More visual treasures, found in the City Botanic Gardens.

This evening a gorgeous new moon was just visible over Brisbane CBD. Naturally I had to try and photograph it.

I’m trying out a more photo-friendly layout for this site. So here goes.

After all the fun I had last time at the City Botanic Gardens with their waterfall we decided to see what flowing water might be available at its bigger out-of-town sibling. Since I had my Key Grip with me to carry things I brought all my lenses, and even a tripod. We came away with several lovely shots, including my current favourite, a currawong in flight. In the expectation that it might take off I’d adjusted the camera settings in advance, and got rewarded with a sharp image of it flying away, including its reflection. Pleased, I am.

Yesterday’s shoot also produced my contribution to today’s Daily Shoot.

Late winter is producing warm, sunny days, and while the harsh sunlight is perhaps not perfect for photography it’s awesome for wandering around outside with a camera. A jumper during the day is no longer necessary; sunblock, however, is. I watched this cormorant for quite a while, getting a shot just as it was flying off. It didn’t go far; it was mostly after a higher spot from which to watch the world go by. Note that the chosen tree is still devoid of any greenery.

This Eastern water dragon did what lizards do best: sun-bathing, while this moorhen preferred to stay in the shade.

A waterfall afforded the opportunity to play with manual settings. Give a waterfall a long enough exposure and the water droplets should look like long streaks. This is limited not so much by the minimum available aperture but by how long I can hold the camera steady-ish. This turned out to be one-fifth of a second. Any longer and a tripod will be required.

When I went out in search of photographic subjects today I got a bit more than I bargained for. Sitting in the sun with a vague idea of maybe photographing some seagulls I spotted a Wedgetail eagle! What an excellent time to be trying out my new camera’s AI Servo focus and multi-shot drive modes. AI Servo focus means that the focus intelligently follows the moving subject that the camera thinks you want to focus on. And to be fair, while there were a few misunderstandings between me and the camera (yes, I know there is a cyclist over there, why would I want to focus on him rather than the shiny eagle??), overall it did actually work pretty well. Certainly better than my previous attempts at photographing moving subjects.

The other thing that this camera setting does is take lots of shots in close succession. My old camera could only take four pictures in a row before wanting a break to write the stuff out to its card. This one rattled off several six-shot sequences in succession without batting an eyelid. 384 shots later (I didn’t count but I assume my camera can) I had a pretty decent shot, taken with a 75-300mm telephoto lens.

384 shots later I also had 384 18-megapixel RAW files that made a considerable dent in the computer’s 1TB hard disk and caused Aperture to crash. Maybe 8GB of RAM is not enough after all…? After several hours of editing, the best shots of the day are attached below. I used the eagle for today’s Daily Shoot as well.

Slight administrative change, the thumbnail pictures below now link back to my Flickr photostream. This is an experiment. I am trying to consolidate my public photo store. We’ll see how it goes.

I took my new camera to Daisy Hill at the weekend, to explore its capabilities while Other People took their mountain bike up and down trails (and had a puncture — but that’s another story). Anyway, new camera has HD Video recording capability, and I was lucky enough to run into a wild kangaroo in the picnic area. The kangaroo was only interested in picnic remains (of which there were none — by and large, Australians leave their picnic areas tidy) and, having determined that I wasn’t edible, proceeded to ignore me. So I shot my first-ever video. I think my camera work could do with improving but still, a wild kangaroo this close, how cool is that?

Since this was so much fun, I repeated the experiment with a not-so-wild koala at the Daisy Hill Koala Centre. It was almost dusk and the koalas were waking up and starting to move around. In fact, this was the most active koala I’ve ever seen.

I still prefer photographs but it’s fun to try a movie from time to time. Meanwhile, here are the best of the weekend’s pictures.

For some time now, my trusty Canon EOS 300D has been showing signs of aging. After all, I have had it for seven years, and while USB 1.0 was all the rage back then, the new ‘resident’ in our flat, a brand-new, raunchy, 27-inch iMac with 8GB RAM, 1TB of disk space and an uncertain number of CPUs (four? eight?) throws a wobbly every time the camera is connected, being unable to imagine such a relic even exists. Most of the pictures end up imported with Aperture’s hideously unhelpful ‘unsupported file format’ message.

We tried giving it smelling salts (different USB cable, different USB port, different photo application) to no avail. Yet exactly the same pictures, from exactly the same memory card, using the same USB cable and the same application, import just fine (if extremely slowly)  into my older model.

Clearly, there is absolutely no point in having a top-level graphics-capable computer available if I don’t use it for photography work. So, what to do? I admit, it seems like a rather large jump from “my pictures don’t download properly to state-of-the-art computer hardware” to “I need a new DSLR”. After all, this particular problem could be solved quite easily by procuring a USB2.0 card reader for roughly 1/50th of the price of a new camera. But I have improved significantly as a photographer in the last seven years, and as a result the camera’s technical specifications have become insufficient for what I want it to do.

For instance, its minimum shutter speed of 1/4000th of a second is far too long. Connect my 50mm prime lens to it on a sunny day, open the aperture as wide as it’ll go (f1.4) and ask the camera to take a picture and it will blink the shutter speed furiously since a correct exposure cannot be achieved with that setting. “So, close down the aperture,” I hear you say. Well yes, that would work from an exposure perspective. Artistically, however, the  increased depth-of-field may not be what I want.

Anyway I’ve been considering a camera upgrade for the best part of a year, and compared specifications between models for ages. This weekend I finally bit the bullet, walked into an excellent camera shop, pointed at the Canon 60D and said “May I exchange this for an exorbitant amount of beer tokens, please.” The shop was happy to oblige, and the Generous One insisted on buying me a 16GB memory card to go with it.

I’ve played with the camera a lot over the last few days, and am extremely happy with it. It’s a little heavier (read: the build quality is better) but the handling is a noticeable upgrade; it feels solid and secure in my hand. Plus, shutter speeds down to 1/8000th of a sec, 18MP pictures, fast USB2.0 downloads, far improved sensor quality, Live View, a hinged, rotating LCD display…. I’m a happy bunny. Here are some pictures I took with it over the last few days.

It can take HD video too, by the way. For me, that wasn’t a selling point but I certainly intend to play with it. A topic for another post, perhaps.

Oh, and it can make coffee. (Only kidding.)

A few days ago I read this post on how to photograph waterdrops. It looked awesome so I thought I’d have a go to see what I could come up with along those lines.

First, the technical issues: Waterdrops needed to fall from some height into a receptacle, ideally evenly spaced. Experiments involved hanging plastic bags from ladders, using different receptacles, changing the lighting, the background and the lenses… and making a mess — inevitable where water gets splashed around deliberately. Eventually I settled on a whisky glass (because it’s pretty) set in front of an (out-of-focus) batik napkin.

Literally hundreds of shots later, including variations on how full the glass should be and which lens to use, some of the best pictures are shown below. Enjoy!