An Australian Icon
The laughing Kookaburra.
Remember Film And The Good Old Days
Some time ago I scanned many of my old 35mm slides. It was a slow and tedius task but it brought back many memories. Here is an image of Ularu taken on Kodachrome, what a wonderful film that was. We have now moved on into the digital era but let us not forget the past.
Noisy Minor
An image taken at Roma Parkland, Brisbane.
F111
This image was taken at Amberley RAAF base, Queensland, Australia.
Antique Camera from 1930’s
This camera was given to my father in 1930 for his twenty first birthday, it is the Houghton Butcher – No 5 Ensign Carbine. This camera gives a good indication of the type of equipment photographers used at that time. This camera illustrates what photograpy is all about, recording the precious moments in your life and many photographs in the 1930’s to 1940’s were taken with this camera.
Some of the details and specifications of this camera are as follows:
Lukos Anastigmat lens- F=4.5 10.5 cm
Shutter Vario 25 50 100 B T
This camera has shutter speed settings of 1/25, 1/50 and 1/100 second, B setting where the shutter opens while the shuttter lever is pressed and T setting where the shutter opens and closes on successive shutter lever actions. The lens is a 105mm focal length with a variable aperture of f4.5 to f25. The camera is provided with a simple optical viewfinder and for fast action photography there is a separate fold out wire frame viewfinder.
This camera is a far cry from the sophisticated digital cameras we have today. When we consider the cameras used by the early photographers from the last century, it makes us marvel at the results these photographers obtained with the extremely simple equipment and it also makes us appreciate the sophisticated photographic equipment we use today. ‘It is the memories that are important, not the camera’.
Kakadu the photographer’s paradise
Ubirr at Kakadu National Park, Northern Territory, Australia, would have to be one of the most beautiful scenic locations for sunset landscapes. This image looking towards Arnhem Land. A sacred spot to the Aboriginals for thousands of years.
Nawurlandja is another of the beautiful areas of Kakadu. Nawurlandja at sunrise was a sight to behold, beautiful low cloud cover, a short walk from the road up a very rough incline, shortly after dawn.
Kakadu offers much more than the landscapes illustrated above, there are crocodiles, abundant animal life, large water bird sancturies, billabongs etc.
Do you take your camera everywhere you go?
If you do not, you may miss some great photo opportunities. Sometimes a photographic opportunity may occur when you least expect it.
The two examples below were such opportunities, both were taken with a 200mm, Nikon Micro lens. The first image here is a Noisy Minor.
This bird is a blue faced honeyeater.
High Dynamic Range (HDR) Images in Photoshop
I have recently been experimenting with HDR images in Photoshop, the aim of HDR being to increase the overall dynamic range of an image, compared to a single exposed image. In the example below the lighting was very contrasty and I exposed five images using a tripod to avoid movement between exposures. The images were exposed with EV (exposure value) variations of -2, -1, 0, +1, +2 EV. The images were merged in Photoshop (File/Automate/Merge to HDR), being quite a simple process.
One of the limiting factors in producing HDR images is the capability of the camera being able to bracket the images with sufficient EV variation between the exposures. Idealy it would be excellent if cameras had the capability to bracket exposures with -4 to +4 EV variation, but this is not possible with many cameras only allowing variations of -2 to +2 EV. We can only hope that future cameras will provide this capability.
Multiple Exposure in Photoshop
Todays image is a Photoshopped multiple exposure of a daisy. Some people will argue that Photoshopped photography is not legitimate photography, but if you like the results why not.
