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Having fun :-)

Up early again today trying to finish off a few jobs and also get better acquainted with the drone and the time-lapse and night-lapse features of the GoPro. It’s easy to set the GoPro to do the job, but what intervals get the best results AND how long does the battery last! Oh well, all good fun.  One ideas was to capture a sunrise over a rather lovely valley.  Problem was the weather … or the temperature … or maybe it’s just the wrong time of year!  All I got was rolling mist and clouds!  Sure it’s reasonably pretty, but not what I was looking for!  Thankfully I’d made some tea to keep me warm and some spare shoes in case I got wet.  I got soaked and really should have brought extras pants as well as socks and shoes.

Early morning with the moon the dominant feature in the sky.

On the way home I tried out the drone again. This is a wonderful device and great fun to operate. I’m only just starting, so need a lot more time in the air practising manoeuvres and also operating the camera. Thankfully there’s a very useful return to home feature that brings the drone back to you if you get a little confused or concerned. Mind you, this only works if you set it correctly before starting your flight. There’s quite a few stories of “fly aways”, crashes and issues with batteries that I must admit to being hyper cautious when out flying. The next image is one from the drone taken on my may home this morning. The river is the Waikato River. Click on the image and you should get an enlarged view.

A drone shot over the Waikato River close to Tuakau.
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Yashili … early morning

Yashili New Zealand Dairy just before dawn.

Another early start this morning and down in Pokeno I was quite intrigued by the lights around the new Yashili New Zealand Dairy. I was supposed to be looking the other way for a sunrise, but couldn’t resist taking a couple of snaps of the lights in Pokeno village and, of course, the new Yashili factory.  There was a significant amount of low cloud this morning and the lights from the factory and adjacent areas just lit up the mist and clouds.  Quite pretty from a distance!

Yashili New Zealand Dairy with Pokeno village in the foreground

Sad to say I didn’t get the shots I wanted with the sunrise … way too much mist and low cloud and it was bitterly cold. My fingers and toes were frozen and then my car decided to play silly games and wouldn’t let me open the boot to store away all my gear! Not the best start to the day, but the view towards Yashili was pretty.

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A bit of a difference!

I had the opportunity to shoot yet another GORGEOUS home out at Beachlands last night and thought I’d see how the camera on my drone compared with my usual dSLR when the light levels decreased. My usual dSLR is the Nikon D800 with which I must admit to being delighted. The D800 has a similar layout to the D300 I used previously, but the dynamic range is so much higher. The images with the D800 are significantly better than those I used to get with the D300 especially when the light levels decrease.

The Inspire 1 has a 12MP camera, the same number of pixels as my D300. However, the Inspire 1 has a much smaller sensor than the D300, but it’s more modern. I’d certainly not use my D300 instead of my D800 at dusk, but how does this Inspire 1 camera compare with the D800? Below are a couple of shots. One taken with a D800 on a tall tripod, the other from the air with the Inspire 1.

Photo with D800 and Nikkor 12-24mm f2.8
Photo from DJI Inspire 1

For small images the Inspire shot seems fine, but as soon as you start to enlarge the image you notice how grainy and noisy the image really is. Fixing noise just softens the entire image and it then loses the crispness that the D800 provides. Nevertheless, the images from the Inspire seem fine during the day. I’ll be intrigued to see how video looks … but you’ll have to wait a few days until I post one of those.

Oh, the house? Believe me it’s stunning. If you’re looking to buy this gorgeous home, or one like it, then give Brianne at Ray White Lighthouse in Beachlands a call on 09 536 7011 and she can arrange a private inspection for you.

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60 seconds?

There’s two common questions I get asked. “What type of photography do you do?” and “What is your favourite type of photography?”

To answer the first is probably easier to achieve by way of an example than with words. What is it that people say? A picture paints a thousand words? So, maybe I should use pictures to give an idea of the things I do … but briefly! Someone wanted me to watch a video the other day and it was over 30 minutes long. Needless to say I’d lost quite a bit of interest well before I got to the end! So, whatever I do needs to be brief, but needs to give you a bit of an idea as to what type of photography I do. I could then make specific short clips to demonstrate in more detail each of the types of photography I do.

With this in mind, please take a look at the short clip below and, if you have time, let me know what you think. Hopefully 60 seconds is not too long and you might discover a little more about the types of photos I take as well as how to get in contact.

Oh … the second question?  I’ll leave the answer to that for a subsequent post 😉

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Orchids!

I did suggest I’d post a few shots of the plants I saw at the Botanic Gardens in Singapore, and in many ways the main floral feature would be the orchids.  Having said that, the first image in this post is of a very pretty bougainvillea.  As you may recall (having seen images in previous posts) there are a few bougainvillea in my garden, but not with such pretty pastel colouration as this particular bloom you see here.  In fact, it was at this bloom that I met the photographer who showed me the lizard in the previous post.

We have orchids here in NZ, but they tend to be located in greenhouses. Furthermore, I’ve yet to see as profuse a display of blooms as I saw in Singapore. Below are a few snapshots of some of the wonderful flowers on display. Sadly time wasn’t on our side so it was a very brief visit. Hopefully, one day, I’ll be fortunate enough to spend a lot more time in these wonderful gardens.

All images were shot with my Nikkor 24-70mm lens and using available light.  I’d taken reflectors, speedlights, filters and my trusty tripod, but the gadgets remained in the hotel.   All these shots are hand held snaps.  When we visited these gardens I was really feeling the heat and wanted to carry as little as possible.  Camera and a water bottle was plenty!

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Nice reward.

I’d been admiring a hibiscus plant over the past few months. I suppose really because its flowers were so much more delicate that the larger more substantial blooms I have in my garden.  A delicate pink with such a dainty flower.  Anyway, after admiring the plant for some time I was given the opportunity to take a cutting.  Just the one small cutting, placed in a jam jar with water and left on my studio windowsill to see if I could encourage some roots to grow.  To my delight, grow they did and once they seemed large enough the new plant was transferred to a small plant pot and left to develop further on the windowsill.

20150221_125710 copyThese past few days have been pretty busy for me and I must admit that it was only today that I noticed the plant.  What a wonderful surprise to see my new plant in flower!  I couldn’t resist and had to take a photo to show you.  Click on the image and you’ll be able to see a larger version of the shot.  Do you like?

The photograph was taken with a single flash with a snoot attached to camera left.  The idea was to keep the background quite dark, but give sufficient light on the flower such that I could use a small aperture.  I wanted to get as much of the stamen in focus as I could, so the lens was closed down quite a bit.  For the technical amongst you, ISO100, 1/200s, f29, 105mm lens.

 

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Compost heap kitten with a 50mm lens

You may recall me mentioning that the stray cat has returned to the compost heap to produce yet more kittens. This afternoon I tried to see where they were hiding. We’ll need to get them off to the SPCA reasonably soon to be in with a chance of getting them off to some good homes. Folks seem to be more attracted to cute kittens than stropy cats for some reason. It was difficult to decide where they are hiding … and I suspect they’ll find places in which they can escape or hide when I try to catch them. There’s so many little places into which they can run from which I’ll find it close on impossible to extract them.

Whilst looking for their ‘home’ I spotted one of the kittens amongst some undergrowth near the compost bins. Looks like I was the only one doing some spotting!

Lurking in the undergrowth by the compost heap
Lurking in the undergrowth by the compost heap
I think I've been spotted!
I think I’ve been spotted!