Rodney Campbell’s Blog

This is my second dawn seascape shoot (inspired to try this type of shooting somewhat by the awesome work of Xenedis and Brent Pearson) – also many thanks to the folks from the photography forums for inviting me on both occasions.

Note: Click any of the images below to see larger versions in an inline overlay gallery viewer.

It was another very chilly 5:30AM start in total darkness at the carpark at Long Reef (behind the Golf Club) at Collaroy – scrambling over a couple hundred metres of extremely slippery rocks and low water in the pitch dark to get to the edge of the reef was “invigorating”.

I should note that I don’t own any of the essential tools of choice of seasoned landscape and seascape shooters (ND’s or GND’s – Neutral Density and Graduated Neutral Density filters) (and there is no filter thread on my Ultra Wide Angle lens so it would have to be handheld even if I did) so I have to make do with what I can. I also discovered the gradient tool thingy in Adobe Lightroom so had a bit of a play and got much better results adjusting the single RAW exposures (rather than using HDR).

Firstly Way Pre Dawn – this is a 3 minute exposure I took looking back towards the City – so the ambient light in the sky is coming from the main city. I didn’t have my remote with me so this is a three minute hand hold the shutter button down – not ideal but it appears to have basically worked although I did have to heavily post process this image to bring it back…

D90 + Sigma 8-16mm @ 16mm, 177 sec at f/11, ISO 200

Pre Dawn (the very long shutter speed misty water look) [6:20AM]:

D90 + Sigma 8-16mm @ 8mm, 30 sec at f/11, ISO 200

The next two shots are the slower shutter speed flowing water shots – the first at 6:35AM and the second just after 7AM:

D90 + Sigma 8-16mm @ 12mm, 2 sec at f/13, ISO 200

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D90 + Sigma 8-16mm @ 13mm, 1/13 sec at f/16, ISO 200

Looking Back (this is the headland we walked down and the rocky reef we walked across in the darkness) [7:15AM]:

D90 + Sigma 8-16mm @ 12mm, 1/25 sec at f/16, ISO 200

The edge of the reef in the early morning light [7:35AM]:

D90 + Nikon 18-200mm @ 31mm, 1/80 sec at f/9, ISO 200

A Panoramic shot of the headland and beach (this is a single ultra wide shot cropped):

D90 + Sigma 8-16mm @ 8mm, 1/200 sec at f/11, ISO 200

I had some of my gear in the office with me one day last week so I decided to to do another impromptu lunchtime shoot in the city of Sydney. Went for a bit of a walk towards Cockle Bay/Darling Harbour for a quick lunch and grabbed a few shots along the way.

Note: Click any of the images below to see larger versions in an inline overlay gallery viewer.

I loved the colours and the way the reflected light was falling onto this old building in the city (near Town Hall):

D90 + Nikon 18-200mm @ 29mm, 1/60 sec at f/11, ISO 200

Just at the entrance to Cockle Bay I saw these poles sticking up into the sky and had to frame this shot against the sparkling blue skies:

D90 + Nikon 18-200mm @ 56mm, 1/100 sec at f/8, ISO 200, CPL

At the end of Cockle Bay wharf there was this interesting little jetty with nicely lined up poles and as luck would have it a seagull arrived on cue :

D90 + Nikon 18-200mm @ 50mm, 1/160 sec at f/11, ISO 200, CPL

Finally on the way back to the office we have this shot of the clock tower on Sydney’s Town Hall in the early afternoon sun:

D90 + Nikon 18-200mm @ 56mm, 1/160 sec at f/9, ISO 200, CPL

Continuing our macro quest from the other day here is another selection of five shots from that shoot.

Note: Click any of the images below to see larger versions in an inline overlay gallery viewer.

D90 + Tamron 90mm Macro, 1/160 sec at f/11, ISO 200

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D90 + Tamron 90mm Macro, 1/160 sec at f/11, ISO 200

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D90 + Tamron 90mm Macro, 1/160 sec at f/11, ISO 200

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D90 + Tamron 90mm Macro, 1/160 sec at f/11, ISO 200

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D90 + Tamron 90mm Macro, 1/160 sec at f/11, ISO 200

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D90 + Tamron 90mm Macro, 1/160 sec at f/11, ISO 200

Having been totally inspired by the awesome Macro photography of Michelle Legg and her Macro a Day journey I decided to give this a try myself.

Now first things first – I’ve never done this type of photography before so I was sort of making this up as I go along. Secondly Macro photography is close-up photography – the classical definition is that the image projected on the “film plane” (i.e. the digital sensor) is the same size as the subject – i.e. 1 to 1. That way when you view it on screen or in print the images appear much larger than real life.

It’s night and it’s indoors so I figured I needed some form of vaguely evenly diffused lighting to light my tiny subjects – so I cobbled together this sort of crazy makeshift “lightbox” of sorts in an attempt to have light from all around the objects.

Thats my D90 with my Tamron 90mm f/2.8 1:1 Macro lens to the right on my tripod. To the left is my SB-600 flash pointing mainly upwards with a dome diffuser on and some tissues thrown over it for good measure which I’m wirelessly triggering from my camera through the magic of Nikons Creative Lighting System (CLS). I’ve also got a diffuser on the cameras built in flash because whilst it isn’t being used to provide any of the flash light (I set it to commander mode only) I had noticed that the preflashes it generates to talk to the slave SB-600 still caused some bright reflections on the shiny objects I’m photographing. At the back and side are some white cardboard boxes standing up as reflective walls and to the right of that I have some simple white A4 paper being stood up by my Joby Gorillapod. Over the top I’ve got a large piece of my childrens white craft cardboard and finally on the bottom to provide a neutral background I’ve either got the black cardboard or a bunch of white A4 paper.

After mucking around with a few shots to begin with and playing around with the light (I ended up having to move my flash to different positions and change the angle of the bounce for certain shots as I went along) – I decided to shoot in Manual mode and lock the ISO in at the Nikon default of 200, the Aperture at f/11 and the Shutter Speed at 1/160 sec and let the TTL flash do the rest of the work. I did find that for some objects and shots I had to apply some minimal flash exposure compensation (between -1 and +1 EV). I also used manual focus for all of this – at the start I used the viewfinder and then later started using liveview on the rear LCD. I’m not sure if this is the “right” or most appropriate way of doing things but hey it’s all one big learning experience

OK without further ado here are some of the results (feel free to guess what they each are ) and I’ll post some more at a later stage.

Note: Click any of the images below to see larger versions in an inline overlay gallery viewer.

D90 + Tamron 90mm Macro, 1/160 sec at f/11, ISO 200

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D90 + Tamron 90mm Macro, 1/160 sec at f/11, ISO 200

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D90 + Tamron 90mm Macro, 1/160 sec at f/11, ISO 200

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D90 + Tamron 90mm Macro, 1/160 sec at f/11, ISO 200

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D90 + Tamron 90mm Macro, 1/160 sec at f/11, ISO 200

So I learnt a little about lighting using a strobe and a makeshift set of light modifiers, diffusers and reflectors and had some fun along the way.

Another thing I only discovered after loading the photos on my computer is that even though the exposure looked correct and for some even slightly over exposed on my cameras small LCD screen once those photos were opened up in Adobe Lightroom most of them were slightly underexposed (to the tune of around a half to just over a stop) – possibly about the amount of negative flash exposure compensation I was applying?

The white background also didn’t look so pure white or so evenly exposed which I was able to partially correct in some of the shots but likely also means my makeshift lightbox was by no means anywhere near perfect.

I really wasn’t happy with the shot of the water fountain in front of St Mary’s Cathedral that I took the other day (see next blog entry) so took my camera gear to work yesterday and during lunch I though I’d see if I could do a better job. The light wasn’t particularly good (it was extremely overcast and very dull – and then it started to rain) which made it more difficult to achieve the very high shutter speed I wanted to use to freeze the water (I shot in Manual mode and used ISO to compensate for exposure). However I think these shots better represent the vision I had in my head when I took the first…

I took these with my Nikon D90 and Tamron 90mm f/2.8 lens on Manfrotto tripod.

Note: Click any of the images below to see larger versions in an inline overlay gallery viewer.

First a colour view towards the cathedral itself:

1/2000 sec at f/2.8, ISO 560, 90mm

and then one looking away (towards the Museum) which I’ve applied the antique black and white processing to:

1/4000 sec at f/2.8, ISO 1100, 90mm