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.

Big Waves In Coogee

Fantastic stuff! It is not very often the really big waves hit Coogee, indeed it is not very often that you can even claim that it is worth surfing around Coogee - the waves are simply just not good enough. This late January day, however, things were different.

[Notice the surfer to the right taking on this monster!]

I had finally decided to do what I should have done from the very beginning; put the new lens on and keep it there till I felt comfortable with it! That is how all new lenses should be treated! At work I had heard that it was looking like it would be "good" surf conditions along most of the coast, so why not take advantage and go for a little surf watching - photo walk combo.

Standing watching these gigantic waves coming in was absolutely gob smacking and when a group of 5 surfers started paddling towards them it attracted a crowd of probably up towards a few hundred people standing there watching the battle.

In about 1 hour all in all we saw one(!) single surfer actually being able to make it out to behind the point where the waves started breaking, probably ca. 500 meters from the beach. After a few minutes of resting he received an epic cheer from the crowd when aligning his board and catching one of the monsters of the day - fantastic stuff! First of all making it out there was only achieved by him - his 4 mates were still struggling in the foamy waters closer to the coast - but someone actually taking on and riding on of these waves was everything you could have hoped for as a spectator ... I would seriously have loved bringing the Bigma, but for keeping the wave in the shot I must admit the macro was probably better suited - exactly the purpose of exploring what you can do with your new lens! ;-)

After his ride, he had been pushed back probably around 100 meters and it was like the water had been infuriated by him conquering a wave and a set of 4 to 5 even larger monsters were rolling in, pushing everyone even further back - at some stage it started looking slightly dangerous since the pounding waves gave very little time for recovery. It broke the spirit of most of the surfers and as we left it looked unlikely that anyone else would be able to ride the waves.

It is weird only having 150mm - at that distance it becomes quite a significant task to "zoom with your feet". At first I was considering running home to pick up the bigma for the surfer pictures, but in reality I should probably be happier with what came out of the prime. With the zoom I would probably have made a close up of the surfer as he plunged down the slope of the wave, but would have lost the shear magnitude of the wave. Being forced to include the wave might indeed have made it a more interesting picture. :-)

Birding With The Pros - Pitt Town Lagoon and Sheyville National Park

Full and contented from a surprisingly good lunch we made the short drive to good old Pitt Town Lagoon eager to see if once again this little gem of a bird spot would deliver.

Weather had changed! Clouds had come in and covered the scorching sun, which was nice, but making our way down to the Lagoon was like walking into a steam sauna, humidity was approaching 100% and temperature had not yet dropped - well, we were not there to enjoy(?) and you cannot die from sweating(?) .. so we dived in ;-)

At first it all seemed a bit difficult, the Australian part of the company was not to happy about the never ending bashing through tall grass in the vicinity of water - absolutely prime snake territory - and trying to alert the snakes of our little party passing through probably had the same effect on all wildlife including the birds - what to do?

Slowing down and letting things happen around you is often the way to go and suddenly from nowhere was a little family of about 6 beautifully colored finch sized birds jumping around in the tall grass: Chestnut-breasted Mannikin - I have never seen them before :-)

During our exploration around the Lagoon we managed to a get close to a good selection of waders, however, the target species were not "home". Instead we had another surprise encounter with a (different?) Cuckoo. Unfortunately the pictures are not good enough for the blog, small bird in a tree 100 meters away is not "publishable" here. Instead I have included a link to some of the pictures from the trip down at the end of this post and invite anyone interested to take a look and chip in with comments on the Cuckoo in picture 18 and 19.

Apart from the excitement that comes along with being lost we were getting a bit birded out when exploring around in Sheyville National Park. Some Brown-headed Honeyeater and an unidentified Swift should have been photographic highlights - that could potentially have happened if I had changed to the much less light-hungry macro lens, instead of holding onto the reach of the bigma .. at least, such a swap would have allowed me to do a "proper" macro of the semi-macro fly photos you will have to content yourselves with.
All in all a great trip! Fantastic company and Pitt town and Bushell's Lagoons are always worth a visit. Indeed it could be argued that it would be sad to see everything in one go, since it would severely increase the activation barrier for going on the next trip :-) One would have to do something as stupid as starting up a year-list or similar madness to solve such "problems" :-D

Birding Road Trip

Birding Trip With the Pros :-) Windsor Downs, Bushell's Lagoon, Pitt Town Lagoon and Scheyville National Park

What a trip! Four top birding spots in one day, traveling with some exceptionally experienced birding celebrities, what more can you ask for? Well, one could argue that it would be nice with some birds to look at, and as the observant reader will notice it is often a bad sign when a birding blog post starts with 2 insects pictures :-)

The Nikon started snapping before the trip had really started. In the back streets of Newtown I managed to stalk the butterfly in the first picture - these guys are very shy creatures and seems to know when they are being observed. Though 750mm full frame equivalent (FFE) takes a bit off the required early morning sneaking skills.

Amazingly and brutally honest: The grasshopper in picture two was probably the highlight of Windsor Downs :-D We gave it a good go though, using at least an hour wandering around in a dry and very warm forest seeing only a few wrens and a White-throated Treecreeper - I need to see the Red-browed soon!

Bushell's Lagoon, however, never disappoints! Even during the very warm part of an Australian summer day the waterbirds will be out and on this particular day at Bushell's even a few nice surprises: The Cuckoo below for one :-)

A bit of walking through high grass brought us out on some wonderful(?) mud flats where a good crowd of waders had found refuge. Sharp-tailed Sandpiper (below) and Black-fronted Dotterel. No sight of the Grey Plover, but who cares ...? ;-)

This year seems to be the "year of the turtles", I have seen turtles in every waterhole I have visited since I came back to Australia after Christmas and New Year in Denmark. The little fellow below had dragged itself into a nice warm sunny spot taking full advantage of the scorching sun.

We decide to retreat back to Windsor for some shade, a look at some real estate pricing (I really love that) and a bit of lunching - all in combo with a deliberation on how to solve the the lack-of-birds problem. I have never been to Bushell's Lagoon without seeing a Black-shouldered kite and this day was no different .. At some point I will have to get the Letter-winged Kite .. soon!..?

Yet Another Spider Macro Post

This little fellow was having its web expanded in a fence close to where the Magna sleeps in the streets of Coogee. You get a bit macro-nerdy trying to spot small things in your surroundings that you can practice taking pictures of :-)

I realized that I badly need a spider book! The little fellow here is probably a female Garden Orb-weaver of some sort, it is a bit of a stab in the dark, so if anyone out there has better sources please do not hesitate to chip in - I will start looking for a heavily discounted spider book straight away! :-)

Bicentennial Park - A Bit Of Macro And Stuff

When it gets really stinking hot you just have to bring water and you will have a great day in Bicentennial Park - every other sane Sydneysider will be at the beach! However, be careful about leaving the water in your car (even if it is white!) Since it will be close to boiling when you get back - consequence being that you drink 0.5L and turbo sweat 0.5L as a result thereof :-)

Suddenly having an extra lens there is not straight forward! Having been used to the Bigma handling 95% of my shooing; long, short (with stitching) and semi-macro makes it very hard taking it off. However, my new macro lens has some qualities that makes it superior for certain types of photography - one of them obviously being proper macro - I just need to learn to shoot that type of photos.

A great example is the two Golden Orb Weaver spider shots - the one above is taken with the Bigma at about half zoom, somewhere around where you get the best magnification ratio (at 500mm the minimum focus distance is significantly increased). The picture below is with the Sigma 150mm f/2.8 Macro and you suddenly realize that when you get really close a hole new story is unfolding. The macro shot is actually not really good, I had a hard time getting a sufficient depth of field, at least to cover the travel of the insect while they were being blown around by the wind :-/ Handholding macro shots outside under windy conditions will be one of the things I will have to optimize in 2010! :-D

Finally having gotten the Macro on I decided to keep it there for a little bit and had a bit of luck finding a Leaf curling spider that had established its home in a sunny and less windy spot.

A super smart little spider that is truly taking advantage of its surroundings. They are very common here around Sydney, but often people do not notice them since they sit inside their little leaf only having the legs resting on their web, detecting any vibration caused by potential prey.

When you get optimal conditions - and a preying spider might be one of the most still and optimal targets you can hope for - my new Sigma macro is scary sharp ;-) If you press the picture above you are taken to a higher resolution version, for a bit of spider leg-hair examination.

Well, after a while the prime lens got a bit restrictive and I returned to the Bigma for a bit of water shooting. Having a leaky underwater camera has hurt the underwater content of this blog badly so I will try to make up for it with a few wet ones.

I was happy about the eel above, I have tried to get a similar photo before, but maybe because of the heat and the consequential low oxygen level this day the underwater creatures where swimming closer to the surface ... or the fact that an entire 7 membered family was standing bombarding the water with old bread next to me :-)

Fantastic stuff! The possibility of carbon loading (or once again the low oxygen levels?) also attracted a couple of turtles - they look pretty scary close up!

Great day in the park! Bicentennial park is a fantastic package of various habitats and therefore packs an excellent selection of wildlife to look at. From a photographic point of view it is nearly as good as going to the zoo - the park being one of the busiest in Sydney has made the wildlife very relaxed about having screaming human activity around them, so relaxed indeed that you are more successful by walking straight towards a bird and shoot your pictures instead of trying to creep towards it .. crawling in public parks have been known to be considered suspicious behavior ;-)