Tasmania - The Video

Hi again guys, 

I've spent the last few days trying to edit some video footage which i took during my trip to Tas with my new D3s. The footage is not the best as i didn't really focus on making a video, was more like video for fun. So anyways, mosto f the footage is shot at 720x1280 and the other is shot at... i dunno.. 640X something something. using DX mode reduces the video quality so some of it is not as nice as it could be.

Next time i'll try and make a proper movie with better panning techniques, focus, movement, lighting etc etc. Certainly was fun to play with. Hopefully i can do more of this in the future. Anyways. quick film with a quick edit. There's one scene where the aspect ratio is wrong. i need to fix that up, so ignore that.

Anyways. D3s, 70-200, 28-70 for most of the shots.

p.s the footage is a little squashed in my blog. so if u want to see properly, click on it again and it should open in youtube. sorry.. enjoy.

Tasmania

Tasmania.. where to start.. Went with a friend to do some photography shooting which we do atleast once a year for a few years now. This had been the biggest and longest photographic "expedition" we'd undertaken as normally we get screwed around with weather and.. yeah.. weather.. this time was good. Lucky i guess.

There were a lot of Australian flags in Tasmania, thats the first thing that struck me, i don't know why but Tasmania had a lot of Aussie flags.. everywhere.. cars.. houses, roads..  lets see photos. First shot is Cradle Mountain.

Got lucky with the sunset, thought it was gonna be average but at the last minute the sky decided to give me something. We'd been hiking all day around Cradle mountain for a good photo location, took us 7 hours and we ended up shooting where we started.. what a waste of a day.. tiring as hell but.. whatever.

that's cradle mountain in the b/g. We hiked up there..

Hard hike.. took too long.. 

Little hut near Cradle mountain. I was going to shoot here but.. i don't know.. changed my mind in the end. I'd like to go back and shoot from this spot. 

some nice light was hitting cradle mounting in the afternoon after our 7hour hike. this was taken when we were walking back to the carpark.. another 5km away.. fml. 

i was on animal watch when Donald was driving. They liked to jump out just as the cars are coming towards them.. i don't know why.. lot of road kill as you can imagine. 

We had visitors at our camp site. Not scared of humans at all.

ballsy enough to beg for food.. bastard possums.. All shot with a flash light at 20K iso. D3s ftw. This possum bit Donald. I lol'd.

We went to a few places and i've skipped a few locations.. nothing to see.. maybe there was but.. i cbf going thru X gb's of images.. sorry.. maybe i'll sort thru some later.. This was at Freycinet National Park. I loved this place i must say. 

I was planning to shoot this image at sunset.. but that never happened.. i was determined to get my shot at sunset. I wish this had of worked the way i wanted it to. but.. such is life, cant win them all. 

 Had to settle with this instead the next night. if only there were DAMN CLOUDS IN THE SKY.. fml... feeling frustrated and unsatisfied Donald and I went to have dinner, canned food, and came back at night. I wanted my shot. I wanted something at least.

I quite like this one. I'm glad i came back. 

This is how we spent most of our time. Napping in cars. Waking up at 430-5 every morning for sunrise and sleeping at 12-1 every night took a toll on us.. we're bloody crazy. 8 nights with 4-5 hours sleep.. fun times. 

He played the staring game with me. I won. 

Tried to do some birding at the wetland park in Launceston. too hard on a FX camera body, had to use DX mode which meant 5mp images. I don't care that much. but this camera sure is fast. Sure takes some good images too.

I have a lot of video footage of these little guys. They swarmed the whole beach at Freycinet.. it was scary.. but cool. The ground was moving and all you could hear was the sound of them scuttling around.  I need to upload the video.. i'll edit the vid at a later date and post it up later. Made a little vid of Tasmania. filmed a bit too late. missed the first half of the trip but.. whatever. 

Sunrise at Freycinet. 

The last 2 nights Donald and I went exploring the towns of Launceston and Devenport for night photography. Was a lot of fun i must admit, something different instead of landscape photography.

A lot of nothing really but its good to play with design, colour and form when you do abstract sort of art.. whatever.. i'm glad to be home.. Melbourne, i missed you. I'll get on that video soon!

Chris.

Ok..

so it finally arrived.. It's been while since i blogged but i've been busy for the past few days playing with my new toy. For those of you who keep up with me, i've been waiting for me new toy and it finally arrived on Thursday.

RAHHHH yessss my D3s finally arrived.. and let me just say.. its huge and heavy.. especially when its mounted with the 28-70 2.8 as seen in the photos above. For those who are camera nerds you may understand the next bit i'm talking about, for others, perhaps not.. but whatever..

Probably can't tell from such a small image, but thats 12800ISO.. i was fairly speechless. heres a 100% crop.

which i don't think is much MORE helpful, but you get the idea.. crazy.. love it!

What i have noticed is the DOF is so much shallower than on standard DX sensors

First time using the 70-200 on the beast. must admit that the FX sensor means i lose a bit of reach on my long lenses, as i've been so used to the DX sensor 200mm just is so short. however the ISO and speed are enough to make up for this. But i can shoot DX mode on the D3s, however at lower quality. roughly 5mp

which gets me a little closer. Might invest in a teleconverter.. AF is fast.. and accurate.. just like 9fps..

Video seems a bit buggy i hope it works.. whatever.. anyways.. super fast.. enjoying this camera but it is a major upgrade from my humble D80. Haven't quite gotten used to the colours and the way it meters 

light yet, but i'm sure i'll get used to it soon. I did try the crazy 102400ISO..

there was no light in the bathroom, besides the light which was coming from my bedroom 2m to my right.. 102400ISO is fairly FKN amazing... not the greatest image quality at all, but still usable if needed.

I've taken some video but not sure how to upload it properly to my blogger yet, but i'll upload some once i know how to upload it well and when i get some good video footage. Anyways, small update, i'm eager to take it out for a good test run and i'll be back with more updates!

Ciao.

All good things must come to an end.

Well, just a month ago i landed in HK and started doing my blogs. And before you know it, its been a month.. time flies.. shit.. spent my 2nd last day in HK taking photos of course. WEnt to Wetland park instead of Macau as the weather was a bit average. It is winter after all. I'd seen photos of wetland park and it looked quite nice. Lakes, blue skies, birds.. didn't see much of any of those.. there was lots of water, but no birds.. well.. ones i could shoot. If you don't like flowers you may as well stop reading my blog.. i took lots of photos of flowers as i couldn't get many birds.. bastards.. 200mm just isn't long enough for birds..

Vented my frustration by shooting flowers. There are gonna be lots of flower photos.. don't like it, stiff shit.. i do.

Place was full of observation decks, hideouts, where you could go and view the hundreds of birds. Too bad i didn't have a long enough lens =[

see who this scope is made by ;) beautiful scope might i add.. very VERY clear images.. amazing actually.

this is all i got from my 70-200 @ 200.. sigh.. i need one of these bad boys.. one day..

don't get me wrong, it's a great place. just that the weather made it shit.. well.. anti climatic.. i still enjoyed it, its good to try and make something out of a nothing situation.

 

i don't understand how this can be..

Lots of these flowers, seemed like there was only about a handful of flowers still in bloom during winter, but thats alright, i took a lot of photos of them anyways..

sorry, didn't save to sRGB profile so a little bit of the oomph has been lost in the colours, but truly vivid colours. I like the red on green, stands out. i like colours.

Great place to take wedding photos, photog < left assistant > right. Don't agree with the way this photog worked though to be honest. sorry. Overcast day, nice soft light would have made a nice huge giant soft box effect, yeah i get that, but.. bro.. use a bitta light, make some light.. pull out some flashes and make your subjects stand out instead of being washed away in the background and fixing it all up in post.. whatever.. what do i know.. ;)

I'm sure they'll like it..

Don't know what flowers these were, looked like lavender but.. not at the same time.. if anyone knows comment it for me! loved them, took too many photos of them.. but can you blame me?!

70-200 shoots flowers nicely =]

If you have time go deviantart.com and look up 'gilad' does a lot of this.. here's my tribute to him.. whatever.. there were lots of boardwalks, unfortunately unlike the wildlife.

Empty fields..  no birds in there.. heard them.. but didn't see. Heard some other birds.. made a hell of a noise.. i saw them atleast.. The red army came rolling in.. flew some choppers over a few times, maybe training.. or.. being communists and checking on their people.. who knows.. but still cool

Although we were in a wetland park as per say, a national park in the middle of hong kong is never ever that far from civilization. The park is in the middle of a town pretty much. the urban jungle is just over the hedge.

There was a board saying what kind of animals and insects were around the wetlands.. this is the only one i found.. its like some insect that walks on water.. sigh..

there... finally a photo of a bird which doesn't look like a speck..sigh..

oh how i wish i had a 600mm lens or some teleconverters.. next time... this is the view from one of the hideouts where you can jsut sit and view the birds. Is a really beautiful spot, there have been some great photos taken form these hide outs. There is a kiosk at the info centre where you can submit photos.. i didn't submit anything..

too bad they didn't have one for flowers.. i woulda submitted a few..

This little fella got a lot of attention from people. He was swimming in a tank with a crocodile who is a local celebrity around here. "Pui Pui" who was captured in a local river, which is strange, considering she is a salt water croc, who some people believe either escaped as an illegal pet, or was dumped by someone.. either way, she lives in the wetland park now. In a tank however.

Pui Pui was cool but i liked the fish more.

Good subject. he liked to be photo'd

Back to my flowers.

while taking my flower photos, something caught my eye. had a closer look turned out to be ants on a leaf.. but they were fricken huge.

it happend to be that the whole tree was covered in them..  i quickly left.

nearly a bird shot.. but.. i finally one.. by accident really.

While walking back on one of the board walks i looked down and this little guy popped right out and sat infront of me just long enough to snap about 15 frames.. fairly happy.. not the greatest photos, but i got my bird photo.. bastards.. all that waiting around for birds for nothing.. we left.. i was content.

but not before we stopped and took photos of this.

fast shutter speed vs slow shutter speed. just for kicks.

And that was the end of my adventures at wetland park.. it was alright, not the best.. but such is life, can't have it perfect always. Sadly this will be the last adventure i have in HK until i later return perhaps in March, so stay tuned for that kids. I have lots of photos of my Aunty's cats which i might post back up when i get back in Oz.. but i'm sure i'll post some stuff when i get to KL. planning on staying in a hotel which will give me access to the net, and more importantly, a bed for the night.. fkn 12 hour wait.. sigh.. anyways kids, talk to you when i'm in KL or in the land of Oz. I shall miss Hong Kong.

Changas, over and out.