Botany Bay National Park - La Perouse

There you go! After having traveled nearly 1000km down south and back, visited two national parks and used 4 days doing it without seeing a single new bird, you drive 10 minuets down the coast for a little stroll in the park and an Australian Hobby suddenly leisurely glides by :-) The picture is nothing to cheer about, but sufficiently good for ID.

We had decided to do a little walk around the headland, a great way to spend a few hours here in Sydney. The walk covers a good selection of habitats and it is always nice to hit a bit of sea breeze.

It looked like all the good predators were out showing their feathers this late January weekend. We noticed a predator being harassed by a gang of ravens, typical for a juveniles not knowing how to avoid trouble in the world. Being a bit shell shocked after having been picked upon by 3 grown up ravens, the juvenile Peregrine Falcon was happy to have found a quiet spot and was not keen to get back on the wings again, allowing us to get a good close look.

Despite all the ranting about how fantastic macro lenses are, I must admit I had only brought the Bigma for this walk, sometimes it is just not convenient to changes lenses in the bush and the bird-in-flight pictures could not been done with the macro, the Hobby was simply too far away. However, even a old, heavy, light hungry super zoom can be fired up for a bit of close up action ;-)

Happy about the picture above, pretty sharp! Handheld, 1/250s at 320mm (480mm full frame equivalent), cropped a bit, but otherwise straight from camera.
Great walking close to home and realizing that the local bush also can deliver and that you do not always have to travel to where the grass is greener to see something new.

La Perouse At Night And A Close Encounter With The Canon 5D Mark II

La Perouse is a great spot! I guess quite a few underrate exactly how nice it is down there; great bush, good beaches, fantastic fish and chips and stunning sunsets. Well, looking at house prices in the area I should probably not want to be quoted for claiming it is underrated, but is there anywhere along the coast that you can get anything decent for less than $1000000 and a couple of kidneys?

One of my friends has given in and put his accumulated pocket money to good use and invested in a DSLR. What a sane idea - unfortunately things are not always straight forward with this particular friend in question so while doing something good, as usual a bit of madness struck and made him buy Canon - the 5D Mark II in fact. [As a Nikon shooter you have to write that sort of stuff] :-D

I had been invited to have a closer look at this full frame beast, actually I had more or less invited myself to have a look at this second generation 5D. From what I have read on the internet a very capable package - maybe not the fastest speed monster out there, but probably the best high megapixel full frame deal on offer. Nikon's D3x alternative is way(!) too expensive even for many pros and the Sony alpha900 has started looking a little long in the teeth - it probably just beats the Canon if you are exclusively into landscapes, but the lack of high ISO magic and all the other bells and whistles; live view, video capability etc. makes the new 5D Mark II a much better choice for general full frame photography.

I tried the camera with Canon's 50mm f/1.8 II and the 24-105mm f/4.0 L IS a great combo of lenses. The zoom gives a near perfect range for a walk around lens and the fast 50mm prime is good for all the exciting stuff i.e. shallow depth of field, night shots, portraits and razor sharp when stopped down a bit. I have not done any pixel peeping - many much more capable places on the internet have done heaps of that stuff - but playing around with it, you get that good feeling of handling something of quality, it feels very solid and well built without being excessively heavy and I simply love that full frame viewfinder - WOW that packs a lot of light! :-)

An evening of chatting camera gear over some high quality fish and chips, what could be a better way of spending a week day evening? :-)
By the way, all the pictures in this blog post is from the old trusted D300, when the D5 Mark II pictures hit the internet, I will try to supply a link.

The Arrival of Big Al :-)

My dad arrived :-) Not bad at all! His arrival was the starting signal to a well orchestrated 3.5 weeks of excitement ... and probably also the main reason for the pathetic amount of postings hitting the blog lately ;-)

Using the first few days to get the jet-lag under control we kept the action happening in the vicinity of Coogee where we visited a few of the good old favorites. As always it is fantastic to realize how much is happening outside your door if just you make it out there.

Took a few trips up and down along the cliffs of the Eastern suburbs. The picture above is a panorama of Magic Point - a location that has indeed proven quite magic for those who are out looking for Grey Nurse Sharks or a bit of BW'ing. If you click the picture you will get a high resolution version to enjoy.
The wind was wrong for BW'ing and only having two sets of snorkel and mask we decided to just enjoy the views and tick a few whales swimming south :-)


Not having planned to go north during my dad's stay we conveniently also ticket a couple of "Sydney-crocodiles" lying sunning themselves on a rock before going hunting for ... flies.

Final achievement of the first couple of days was to get my dad well and truly hooked on fish and chips, indeed a very easy task, that would give us much happiness during the next few weeks :-)

La Perouse - Light and Shadow Plus a Bit of HDR Photography

Had a late evening down around La Perouse. Starting our walk the ocean was rough and the layer of clouds gave absolutely no hope of any light from above. If it was not for the possibility of getting some of the best fish and chips around Sydney down at Danny's we would probably have given up before we even started.

All wildlife seemed to have sunken in the ground and I was seriously afraid that carrying the Nikon would end up as nothing more than just some extra exercise. Just as we had finished our non-eventful round coming back towards the car park the sun finally got so low that it started breaking through the clouds.

Having tons of memory card space left I felt I could lash out and shoot some HDR stuff - it gives some colors on the blog ;-)