Here and There

NIKON Z6_3 + NIKKOR Z 14-30mm f/4 S @ 14 mm, 120 sec at f/9, ISO 100

Gerry and I took a trip up the Blue Mountains to shoot sunset and then hopefully some astro and light painting. That was the plan at least 🙂

Gerry’s prediction of 100% high clouds around sunset was a good call. The additional 100% middle and low cloud that also showed up, along with gale force winds and rain not so much 🙁

This was a quick take just after we’d shot sunset from this neat little cave at Lincoln’s Rock. When we climbed back up the top of the cliff we discovered these very cool rock formations that would be great for light painting later

Here’s a quick shot (2 minute long exposure – using one of the extended shutter speeds on my new Nikon Z6 III) of me with the last of the dying twilight and some light painting courtesy of Gerry

Off to dinner in Katoomba before coming back here for some light painting and hopefully astro (if those clouds would just blow over – the radar was looking somewhat promising)

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.

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Loo View

NIKON Z6_3 + Viltrox AF 16/1.8 Z @ 16 mm, 20 sec at f/1.8, ISO 100 x 700 Frames

The view from our bathroom window

During the past month or so I’d acquired a number of new photographic items to upgrade my kit bag

I’d bought myself the new Nikon Z6 III camera, which has a number of feature enhancements and improvements over my Nikon Z7

I’d also tired of waiting for Nikon to release a Nikkor Z 14mm f/1.8 lens – which I would expect to be a truly epic astro lens to replace my large and heavy F mount Samyang 14/2.4 lens. I was hoping for a smaller native Z mount ultra wide angle astro lens to go with my Nikkor Z 20/1.8

So when the new Viltrox AF 16mm F1.8 Z lens came up on special recently I caved and ordered

This is my first shot (or rather shots) with that lens. It was an unusually clear night and only a few days after the new moon (with moonset around 7PM) so pretty ideal for some astro

I was pretty lazy and just did the 700 frame (just over four hours) sequence from our bathroom looking out the window (which conveniently looks east)

When trying lots of different new things you probably should just change one thing at a time to avoid things going completely wrong ;); and worse not knowing exactly which of many possible things caused any issues 🙂

So with that in mind I basically tried a handful of new things I’d ever used or done before 🙂

• a new camera body with all sorts of completely new features compared to my Z7 – partially stacked sensor, fully electronic shutter, starlight view mode, warm display colours
• a new lens – which I hadn’t tried at all before these shots – which also had new features I didn’t have in other lenses (like a neat built in OLED display with focus distance and other info, two function buttons)
• I also decided to try powering the camera via an external power source via USB-C. The battery was 2/3rd full and I wanted to shoot for many hours and wasn’t sure it would last
• I also tried for the first time using a new remote control I ordered for this camera (an ML-L7B which connects directly to the camera via bluetooth low energy) – I only used this to take the twilight frames – it has no intervalometer functions
• lastly I tried using the camera’s built in intervalometer function (the first time I’ve tried using the built in Nikon function) – I normally use an external dedicated intervalometer plugged into the camera because it has much more control. The Nikon built in intervalometer is “strange” – one setting is to set the “Interval” which Nikon describes as “Specify the interval between shots”. Sensible reading of this would indicate this would be the gap or interval between shots – however you’d be wrong – it’s actually trying to be the time between the start of one shot and the start of the next – and if you don’t set the interval value carefully to work with the shutter speed you’re planning to use, things can and will get completely out of whack. Another vagary is that if you manually set a shutter speed of say 20 seconds – the time taken for the frame is actually around 21 seconds

Anyway long story short – as you can see – it all worked out in the end. I don’t think the built in intervalometer worked as well as my specific external one does (where I can set and control very small sub-second gaps between frames) but it wasn’t horrendous. The external power worked fine – and in fact the battery ended up being charged by the end

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.

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Curve

NIKON Z 7 + NIKKOR Z 24-120mm f/4 S @ 24 mm, 1/25 sec at f/4, ISO 160

Louise walking the curved corridors of Trajan’s Market

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Mercati di Traiano

NIKON Z 7 + NIKKOR Z 24-120mm f/4 S @ 24 mm, 1/50 sec at f/5.6, ISO 64

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.

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