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.

Stars Gazing Alongside Manawatu River

Assalamualaikum wbt,

After a week at Nikon Service Centre in Auckland for annual maintenance, finally I got my D700 back in action last Friday afternoon. The weather was fine that day which sunny and cloudless sky. So I decided to go to the riverside, Manawatu River that night, planning to shoot Milky Way and if possible, a star trails picture.

At first, suddenly there were many clouds and moonlit that shrouded the sky, but didn't give up so I waited around an hour there. It was so dark on the other side of the river, but in my side it's quite bright from the houses and cars.

When the clouds disappeared and moon setting down, I started to take pictures. I put my tripod close to the water and made some try and error shots just to get the right setting for the pictures.

To shoot Milky Way, since I didn't have the rail system to shoot the still stars (as they and earth are moving) I shoot using the faster shutter speed possible. This meant that I had to boost the ISO up and use the widest aperture available. In a simple words, Shooting star trails need you to use the Milky Way settings in the opposite (I did shooting star trails as well, and to shoot it I need to use the lowest aperture available, low ISO and longer exposure).

It was worth standing there for hours when I managed to get several nice shots like these below:

Vertorama from two pictures, stitched in a single image.

Before packing up to go back, I made this shot which was incomplete due to the battery flat.

A dangerous attempt from me to take this shot. I put my camera on tripod at the bottom close to the water and set it on timer. So I only got 10 second to run up there. Luckily I didn't injured and worth it to take this wonderful picture. This picture was listed as one of Flickr's daily best pictures for yesterday (currently ranked #36 out of 500).

Alright guys, thanks for visiting. Cheers.