Sunday, May 27, 2012

My Pictures Published Again

Salam and hi everybody,

Alhamdulillah, following my first debut in Malaysian local magazines last month, few of my pictures were published again and this time there were two magazines that publish my images.

They are:

Digital SLR Malaysia Magazine




In this magazine, there were three images published which are :

Beach Domain, Napier.
The Beach Domain



The Evening Fog.
The Evening Fog



Masa itu Emas
Time Is Precious


I got an email from them yesterday, asking for mailing address and contact number for them to send the prize. Thanks Digital SLR Photography Malaysia for having me in your magazine this month.

The second magazine was:

Dunia Kamera



The picture published was the picture taken during my trip to Wellington last mid-semester break.


Le Waiting Part 3



Thanks for your time. 



New Lens and Hitech Filters

Salam and hi everybody,

For those who don't know, I sold three of my lenses to buy this lens :


It is Nikkor 16-35mm f/4G ED VR. The main purpose that I have when decided to buy this lens is that I found that in creative landscape photography, it is important to use various type of filters. My former ultra wide angle lens (UWA) which is Samyang 14mm f/2.8 AE ED UMC was a good lens, but sadly it can't be fitted with filter due to its bulge, converging front element  nature. Plus with this new lens I have advantages of autofocusing and also be able to zoom up to 35mm.

Back to the filters, for the beginning I bought three filters which are two graduated ND and one ND filters.

- Reverse ND Grad0.9 
- GND0.6 Soft.
- ND1.2

 All of them are made by Formatt Hitech based in UK. For sure if I have lotsa money I will opted for Lee filters or Tiffen glasses, but that's not the case for now.

Talking about quality, they are all great. I used GND0.6 for most of my shots and sometimes use Reverse ND Grad for sunset/sunrise shots. Below are some of the pictures taken using these filters.

Single Exposure | Sunset at Waitoetoe Park


After Raining


Sunset From Fitzherbert Bridge


Sunset over Waitoetoe Park


Awatea Reserve


Round Culvert



Apart from all of these good pictures I captured with these filters, there are also some imperfections I found. One of them is the color cast. I found that when I stacked two filters for long exposure, there is a purple/magenta cast in the images captured. 

Color Cast


But still though, it is not really a big issue. There are two solutions for this problem which are:

1) Shoot in RAW and during the conversion to JPEG, tweak the white balance using dropper tool in Adobe Camera RAW (or set grey point in Nikon Capture NX2).

2) Make a preset white balance at the scene using a sheet of white paper.

That's all for now. Thanks for your time.


Sunday, May 6, 2012

The Hoffman Kiln Brick Works

Opened: 1901 
Closed: 1959
Status: Abandoned, 51+ years (apart of historic trust)
Located: Roslyn, Palmerston North.




#1
Old Brickworks
Camera Nikon D700
Exposure 0.6
Aperture f/8.0
Focal Length 24 mm
ISO100




#2
Old Brickworks
Camera Nikon D700
Exposure 5
Aperture f/8.0
Focal Length 16 mm
ISO100


Listed on The Historic Places Trust as one of New Zealand's 10 most important industrial sites is The Hoffman Kiln Brick Works in Palmerston North. Opened in the late 1890's by Frederick Hoffman the kiln was in continuous use with chambers being loaded, heated and unloaded in succession. About 9000 bricks could be made per day. 

Pieces of coal were fed through openings in the roof of the kiln every half hour to bring a chamber up to heat. Most firings went on for six weeks although their longest record to date is 3 months. Increasing labour costs, efficient kilns and use of materials other than bricks for building saw the works shut down in the late 1950's. During the early 1900's many towns followed the brick making industry and had their own Brick works but today the only other works that remains is in Douglas,Taranaki and Dunedin, although the South Island brick works is far more deteriorated then the Palmerston North. 

Used for making Bricks, the works contained 14 chambers. During the firing, as many as 6 chambers would be in some form of firing at a time. The other chambers would be in the process of cooling or being loaded.The kiln's interior is like a race track allowing the rotation of chambers without ever reaching an end. When in use an internal temporary wall was built between chambers.

These days, the surrounding property is utilized by a large Palmerston North private company, I believe they have owned the land since 1993, if not leased. In early 2009 there was a fire in the front brick offices/reception building, which was due to vandalism. This completely gutted the building, it was not in use, but was insured I was told. It currently still stands in disrepair.