Smiley Bollard

As I walked home the other day using a route on the waterfront I don’t always use, I almost passed by this bollard without noticing its peculiar features. Luckily the corner of my eye caught this amusing face someone drew on the bollard. You will see I shot the picture on f5, so for effect the blurred background is thanks to Lightroom.

Sony a5100, Tamron 17-70mm f2.8 Di III-A RXD, Focal length 26mm, Exposure 1/80sec at f5, ISO 100, AF on, VC on, Flash none, Filter none.

Read more »

A Gull's Perspective

Beautiful sunrise today on the Wellington waterfront. I am still shooting the Tamron with what I consider safe settings just until I can get to grips with the quality and capabilities of the lens at more extreme settings. Aperature was set at f5 at 25mm, and I am very pleased with the resulting depth of field. At the same time I have a new camera to learn. I love the size of the Sony a5100 and the flip up screen is real useful to take pictures from angles other than the typical eye level photos. Oh, and have I mentioned how quick focusing is with this little camera! One downside is that it does not have any manual dails on the camera like my Fuji X100T has. Everything must be set via the menus and rotary dial. Not ideal, but with practice I am sure I will master this.

Sony a5100, Tamron 17-70mm f2.8 Di III-A RXD, Focal length 25mm, Exposure 1/60sec at f2.8, ISO 250, AF on, VC on, Flash none, Filter none.

Read more »

Fountain sunset

It has been 10 years since I posted on this blog. In celebration of my return, I took the photo below with my new Tamron with my recently purchased secondhand Sony a5100. It is early days, so I cannot yet offer any feedback regarding this camera and lens, but keep visiting this blog to learn more about my experience with these new photography tools.

Sony a5100, Tamron 17-70mm f2.8 Di III-A RXD, Focal length 17mm, Exposure 1/160sec at f2.8, ISO 2000, Focus auto, VC on, Flash none, Filter none.

Read more »

Libertia ixioides

Took this photo in wind the weekend while my kids were injoying a play at a park. I just love the colors of the background and how focus causes your eye to automatically be drawn to the little flower. Image taken at very shallow depth of field to force a high shutterspeed to make up for the movement due to the wind. The added benefit is that the rest of the photo is not too distracting due to the narrow focus.

I believe this specific veriety is Libertia Goldfinger. "A native NZ plant. Stunning all-year colour! This Libertia ixioides selection is named for its bright golden strappy leaves. White flowers nestle among the leaves in spring followed by golden seed pods which remain on the plant for some time. Planted en masse it makes a sensational landscapr feature especially when used as an underplanting for slender natives such as lancewood and cabbage trees. Grows to 80cm Height 80cm."

The very good vibration control on my lense helped a lot as well since I've had to take a funny stance to be able to make the shot.

Canon 7D, Tamron 18-270mm f3.5-6.3 Di II VC PZD, Focal length 270mm, Exposure 1/800sec at f8, ISO 400, Focus auto, VC on, Flash external, Filter none.

Read more »

Tiger Lilly Stacked

Played with focus stacking in Magic Lantern on my Canon for the first time. Not my best photo but posting so I can share how useful this tool is. Subject is a bunch of flowers I had to get my wife after I did something I shouldn't have. That plus 2 boxes of chocolates got me back into the green :-)

So what is focus stacking you may ask?

Well, when you take closeup photos of subjects like flowers and insects your camera has a very shallow depth of view. The higher the magnification the less foreground and background you will have in focus. I've shot many photos where my depth of field is no more than 1-2mm! Sometimes this is desirable but more than most not. The lilly below would have had some of the background and possibly deeper bit in the inside of the flower out of focus. To rectify this I set my camera up on a tripod and took 7 photos each one 2 focus steps deeper than the one before starting from the front of the flower slowly working deeper.

Now, this would have been difficult with a manual lens but, with an autofocus lens en Magic Lantern installed on your Canon, you can let the camera do all the calculations, change the focus and take the shots for you. All that is left is to do some basic exposure and saturation editing in Lightroom, then import the photos as Layers into Photoshop. Use the Photoshop Auto Align tool and then the Auto Blend tool to stack the photos by focus point.

The end result is a close-up photo where the whole subject is fully in focus!

Canon 7D, Tamron 18-270mm f3.5-6.3 Di II VC PZD, Focal length 54mm, Exposure 1/60sec at f5, ISO 1250, Focus auto, VC off, Flash external, Filter none.

Read more »

Te Papa Seagull

Another 15 minutes lunchtime trip to have a play taking bird snaps. There is this nice area behind Te Papa museum where seagulls and other birds come together to bathe and drink in a fresh water stream flowing into the sea.

Canon 7D, Tamron 18-270mm f3.5-6.3 Di II VC PZD, Focal length 85mm, Exposure 1/1000sec at f13, ISO 1000, Focus auto, VC on, Flash none, Filter none.

Read more »

1895 Benz

This charming vehicle is the oldest New Zealand car and has been restored to its original condition by Daimler Benz museum in Stuttgart and is one of only two remaining models in the world!

This photo is a 5 shot HDR to pull in the background taken at the Southward Car museum.

Canon 7D, Tamron 10-24mm f3.5-4.5 Di II, Focal length 10mm, Exposure 1/800sec at f3.5, ISO 1600, Focus auto, Flash none, Filter none.

Read more »