Rodney Campbell's Blog

Sydney (well most of Australia) is heading into bushfire season and we’ve started early this year with a couple of large fires burning in areas west of Sydney. With high temperatures and strong winds it was particularly bad today and a huge pall of smoke has been blown over Sydney towards the ocean. With the skies filled with smoke and haze and interesting light happening, I decided to head down to the harbour (Blues Point Reserve) for sunset to see if we’d get some colour in the sky.

It was also a chance for me to try my new Formatt Hitech 3 Stop Reverse Grad filter I’d purchased recently to use with my Lee Filter system.

Early on it wasn’t looking promising with the skies just going very dark with a very thick bank of smoke blowing across the skies

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.

In the absence of anything particularly inspiring before sunset I set about to try some bigstopper long exposures stacked with the new reverse grad. The following didn’t work as I’d intended – I’d backed away and used a slight tele to compress the weathered stone lip of the sea wall with the Opera House and bridge in the distance. In hindsight I should have taken two shots and focus stacked them (one with the foreground sharp as we’ve got here, one for the background) – f/11 just wasn’t anywhere near enough dof at 70mm. I’m not even sure the composition works at all (what do you think – does the stone wall at the base with a few scattered leaves and a twisted branch provide an interesting firm footing for the rest of the frame or does it block you from entering the shot?). One thing the shot does show you is the dark and heavy purple smoke haze flowing over us.

Purple Haze

NIKON D600 + 24.0-70.0 mm f/2.8 @ 70 mm, 245 sec at f/11, ISO 100

This view of North Sydney with the BigStopper stacked with the reverse grad

North Sydney

NIKON D600 + 24.0-70.0 mm f/2.8 @ 48 mm, 184 sec at f/6.3, ISO 100

Whilst I was waiting for something to happen (sunset) I tried some more bigstopper long exposures – this one of the SOH and SHB

Long Opera

NIKON D600 + 24.0-70.0 mm f/2.8 @ 70 mm, 184 sec at f/8, ISO 100

I headed around to the western side of Blues Point Reserve just before sunset to try some more long exposures and the sky started lighting up with colour

Golden Setting

NIKON D600 + 24.0-70.0 mm f/2.8 @ 24 mm, 152 sec at f/11, ISO 100

and right on sunset everything started happening

Skies Ablaze

NIKON D600 + 24.0-70.0 mm f/2.8 @ 24 mm, 82.00 sec at f/8, ISO 200

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