Pasca Exam S2 2011

Assalamualaikum wbt,

It's been a while that I havent updated my blog. Busy recently with final exam which already ended last Thursday alhamdulillah. Hope the results coming out this mid of December will be great Insya Allah.

One of the things that I did during few days after exam was to continue with my hobby - photography. So I went out alone and sometimes with friend to take pictures. So below are the summary of the photography things that I've done.

Slow Shutter Landscape.

I was planning to buy a neutral density filter about 10-stop for landscape pictures. But somehow the filters I found in the market are quite pricey. One of em' was B+W 1000x ND filter which costs aroun NZD200. And another problem that I have was the maximum size of the filter thread is only 77mm (my 24-70mm got size of 82mm).

So, instead of that I found another inferior, yet cheaper solution that is to buy "made in China" ND64 and a step down ring which cost less than NZD30. And below is the picture I took using this filter :

Manawatu River.

I did also learn an essential technique for landscape called " Hyperfocal Distance Focusing". This technique is used to maximise the depth of field in the photo so that it will be overall sharp and in focus. I will write about it in the next entry Insya Allah.

Star Trails

Last night the sky was clear and there is moon light which brighten the surrounding. So I went down to the same place I shoot with ND64 last night, planning to shoot the star trails. I made couple of good shots last few months but for last night I used different settings for testing purpose. This time I used the conventional settings, which is using the lowest aperture and ISO available and shoot a long exposure for each frame. Unfortunately, I somehow displaced the position of the tripod little bit, resulted in un-aligned star trails during stacking process in Photoshop. So I had to removed few of the frames which resulting in picture below :

Still not bad uh?

Macro Outing @ Massey University.

This morning I went to the arboretum behind Kairanga Court at campus to shoot macro. This time I wasnt alone because Koid came with me. Like myself, he is also a photo-enthusiast. I did teach (if you want to call it as teaching) him few things on taking good macro pictures. And I lend him my Orbis ring to play around. We found few bugs and I managed to capture em'.

Koid In Action.

Beetle. Too small that I need to crop the picture off.

Also a little spider that Koid found first. I helped him to take few shots before did mine. This one is either a small huntsman or a crab spider.

A Fly.

Special pose from this cute little spider.

That's conclude my photoshooting for this year at New Zealand I suppose. This Monday I'll be leaving for Malaysia on 3 months summer holidays. If anyone of you who want to join me shooting around places in Malaysia, then feel free to contact me.

Cheers and wassalam.