Rodney Campbell's Blog

Another friend has kindly loaned me his Nikon 16-35 f/4 VR lens also for a couple weeks to see if this is the ideal replacement ujtra wideangle lens for my new D600 (to replace the Tokina 12-24/4 I’d been using on my crop sensor D7000 – it has an approx equivalent focal length of 18-36mm).

After picking up the lens in the city I took a slight detour on the way back to the office to try it out for a little city shooting

Note: These images (especially the wider shots) look much better when larger – so click any of the images below to see larger versions in an inline overlay slideshow gallery viewer.

Handheld at 16mm and f/4 – the distortion auto corrected quite well in Lightroom

Mystic Herbs

NIKON D600 + @ 16 mm, 1/15 sec at f/4, ISO 1600

I got so lucky with the timing on this shot – I wasn’t actually planning on the soaring bird but I’ll take it :). I loved the texture of this old ramshackle stone building sandwiched between the two monoliths of glass and figured I’d do a shot pointing almost straight up (whilst trying not to get run down in the middle of the road :)) and into the sunburst reflection no less. No flare – probably the Nano coating.

The Bird

NIKON D600 + @ 18 mm, 1/320 sec at f/4, ISO 100

For this last I headed underground and shot some handheld HDR brackets. This set was taken at 16mm at f/4 with the 0EV shot at 1/15 sec at ISO 560 whilst the +3EV shot was at ISO 4500! – with no noticable noise none the less! Again LR4’s lens correction has done a marvellous job with the distortion at the wide end

I tried two different processings of the image…

The first a more muted rendition of the grimy underground tunnels (and probably my own favourite)

In the Bowels of the Spaceship

NIKON D600 + @ 16 mm, 1/15 sec at f/4, ISO 560

and this second a more heavily tonemapped but still not over the top grungy, noise and halo ridden psychedelia rendition

NIKON D600 + @ 16 mm, 1/15 sec at f/4, ISO 560

Perhaps if you’d indulge me and tell me which of the two versions you prefer (or none if that’s your choice :))?

I recently built a new Programmable Orb Light Painting Tool.

In a future post I’ll detail more about the construction of the tool (with photographs of the home made disaster :)) – for now I’ll just list the components…

– an Arduino (Uno) (basically an open-source electronics prototyping platform – basically a programmable micro controller with inputs, outputs and other goodies)
– an addressable chain of RGB LED pixels (basically a bunch of LED lights which can be driven to display any of millions of colours – I’ve used a dozen here)
– a battery case (to hold 6 x rechargeable AA’s)
– a switch, about 1.5m of cable and a 5.5mm/2.1mm barrel power plug
– A round plastic food storage container
– a wire coat hanger
– a dog lead
– a soldering iron
– a drill
– some wire, header pins (90 degree), solder and electrical tape

For now I’ve just programmed the LEDs to cycle through a rainbowish swath of colours. Tonight I went out at twilight and gave it a try to see how this bizarre creation would work. Note – the actual landscape I’ve used here is pretty boring (I just went to a local oval where it would be dark). This was just to test the tool and see how the orbs would look.

Note: These images (especially the wider shots) look much better when larger – so click any of the images below to see larger versions in an inline overlay slideshow gallery viewer.

NIKON D600 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 19 mm, 74.00 sec at f/16, ISO 100

this second with a quick touch of light painting on the stones and ground with an LED torch as well

NIKON D600 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 16 mm, 150 sec at f/11, ISO 100

My initial thoughts…

– this tool is a lot brighter than my previous orb making tool (which was just one or two fixed colours) – the LED spread is also wider – this means I don’t have to spin the tool for anywhere near as long or for as many rotations – the ones here were two slowish rotations but I reckon I could get away with doing them quicker – my previous tool required at least four slow rotations to burn in
– I reckon I need to program less blue and more other colours
– the dog chain was a good idea but I’ll need to wear gloves in future since the rope rubs on the fingers when you spin it

Took my girls to dinner at a nice Thai place in Cammeray last week – they had these very cool chandelier style lights and with a glass ceiling (and it being near the end of twilight) it made for a interesting handheld shot with the 50/1.4 (at 1.4 of course :))

Note: These images (especially the wider shots) look much better when larger – so click any of the images below to see larger versions in an inline overlay slideshow gallery viewer.

Dining

NIKON D600 + 50.0 mm f/1.4 @ 50 mm, 1/50 sec at f/1.4, ISO 280

and a little glimpse along the kitchen galley with the also interesting birdcage lighting just as I was heading out the door

Firefly Cages

NIKON D600 + 50.0 mm f/1.4 @ 50 mm, 1/100 sec at f/1.4, ISO 560

A friend has very generously loaned me his 24-120/4 VR for a couple weeks to try it out on my new D600. I’m trying to decide whether I want the 24-120/4, the 24-70/2.8, (even the 28-300 I guess – but unlikely) or even no midrange zoom and just get an ultrawide, some fast primes in the middle (I have a 50/1.4 and 85/1.8 (& 90/2.8) already) and one of my tele zooms (70-200/2.8, 70-300 and 50-500).

Note: These images (especially the wider shots) look much better when larger – so click any of the images below to see larger versions in an inline overlay slideshow gallery viewer.

Here are a couple of images in the city the day of picking up the lens

NIKON D600 + 24.0-120.0 mm f/4.0 @ 58 mm, 1/100 sec at f/4, ISO 100

This is a monochrome HDR created from two of the shots from a bracket I took handheld in the QVB – I used the 0EV and -3EV frames only. The 0EV frame is 1/25sec @ f/4 @ 24mm at ISO 500

NIKON D600 + @ 24 mm, 1/25 sec at f/4, ISO 500

Also here is the straight 0EV frame – this is basically SOOC RAW – the only adjustment I made was to do a little highlight recovery.

What’s impressive to me about this is the dynamic range and control of highlights and shadows on the D600 – the inside of these steps in the QVB are dark but outside it was clear blue skies and the midday sun was beaming straight at those windows – they should be completely blown out and there should be no details in the shadows – Lightroom shows no shadow clipping and minimal highlight clipping (and was recoverable).

NIKON D600 + 24.0-120.0 mm f/4.0 @ 24 mm, 1/25 sec at f/4, ISO 500

Another monochrome effort in the QVB (@ 120mm)

NIKON D600 + 24.0-120.0 mm f/4.0 @ 120 mm, 1/125 sec at f/4, ISO 400

A couple more light painting sequences from our session at Sculpture By The Sea

Note: These images (especially the wider shots) look much better when larger – so click any of the images below to see larger versions in an inline overlay slideshow gallery viewer.

Firstly a piece incorporating the very interesting windmills of “Cave Urban”. In this frame Suren is the very accommodating (and with very tired arms and legs from having to stand near motionless for 20 minutes :)) silhouette with fire energy in his hands, I’m doing the green and blue EL wire on the ground and Gerry was going to do the torchlight on the bamboo poles… but.. well, time (and the exposure – all six miniutes) ran out before we had the chance – luckily ambient from the reflected light pollution off the clouds, the full moon and other people lighting was easily enough for our purposes

Gatekeeper Z

NIKON D600 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 16 mm, 360.00 sec at f/11, ISO 100

A Sculpture by Zhang Yangen titled “Seas Nest” – however my version I’ve called

Lunar Egg

NIKON D600 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 35 mm, 160.00 sec at f/9, ISO 100

Incorporating the moon (yes I know it looks like the sun, but trust me – it’s the almost full moon – and it’s very very bright) into the shot was tricky since it would have nuked the exposure. I had Cameron stand at the back of the egg in front of the opening where the moon is, shielding the moon from camera view for most of the exposure, only moving near the very end to expose the moon. I did the greeny/blue EL wire everywhere on the ground… and went a bit overboard 🙂 and Suren did the LED torch light from left and right sides.

Finally another incorporating the excellent “Mirador” dome by Rachel Couper & Ivana Kuzmanovska

Fire Bug

NIKON D600 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 16 mm, 107 sec at f/9, ISO 100