Rodney Campbell's Blog

Not far (perhaps only 200m) upstream from Fortescue Falls is the beautiful Fern Pool. Here you can have a refreshing swim in the spring fed permanent falls. You feel like you’re in a tropical paradise at this pool surrounded by ferns and trees. Park managers have erected a wooden swimming platform with stairs, so water access is easy.

It was now almost 4PM and my daughter and I changed into our swimmers and took a dip in those very inviting – but VERY cold – waters.

Golden Fern

NIKON D750 + 28.0-300.0 mm f/3.5-5.6 @ 78 mm, 1/80 sec at f/8, ISO 1250

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.

This is a stitched panorama of nine (9) vertical frames taken at a tight 105mm. Because of the very strong contrast in the scene – parts were in full sunlight and parts in full shade – I shot HDR brackets for each of the panorama frames.

In the end I have nine sets of five (5) bracketed frames taken at 1EV intervals from -2 and 2/3EV to +1 and 1/3EV. I then processed each of the sets of five frames into a single 32bit image using Lightroom’s Photo Merge to HDR feature. I didn’t post process any of those frames but then stitched those nine HDR frames into a panorama again using Lightroom’s Photo Merge to Panorama feature. I then processed the final 32bit DNG in Lightroom.

Fern Pool

NIKON D750 + 28.0-300.0 mm f/3.5-5.6 @ 105 mm, 1/13 sec at f/8, ISO 100 x 9 Frames

The end result would definitely have been better had I shot it at a better time of day (when the whole area was under open shade – for example near sunrise/sunset/twilight). I’m still happy with this result and it gives a pretty accurate representation of what it was like. How lush and green and inviting it was.

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