Yarra Valley in Autumn and the Big Stopper

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

I had a chance today with the Anzac day public holiday to get out and do some photography. I had been itching to try out the new LEE ‘Big Stopper‘ 10 stop Neutral Density filter I purchased a few days ago and today was my first opportunity. I set my alarm for 5:00am, crawled out of bed, grabbed my gear and headed out to the Yarra Valley in the hopes of a good sunrise and some Autumn/Fall colour. The golden colours in the leaves are just starting to peak in certain parts of the Yarra Valley at the moment (in particular in the many vineyards) and I was hoping to be able to capture a little bit of it.

There was a thick fog as dawn broke and unfortunately no sign of colour in the sky. Normally, I get quite excited when we have a fog as the photographic opportunities are usually wonderful. However, this time the fog was thick and was obscuring the colour I was looking for. I have not been able to crack a really good Autumn sunrise recently despite several attempts (I will just have to keep trying, and it gives me a reason to go back). Thankfully, the dawn fog quickly burned off in the morning sun whilst I enjoyed a cafe lat’e in one of the many Yarra Glenn Cafe’s. With the fog gone the morning had developed into a glorious sunny day with some lovely high cloud that was very photogenic.

These two photographs were shot about an hour and a half after sunrise at the Yarrawood winery (actually its the same photograph with a different crop as I could not decide which I prefer?). I scouted this location more than a year ago and had kept it in the back of my mind for its beautiful lake with the old rowing boat set against the vine yards. I used my 24mm lens in combination with the LEE Big Stopper to give me a 13.0 second exposure in bright sunlight at F8/ ISO 100. Contrary to how it might appear I did not use a polariser. The long exposure has captured the clouds streaking across the sky and has added a good deal of drama to the image. Metering with this new filter is quite easy in the field. Just meter the scene as normal without the Big Stopper in place, then slide the filter into place and consult the handy LEE exposure chart to determine the corrected exposure. Switch the camera to Manual or Bulb, set the exposure accordingly and the exposure will be correct. Its a little more fiddly than just pressing the shutter, but after a half dozen frames or so I pretty much had it nailed and could do it quite quickly. The soft mount system of the Big Stopper is very effective in keeping out extraneous light and the fit is firm and feels good in the filter holder.

Cloud Warp

Cloud Warp

One of the first tests I did with the new filter was to shoot exactly the same scene with and without the Big Stopper in place so that I could compare them side by side in Lightroom for any noticeable flaws such as a colour cast. I am happy to report as expected that there is no noticeable colour cast with this filter in place (as is the case with all of LEE’s ND and Grad ND filters). Overall I am very pleased with this new ‘Big Stopper’ filter. It provides the ability to keep shooting long after sunrise and still create dramatic photographs in the right conditions. This filter is now a permanent addition to my photographic kit and I suspect will see quite a bit of use in shoots to come.

iPad Reads RAW Files

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It appears the iPad may have more use as an ‘in the field’ photography tool than I first thought. With the use of a USB SD card reader adapter  the iPad can read all the normal RAW files that Mac OSX, iPhoto and Aperture can handle. This makes it potentially an extremely useful tool for reviewing work in the field. The large iPad screen would be a welcome review tool in the field compared to the cameras small LCD display and is a far better alternative to luging around a full size laptop. A demonstration of the process for ingesting RAW files into the iPad is in the You Tube Video below. Although you can inport photos directly from the card into the iPad the usefuleness as an editor for me personally is still extremley limited because the iPad wont run Adobe’s Lightroom. However, the ability to store RAW files does also make the iPad an effective back up tool when working in the field.

A New Bit of Kit – The Big Stopper!

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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

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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

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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

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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…

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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

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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…

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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.