Rodney Campbell's Blog

A strange thing happened this day… My two youngest daughters actually asked me “daddy can you take us somewhere nice to take photos of sunset?”

After I’d picked myself up off the floor… we chatted a little – it turns out there was a photography competition running at their school and they wanted to take some shots to enter (normally their interest level in taking photographs is… well lets just say they aren’t happy waiting around when I’m taking photographs anywhere :))

They mentioned some other shots of mine they had seen and suggested we go there – this happened to be Mrs Macquaries Chair on Sydney harbour which has a great view west over the water towards the iconic Sydney Opera House and the Sydney Harbour Bridge

Note: These photographs (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.

Macquarie Scribbles

NIKON D600 + 24.0-70.0 mm f/2.8 @ 34 mm, 25.00 sec at f/11, ISO 100

It’s hard not to get a pretty good shot from this location at sunset, but like any “famous” location and including two of Sydney’s most iconic structures has been well and truly done to death. However it’s a very nice spot and very easy to get to (you can drive and park metres from where you shoot – although you do pay dearly for the privilege :))

So my three girls and I made our way across the city to Mrs Macquaries Chair and setup on the rocks just above the water looking towards sunset. It was a pretty high tide so much of the rocks was actually covered today but the clouds looked to be shaping up quite nicely for a colourful sunset

I setup for some stitched panoramas with my D600 and the 24-70/2.8 along with my awesome new Really Right Stuff BH-40 PC-LR pano head. I also setup my older D7000 with the 18-200 on my old Manfrotto tripod for the girls to use

I took my shots and the girls did their own thing – all I really did was setup their camera to use Aperture priority and set the Auto Area AF for them

Meanwhile the clouds were putting on a very nice show of colour for the first stitched panorama of five (5) vertical frames at 34mm at ten minutes past 5PM (a little after sunset). With the image at the top of the post I’ve just used the Formatt-Hitech 3 stop reverse GND for some 25 to 30 second exposures

Only a couple minutes later and the bright red clouds are fading fast as twilight is starting to take over. Another five frame stitched panorama with 57 to 93 second exposures this time due to the dropping light

Smokey Paradise

NIKON D600 + 24.0-70.0 mm f/2.8 @ 34 mm, 57.00 sec at f/10, ISO 100

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