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A New Bit of Kit – The Big Stopper!

Equipment, News and Updates, Travel Photography, Uncategorized

I decided after my recent shoot at the Pinnacles at Cape Woolamai that I needed and wanted the ability to have more than 6 stops of neutral density available to me in the field. Up until now I have stacked a couple of graduated .09 3 stop filters in my Lee filter holder when I have needed to slow down the shutter speed, or used a polariser in combination with a grad filter. Sometimes however, 6 stops just isn’t enough and I want and need more. This was the case at Cape Woolamai where I could easily have used more neutral density to slow shutter speeds even further to give me the desired effect of milky waves and ocean swells.

Thankfully LEE filters have a new product called amusingly enough ‘The Big Stopper‘. The Big Stopper is a 10 stop (expensive at $203 Australian) neutral density filter that is now part of my photographic kit for landscape work. Use in combination with a graduated neutral density filter this is going to give me up to 13 stops of neutral density; and that should be heaps!

Unlike LEE’s graduatued neutral density filters the Big Stopper is glass and not resin. It is exceptionally well designed with a soft mount system that prevents light leakage around the edges when in the filter holder. For this reason the Big Stopper must be positioned in the very first filter holder in the LEE system. Graduated flters can then be added in front of it as desired. The Big Stopper comes with a useful exposure compensation chart to help in calculating exposure times with the 10 stop filter in place. Its a simple matter of metering the scene wthout the Big Stopper, consulting the exposure chart, placing the filter in place and adjusting the exposure accordingly.

Ten stops might sound like a lot at first blush, but in reality its extremely useful for landscape photography. In both of the photographs posted below from Cape Woolamai I used a 3 stop graduated filter to both darken the sky and slow shutter speeds. The addition of a ten stop filter would have allowed the ocean and waves to go even more milky and whispy. Or, would have allowed me to open up the lens’s aperture more to an optimum aperture like F8, rather than shooting at F16 or even F22 where diffraction can play its ugly hand resulting in overly soft images. I am looking forward to trying this new filter on my next shoot.

The Pinnacles – Cape Woolamai

Australia, Landscape Photographs, News and Updates, Photographs, Travel Photography, Uncategorized

This was one of my final frames during the sunset shoot at the Pinnacles. Although I prefer the photograph below for the lovely bit of warm light in the foreground this shot does actually show the Pinnacles in all their glory – they truly are remarkable. Technically, it was a very difficult photograph to make because the sun was setting directly behind the rock formations silhouetting the Pinnacles. There was very little in the way of overhead cloud to reflect light back onto the rocks; which meant deep dark shadows. I used a 3-stop soft graduated neutral density filter to pull back the sky and exposed the scene for the secondary highlights allowing the shadows to fall where they may. I let the very brightest part of the setting sun clip and then pulled it back in Lightroom with the recovery slider. I new I would be able to get away with this as it would only clip in the red channel making recovery a cinch. This approach allowed me to capture pretty much the entire dynamic range on the Canon 1DS MK3. I used a cable release with mirror lock-up and timed my shots to the incoming waves. Post processing in Lightroom allowed me to add some fill light and tone curve adjustments to brighten up the dark shadows and otherwise correct the image. The end result is a photograph I am very pleased with. A higher resolution version is on my website at www.jholko.com in the Australian Portfolio.

Meet the Flinstones

The Pinnacles – Cape Woolamai

Australia, Landscape Photographs, News and Updates, Photographs, Travel Photography, Uncategorized

A short video from the Pinnacles twenty minutes after a very banal sunrise on Saturday morning. Apologies for the poor quality video and audio – this was shot on my pocket Canon S90 point and shoot; which was resting on a convenient boulder. The sound of the ocean overwhelms pretty much everything else, including my voice, but it gives you an overall impression of the spectacular granite rock formations and their photogenic nature. Fortunately the sunset shoot in the evening was more conducive to still photography with some great light and I got several images I am very pleased with – including the one below.

The Pinnacles – Cape Woolamai

Australia, Landscape Photographs, News and Updates, Photographs, Travel Photography, Uncategorized

A photography visit to the Pinnacles at Cape Woolamai, Phillip Island Victoria has been on my radar and agenda for a long time. I have never photographed or even visited The Pinnacles at Cape Woolamai before, but I have seen and heard enough about them to know they were well worth a visit. I have come close to visiting and  photographing the area about two years ago. I drove the two odd hours from Melbourne with my cousin riding shotgun and the full intention of photographing them, but we bailed out in the car park a mere hours walk from our destination because it was forty plus degrees celsius… and well…. a beer in the pub was more appealing.

The Pinnacles

I finally got another opportunity yesterday with another very good photographer friend of mine and we made the two hour  journey from Melbourne; this time to completion. We parked at the Cape Woolamai surf rescue club after a leisurely lunch in San Remo and walked the hour or so into the Pinnacles along the beach and through the Mutton Bird rookeries in the early afternoon. The skies were clear and the sun was shinning and it was a glorious Autumn afternoon. It was one of those ‘life doesnt get any better’ moments. We arrived a full three hours ahead of sunset and set about scrambling over the rocks in search of the ideal composition. Mother nature is a fickle mistress however, and as the sun began to set we quickly realised that all our preparations were for naught and that the best solution was to go with the flow and chase the light. This photograph, with the volcanic pink granite illuminated by the setting sun was taken looking East; away from the Pinnacles. It is the composition and frame that offered the best light and for me best captures the feeling that the Pinnacles evokes. Its a truly ‘Jurassic’ location lost in time and I look forward to going back.

Those Pesky Dust Bunnies…

Equipment, News and Updates, Uncategorized

I was reminded this evening after downloading my most recent images from a shoot at the Pinnacles at Cape Woolamai on the Victorian coastline that it was time to clean my camera’s sensor. Those pesky dust bunnies were starting to show up in photographs at anything over F8 and at F22 it was less than pretty. Sure, its only a few clicks in Lightroom to get rid of them; but it does start to get monotonous pretty quickly and there are only so many spots you can ‘sync’ between images. Sensor cleaning is a task I all to often put off and regularly procrastinate over – usually justifying to myself that I rarely shoot fully stopped down so the few dust spots that show up at F8 or so are not really that big of an issue.

Well, I was also reminded this evening of how easy and what a joy to use the Arctic Butterfly is from Visible Dust for sensor cleaning. This battery powered sensor brush complete with LED light is a wonder. And in less than five minutes and a few careful strokes of the brush my sensor is again spotless. I will try and bare this in mind the next time I consider putting off cleaning my cameras sensors.

Kaikoura New Zealand

Landscape Photographs, New Zealand, News and Updates, Photographs, Travel Photography, Uncategorized

Kaikoura is a gorgeous little fishing village is located about midway between Christchurch and Picton in the South Island of New Zealand. Its a wonderful location for landscape photography and offers spectacular sunrises with its north western arch cloud formations and snow capped mountains. The combination of ocean and mountains offers stunning coastal alpine scenery that is unique in my experience. This first photograph from Kaikoura was taken after sunset and although it features neither the snow capped mountains or the northwestern arch clouds in full sunrise colour it is nevertheless one of my favourites from the few days I spent there. I used 3 stop hard graduated neutral density filter to darken the sky and a slow shutter speed to blur the racing clouds and outgoing tide. The outgoing tide and the soft blurred clouds in this photograph add a sense of dynamic movement that greatly appeals to me.

Black Marbles

Miss the Darkroom? More iPhone Goodness…

Equipment, News and Updates, Uncategorized

Swankolab have the darkroom of yesterday for today. From their website: “Introducing SwankoLab, a brand new darkroom kit from the makers of Hipstamatic. It’s a loving recreation of the pre-digital era classic. Choose chemicals, process photos, and experiment!”

I haven’t tried it (and probably wont) but it did make me laugh and I guess if you are feeling nostalgic and missing the old days of mixing chemicals in a dark room this could well be the application for you.

Exposures Longer than 30 Seconds – iPhone to the Rescue!

Equipment, News and Updates, Uncategorized

I was having coffee with a keen, but affectionately ‘green’ photographer friend the other day and we were discussing long exposures and how we both really appreciate the softness of both clouds and water that is so often introduced by long exposure photography. He asked me: ‘Since I do virtually all of my landscape photography pre-dawn and post sunset how I expose for longer than 30 seconds with my Canon 1DS MK3 camera?’ A fair question for someone new to the game since Canon digital cameras limit the maximum exposure time to 30 seconds in every mode (except Bulb). Which means without a light meter or a mathematical brain you can be in a spot of bother for working out the exposure of a given scene.

Well, I don’t carry a separate light meter, which is the obvious answer. Its not that I dont like them or know how to use one, its just that it would be yet another peice of ancillary equipment in my already over laden and overweight camera bag. As it happens, I don’t carry an exposure chart either (I am done with charts after my Scuba diving days), and since crunching numbers is not my strong point I found a more appealing solution in the form of an iPhone application called innovatively enough ‘PhotoBuddy‘. Is there no limit to the usefulness of iPhone applications?

What is PhotoBuddy and How do I use it for calculating exposure times?

Exposure Page

PhotoBuddy is a user pays iPhone application that offers a suite of different features; one of which is an exposure calculator. Since this is not intended to be a full feature review of PhotoBuddy I am not going to delve into everything this little application offers or is capable of. Instead I am going to focus on its exposure calculator; which is at the crux of determining exposure times of longer than 30 seconds for Canon digital cameras.

By way of example, If I have arrived at my chosen photographic location pre dawn and have my camera set up on the tripod ready to shoot and my cameras meter is telling me that I need an exposure longer than 30 seconds at my chosen F-stop of F8, then all I do is open up the aperture (or increase the ISO) until I get a correct exposure reading – in this case lets say its F5 to give me a 30 second exposure in Aperture Priority. Then I just launch PhotoBuddy on the iPhone, click the exposure option, input the F-Stop that will give me a correct exposure at 30 seconds (F5 in this case). Then select the shutter speed as the value you wish to calculate and adjust the aperture accordingly to F8 or your desired aperture. PhotoBuddy automatically recalculates the new shutter speed for you – 80 seconds in this example. Switch the camera over to Bulb mode, set the aperture at F8, open the shutter for 80 seconds with a cable release and voila – a correctly exposed image – which can be quickly checked on the cameras LCD histogram. PhotoBuddy even has a built in ‘Bulb timer’, which is really just a glorified stopwatch; but it works well and even gives you a 3 second audible warning countdown for closing the shutter. Pretty neat stuff. Now if someone could just figure out a way for the iPhone to connect to the camera and automatically close the shutter for me! (perhaps the next version!)

PhotoBuddy also includes a Depth of Field Calculator, Sunrise and Sunset times, Moon phases, a Diffraction calculator and a bunch more useful features for photographers. A full PDF manual of all PhotoBuddy’s features is available online. Perhaps best of all the application only costs $2.49 Australian ($1.99 US), making it one of the most useful and cheapest photographic tools that I know of. And since my iPhone accompanies me pretty much everywhere I always have it handy and ready. There are other applications that offer this exposure feature as well and some of them may even be free; but it just so happens I like the user interface of PhotoBuddy.

By way of full disclosure: I have no affiliation whatsoever with the developers of this application. I don’t even know who they are. I purchased it with my own money after trying several other options and have not or would not accept any form of payment or gratuity from its makers for my op ed opinion piece. I just think its a very cool, easy to use application for calculating long exposures. Go forth and shoot!

The Tasman Valley – South Island of New Zealand

Landscape Photographs, New Zealand, News and Updates, Photographs, Travel Photography, Uncategorized

In the three days we stayed at Mount Cook in the plush accommodations of the Mount Cook lodge we were up before dawn every morning to capture the best light of day. We were rewarded every morning with crisp clear cold mornings and stunning transparent alpine light. This photograph is one of my favourites from our time at Mount Cook and was taken looking into the Tasman Valley just as the sun was rising behind the mountains. Reflecting back on the time we spent photographing this area I have to smile to myself about how easy this was to photograph and how lucky we were to have such consistently clear mornings in the dead of winter. This location was quite literally by the side of the road and no more than a minutes scramble down the side of the road to the river. It just doesn’t get any better or easier. Although it is quite hard to see in this small compressed jpeg on screen, the crescent moon almost directly at the top and centre of frame adds that wonderful dimension of the transitional period between night and day. A higher resolution version is on my website in the New Zealand Portfolio.

The Tasman Valley