well, just give me the free time to come along 😉 I see so many awesome sunsets through the pool glass windows while going for a swim, or as we wrangle.. i mean ..read stories.. to Tickles and Chaos or on the drive home and just about every time I plan to go out its dull.
On the brightside it was a pretty quiet evening on the harbour 🙂
D750 coupled with Nikkor 24-70 f2.8 @ 24mm Aperture: f10
Shutter Speed: 220.5s
ISO: 100
Out front: Lee Bigstopper
I always wanted to use that title 🙂 and I think this building is the perfect subject for it.
One significant difference between the D7000 and the nikon D750 cameras which becomes quite apparent in shots like this is the noise and sensor hotspots. Previously when doing exposures like this on the D7000 there would be a barrel load of hot pixels and more noise (for lack of a better term). The D750, in this case has none, yep.. thats right.. zero hotspots and the resulting long exposure is much cleaner (read less noise) – this is to be expected given different sizes of sensors and the pixel density i suppose.
anyway enough of all that boring stuff, back to the picture, this image is taken with the B+W ND1000 filter, which was the second ND filter I purchased, the first was a 3 stop hoya one, just for waterfalls), the B+W was my first introduction into super long exposures and even after the first use I was really pleased with the results, the only drawback, and it is a significant one is that its a screw filter, meaning it can be quite time consuming to get a single shot, ie one must firstly compose, focus, then screw the filter on and then take shot (after putting your DK-15 eyepiece cover on – dont forget that 🙁 )
After sometime of using this filter I did get the Lee bigstopper which is a slide in filter, hence is by far more convenient, however a completely different colour cast and in my opinion less nice than the B+W – that is however based on nothing but my grand opinion. And in case when it goes to a black and white, who gives a rats bum.
back to the penetrator… no fake clouds here – these are all real, yep every single one of them, admittingly I did clone out a bit of another building up on the top left, but it was tiny.. 🙂
Exif love:
D750 coupled with 24-70mm f2.8 @ 62mm Aperture: f/18 and Shutter Speed: a mere 127.3s
ISO 100
out front – ND1000 B+W Neutral Density (ND) – Schneider Optics
Zig Zag Coogee – (c) 2014 Gerard Blacklock
D7000 with Nikkor 17-55mm f2.8 @ 55mm – Aperture: f/8 and Shutter Speed: lots of seconds
out front – +HoyaFilters CPL and Lee Graduated Filter (0.9x)
Probably the most typically composed shot you will find of this location at Coogee (Ross Jones Pool) The edges of the sea pool lend themselves to being composed with cool S curve, whether its down low, or up high I think it works pretty well.
This particular morning Rod and myself met up with the initial plan to shoot this pool and maybe check out the next couple of ones along, however we did just hang at this one, in hingsight, i think we could have avoided all those othe rphotographers and gone to Wiley Baths of something – especially avoided that dude who came in and set up right in front of us (which by the way was in this shot, bottom right, but got cloned out)
Nonetheless, here is to the world of cliche, S curves at Ross Jones Pool.
Single frame, cropped to a vertical pano
Techie data:
D7000 with Nikkor 17-55mm f2.8 @ 55mm – Aperture: f/8 and Shutter Speed: lots of seconds
out front – +HoyaFilters CPL and Lee Graduated Filter (0.9x)
Softness is .. North Bondi – (c) 2014 Gerard Blacklock
D7000 coupled with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @11mm Aperture: f/5.6 and Shutter Speed: 248.4 seconds
ISO 400
out front – Lee Graduated Filter 0.9x, a very tall cliff and lots of rocks.
It was well past sunset and there was nothing but a warm glow from where the sun had disappeared over the city skyline, with almost no moon it was a perfect time for some long exposures without the need for filters.
I did however have a graduated filter on the sky to enable more light from the lower part of the scene to be captured, additionally with the use of a super powered torch I lit the scene from an adjacent rock several steps from to right. The rocks down in the ocean are artificially lit along with that part of the cliff face on the right. The warm tip on the cliff is from the argon street lights a hundred metres of so away.
Whilst the composition was not quite what I wanted, i do like the smooth water and punchy rocks, hence it made it off the cull list 😉 I also think a star trail view from this very spot could really make it sing, you can see a few of the star trails from the 250 seconds long exposure
Techie Love
Light vs Dark – (c) 2014 Gerard Blacklock
D7000 coupled with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @11mm Aperture: f/8 and Shutter Speed: 152s
out front – LEE graduated filter 0.9, LEE bigstopper and screw in circular polariser and a battle between the rocks
and whats left between
I really liked this scene, the comparison between the warm friendly looking rock in the front and the mean dark ominous rock out back simply meant I could not compose it any differently, I did have to crop out a rock off to the left, but hey, sometimes nature does not see my entire vision and needs to be bent a little bit to achieve the artistic license 😉
Single frame
Exif/setup data:
D7000 coupled with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @11mm Aperture: f/8 and Shutter Speed: 152s
out front – LEE graduated filter 0.9, LEE bigstopper and screw in circular polariser and a battle between the rocks