Loving the G12! Is it as good as the 7D for still life images?

It was *yet* another wet weekend in Brisbane, and I had a bit of time to photograph some of the beautiful flowers I received for my birthday last weekend.

I thought I'd experiment and shoot the same flower set up...with the G12 vs the 7D + 24-70mm L lens. We're talking about a $2,400 difference in the cost of the gear taking the photo here...

Here are the two images....obviously the composition is slightly different, but both were shot hand held in a light tent to give this high key effect....for the image shot with the 7D, I used an off-camera flash. For the image with the G12, there was no flash, I just over-exposed the image by two stops.

Can you pick which image was shot with which camera?

In case you wondering, I shot the first image with the G12 and the second inage with the 7D. For a little compact camera, the G12 and all its manual capabilities is pretty damn impressive, don't you think!

Experimenting with an HDR'd panaroma

I wanted to try something I hadn't done before - a panaramo processed in HDR style. Some people hate HDR processed photos - and yep, they can be over the top, but like anything in photography, it's all subjective.


The Brisbane River, just outside my window, provided an interesting scene for a panarama - now the Rivercat stops at Teneriffe Pier, there are always boats drifting about.


I took 13 sets of bracketed shots on my 5D II, and then set about experimenting in CS5.


First, I created the three panos (the under exposed layer, the correctly exposed layer and the over exposed layer) using Photoshop's Photo Merge feature. I then tried to run those (rather enormous files) through the Merge to HDR Pro feature - it said the file sizes had to be the same....

I tried to re-size the files, but fiddling with pixels all proved a bit time consuming and ultimately didn't work. Finally, I ran the Merge to HDR Pro for each of the 13 bracketed shots, and stitched them all together in PhotoMerge to create this pano.....

I need to work out how to control the colour banding a bit more effectively, but it gave me a feel for the process. I'm keen to try it again - perhaps on a tripod and at night, might make an interesting alternative. In any case, it was great to be out at that time of the day with the camera. 


The large version of the image is available on my Flickr stream.

15 sleeps and counting! Now, which gear to take?

In 15 sleeps, my partner Michael and I will be heading off to Asia on a 3.5 week trip through Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. I absolutely cannot wait!

We're spending 5 nights in Bangkok, and will be there for New Year's Eve - it will be so cool to see the fireworks from the top of our hotel, which apparently has a bar, spa and expansive view of the city from the top floor!

Then we pick up an 18 day Intrepid tour called the Best of Cambodia & Vietnam. I haven't travelled with Intrepid, but they run small group tours with no more than 12 people. Here's the itinerary - lots of driving, but SO many fantastic places to see.

Copyright Intrepid Travel - www.intrepidtravel.com/trips/TKSKC#overview

I've been exploring groups on Flickr to see how other photographers have shot these three very different countries, and am putting together a bit of a shot list. Ages ago, I stumbled across an app called My Shot Lists for Travel, so will also be using this as a prompt to take shots I might have otherwise forgotten.

In exploring through Flickr and photography blogs, I came across the most fantastic time lapse video of Ho Chi Minh City. UK photographer, Rob Whitworth constructed the video from over 10,000 individually shot RAW files - how committed is that! The resulting short video is spectacular, and definitely worth checking out if you're interested in time lapse photography, or the bustling former city of Saigon.



We're also debating what gear to take. We both shoot with Canon gear, and both have the 24-70mm F 2.8 L and 70-200mm f/2.8 L lenses, with a swag of other prime lenses. I learnt from my trip to Japan earlier in the year, that I typically take too much camera gear. Looking back at my photos from Japan, I'm not even sure I used the 70-200mm lens, and it was a heavy chunk of glass to lug around...

I'm sure the debate about gear will continue as we get closer to our departure date. There are still, after all, 15 days left to go.

Stay tuned to the blog as I report on our adventures through the stunning Angkor Wat, bustling Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi, and the tranquil waters of Halong Bay.

I can't wait!

365 Challenge #357 - Sunset at Port Macquarie

365 Challenge #357 - Sunset at Port Macquarie, originally uploaded by Melanie Surplice.

My extended family has an annual tradition of meeting up in the gorgeous seaside town of Port Macquarie each year.

Members of the family drive in from Brisbane, the Gold Coast, Newcastle and Sydney, and we hang out, catch up on goss, and invariably put away a few quiet drinkies on the scenic balcony of the Royal Hotel.

It's always a fun weekend, with the littlies and oldies - and this year's Corroborree 2011 was no exception.

Here's a shot I took of the sunset over the river, from the rooftop of our apartment. Looking forward to the legendary Port Mac weekend next year :)

365 Challenge #318 - who says you can't play with food!

The weather is still crapulous outside, and I was itching to do something with my camera today. So...time for an indoor photography project! It was the perfect chance to play with one of the techniques I learnt in last week's workshop of the Colour II course at the Brisbane College of Photography and Art.

We discussed and experimented with how to shoot translucent objects, like these gorgeous red onions. I love the colours and patterns that come from natural objects, and working out how to light them to really show off those naturally beautiful qualities.

I don't have a light tent or light box, and our tutor showed us a really simple and quick way of achieving the same effect. The next picture shows the ingredients - two translucent plastic chopping boards, two glasses (which prop up the large board), translucent ingredients like red onions or lemons, and some form of flash or continuous lighting.

My set up for the shoot was as follows:
1) Large chopping board propped up on the two glasses - ideally it's level!
2) Smaller board blocks off the back of the set up, to bounce light back in to the "box".
3) On reflection, I should have used white blocks or something other than glasses to prop up the chopping board, to prevent light escaping - but in this situation, it worked fine.
4) Flash or other light source (in this case, I was triggering mine wirelessly, but in class, we used a small desk lamp which provided continuous light).
5) Arrange ingredients over the board, and shoot. You can see the flash going off in the picture below,  and how it blows out the background, leaving just the onions.

In terms of the gear I used, my macro lens is out visiting a wedding this weekend, so I used the Canon 500D close up lens attached to my Canon EF24-70mm f/2.8 L lens on the 5D II. I hand held the camera (although really should have used a tripod).

The camera settings were: ISO-100, f/11, 1/200, focal length of 50mm, manual focus. The speedlight was dialled down to 1/16 power. 

And voila! That's how I made translucent fruit. There's really no limit to how else this technique can be used - jelly babies and other types of see-though lollies, other fruits and vegetables, leaves....and on it goes. Next time I might add a gel over the flash, to throw coloured light into the "box"...the possibilities are endless!

Who says you can't play with food??

365 Challenge #309 - summer fun!

I spent a lovely afternoon today with my family on the Gold Coast. What a cracker of a last weekend for summer - but hopefully now we move into the season of fewer storms and cooler temps. Autumn is my favourite time of the year in Queensland.

Little B, my gorgeous nephew who turned two last week, entertained us by splashing around in the pool. It would have been a great day for using my 70-200mm lens, but I only had the 24-70mm lens.

The 24-70mm lens is the one I use most often - such a brilliant general-purpose lens. My only concern about using it today was that I had to get fairly close to this cheeky little monkey to get a close up shot - and he was splashing around like mad. Even though the lens and camera body are weather sealed, I'm still a bit nervous about getting it the gear wet.

Anyway, I was able to roll off a bunch of shots of him and Grandma playing in the pool. That's what summer is about, after all :)

365 Challenge #276 - the floodgates at Wivenhoe Dam

Happy New Year! Woke up hangover free, and decided to venture out to Toowoomba for a day trip. We drove past the sign to the Wivenhoe Dam, and decided to go check out what a dam at 125% capacity looked like - personally, I thought someone had got their percentages wrong....I mean in my mind, 125% means 25% more full than the dam is capable of holding. But more about that in a sec.

It took a few attempts to get to the Spillway Lookout - couldn't quite find the right road to take, but we eventually made it, along with every other man and their dog.

According to Seqwater, "Wivenhoe Dam (Lake Wivenhoe) is built on the Brisbane River, approximately 80 kilometres from Brisbane.  It was designed by the Water Resources Commission and built in 1984. Its primary function is to provide a safe and reliable water supply to the south-east Queensland region."

As I mentioned earlier, thanks to the massive volume of rain in South East Queensland recently, the dam is currently at 125% capacity - so they'd recently opened the floodgates to let some of the water out. And spew out it did! The mist played havoc with the camera gear, so it was a case of get in, get a few bracketed shots so I could do some HDR processing, then get outta there!


Here are some facts about the Wivenhow Dam:

• Wivenhoe Dam consists of an earth and rock embankment 2.3 kilometres long and 50 metres high, measured from the lowest foundation to the crest, with a concrete spillway section on which five steel crest gates have been installed. 
• The gates measure 12 metres wide and 16.6 metres high and are among the largest of their type in the world.
• The dam has a total storage capacity of 2.6 million megalitres.  At full supply level it will hold 1.15 million megalitres, or about 2000 times the daily water consumption of Brisbane.

And what about that 125% thing? Well..this explanation on the Seqqater site helped to clarify it for me.

"During a flood situation, Wivenhoe Dam is designed to hold back a further 1.45 million megalitres as well as its normal storage capacity of 1.15 million megalitres. Floods may still occur in the Ipswich and Brisbane areas but they will be rarer in occurrence. Wivenhoe’s flood control facility, together with the existing flood mitigation effect of Somerset Dam, will substantially reduce the heights of relatively small floods.

 

It is anticipated that during a large flood similar in magnitude to that experienced in 1974, by using mitigation facility within Wivenhoe Dam, flood levels will be reduced downstream by an estimated 2 metres.

 

Full supply level or 100 percent capacity (in the water level analysis) is indicative of the optimum level intended for town water supply, and does not take flood mitigation levels into account."

So - looks like a dam can be more full than 100%. This is reassuring living so close to the Brisbane River!

The Wivenhoe Dam is an impressive structure, and well worth the drive out to see it, particularly now while the flood gates are open. It would just be nice if this damn rain would let up a bit! :)

Delving into HDR

As part of my ongoing mission to improve my Photoshop skills, I've been reading about HDR (high Dynamic Range) processing.

I've been working my way through Scott Kelby's awesome book, The Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers - it's SO practical! It's literally a step-by-step guide on how to do a bunch of stuff in Photoshop CS5.

According to Scott, when you increase the dynamic range of the photo, you get a greater range of tone and light than today's digital cameras can create, which gives you an image closer to what the human eye captures.

Photoshop CS5 comes with Merge to HDR Pro - a module that pretty much does everything required to take one or a series of images into "photorealistic" look right through to the "hyperreal look" which HDR images seem to be renown for.

Scott's book tells you how to set up your camera to shoot HDR, and then goes through the steps to get an image that started off as something like this:

to this:

Ok, so it looks Photoshopped to bejeezus, but I kinda like it - this is way more towards the "hyperreal" end of the scale than the first photo, which is the actual correctly exposed image that the camera took.

I also tried processing a few images HDR-style, where I manually changed the exposure in Photoshop - again, cheating, according to HDR-purist rules, but hey - I like experimenting. Watch this space for more HDR experiments!