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  • Cheltenham at Dusk

    A misty rainy day today left the sky a washed out white, and the constant drizzle was less then ideal for my walk after work with camera in hand. I took a stroll down Cheltenham beach in Devonport from dusk to dark looking for some interesting images. Again with the Ricoh, I used my mini tripod, found some semi-sheltering foliage and took some 30-60second exposures with the lens stopped down. I love the effect long exposures have on the ocean, or moving water. As the sky was washed out I decided to convert the image to B&W in post processing, and cropped the image to give us more of a panoramic feel.

    My new-old Juipter-8 arrived in the post today. It looks and feels pretty good, so I will hopefully give it a test out on the nex some time later in the week.

  • New Life

    Walking along a small bush path I came across a fern with a number of seedlings growing from its leaves. From memory I don’t recall ever seeing this before. There were a number of similar ferns around, but this was the only one with seedlings on it. Getting up close I caught this image. Its not crystal sharp, but I like the softness of it combined with the limited colors and dark background.

  • Beyond the Mangroves

    Walking down some lesser known streets (to me) on the North Shore, I came to a dead end at Charles Street. It had a great view looking over at the Harbour Bridge (almost directly to where I took my night shots of the Bridge several weeks back). Armed with the Sony Nex and Jupiter-11 at f4 I got down to the height of the small mangroves and followed the water track to the view of the bridge. Aside from being straightened and cropped slightly, no other post processing.

  • Air Brakes

    We had some more great weather today, so after some tidying around the house I managed to go for a several hour walk. I brought along my Nex 5N and two of my old legacy lenses – the Industar 61 and Jupiter 11. Todays image ‘Air Brakes’ was captured on the Jupiter 11, a 135mm soviet lens, which equates to about a 200mm lens when coupled with a APS-C sensor like that on the Nex. For the price, its a nice old lens that I have spoke about before. I think I will take it apart and re-lube when I get some time as its a bit stiff to focus, which makes all the difference when focusing on moving targets.

    In post editing, I did crop the photo, both to remove a branch in the left, and also to give a larger shot of the bird. Shot in .jpg, I wish I had been also saving in raw as it would have given me some more detail to play with.

    I have a Juipter-8 on the way from Ukraine also and cant wait to give it a run on the Nex (and some 35mm rangefinders) as I have read some positive things about it, most suggesting its a better lens then the Industar 61 (which I like anyway).

  • Friday Sun

    We have had a lot of dull cloudy and wet days these last few weeks, so it was a refreshing change to get a clear sunny day today. Fingers crossed it holds for the weekend! Although I am now carrying one of my Rollei 35T film cameras with my in my bag, its been nice to leave it sit and get back to some digital shooting. Between the weather, long work days and wanting to shoot film, I’ve been ending up diving into archives more and getting out less (Which is not as enjoyable as getting out there to get shots).

    Friday Sun was the result of a stroll with the Sony Nex 5N and its pancake lens. Using its built in HDR setting, something I need to experiment more with, I caught this lazy shot sitting on Mt Victoria in Devonport on Auckland North Shore.