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June 19, 2007
Camera and kit
My mate Macartan from Queens Mountaineering Club days asked what camera kit I'm currently using, so here's a quick synopsis:- Canon EOS 350D with the somewhat ordinary 18-55mm kit lens.
- Velbon CX540 tripod; a nice present from my folks a couple of years ago, reasonably lightweight, fine for current landscape shots on calm mornings/evenings, etc.
- Circular polarizing filter for most of the outdoor photos; hence the need for the tripod at times, since I like shooting at low ISO (100 or 200), and the circular polarizer cuts out another stop or two of light. Circular polarizer really adds pop to vivid blue skies and outdoor shots in general.
- Canon RC-1 remote controller for tripping the shutter while the camera is on the tripod. This comes with a handy little clip which means it clips nicely onto the camera strap.
I shoot RAW format images on the camera (as opposed to JPEG), and am currently using Adobe Photoshop CS2 including Adobe Camera Raw for post processing the RAWs. I don't think I've got my home monitor particularly well calibrated, and I suspect I'm processing my photos to end up a little on the dark side. I'm also not currently going to a lot of trouble to resize my images specifically for our website, so the resolution/quality of the ones on the website is probably not brilliant.
There's so much I feel I still have to learn on the post processing front, but I'm learning quite a lot from the DPReview forums.
For panoramas, I now shoot candidate shots for a panorama in portrait (i.e. camera on it's side), so it requires an extra shot or two to cover the breadth of the panorama. I do a little tweaking in Adobe Camera Raw before loading up Hugin to build the panorama as a TIF file. A bit of sharpening etc in Photoshop and then I export it as a smaller JPEG.
I've acquired a couple of digital photography and Photoshop books by Scott Kelby, and I'm waiting for another one on RAW processing from Amazon which should be here this week.
Thanks for the feedback and the compliments, Macartan!
Posted by conor at 11:28 PM
Back up to Castle Hill for our 3rd weekend away in a row
Off after work again on Friday up to Castle Hill village, on our own this time.
It was another cold weekend, with a dusting of snow falling to about 900m on Saturday night, and a cold fog filling Castle Hill basin, with hard frosts of about -6 degrees again.
We headed up to Arthurs Pass on Saturday, and walked with the kids up to Punchbowl Falls. DOC have put in a fairly substantial walkway all the way to a new viewing platform below the falls themselves, although it was a gloomy and overcast day up there for viewing.
On Sunday, I got up at 6.15am and felt my way in the fog up first the Mt. Cheeseman ski field road and then the Broken River ski field road until I popped out above the murk to watch the sun rise. Took the rest of the family back to the same spot later on in the morning to explore on a lovely, crisp, windless morning. We headed back to Kura Tawhiti (Castle Hill rocks) on the way back home to do some scrambling.
Posted by conor at 2:30 PM
June 15, 2007
Enjoyable weekend at Castle Hill with Trevor, Della, Cara & Little/Big Conor
We borrowed Bernadette & Shane's bach at Castle Hill village, and invited the Keohane family to come and join us.Winter has definitely arrived temperature-wise down here, although very dry, so no snow about. Hard frosts in the mornings (-7 or -8 degrees), indeed the air temperature on Saturday up there didn't get much above freezing. All the kids had a good time playing/scrambling about among the Castle Hill boulders on Sunday afternoon as well. I took a few photos which I've enjoyed experimenting with in Photoshop to make a bit more dramatic.
I also tried taking a few more star trail photos with limited success this week. In fact on one abortive attempt I left the camera out for an hour, and when I came back, both the front of the lens and the camera were covered with a hard frost!
Posted by conor at 12:26 PM
June 12, 2007
Good photography quote
...via one of the guys on the DPReview forums, which I'm now starting to appreciate (requires a slight understanding of astronomical terminology)!Photography is a money-sucking blackhole... and I've just crossed the event horizon.
Posted by conor at 3:04 PM
June 8, 2007
Superb weekend away
First weekend in June in New Zealand is a public holiday to "celebrate" our illustrious Queen's Birthday. We headed up to a cottage on Lake Heron Station, a high-country farm 2 hours drive directly west of Christchurch.
Cold, crisp, mostly calm, early winter days in some stunning scenery. We all had a great time. Here's a selection of images from the album.
Posted by conor at 2:41 PM