Tasmanian Winter - Absolutely Stunning

We were back in Tassie last weekend. Not something people often think about as a winter getaway destination but Tassie can turn on some fantastic weather in the winter months.

We had less than 24 hours in Coles Bay - But couldn't have stayed for weeks.

I wasn't expecting great photography weather so I was light on gear. Canon 1D-X and a 24-70mm L Lens.

But I managed to snap some great pics.

Here's my favorite.

... and here's a gallery link to 9 of the best.

Gallery Link

Back in business

Thanks to a strong backup regime and a good insurance policy I have a new Macbook Pro retina display fully restored and not a byte of data lost.

Now the task of reviewing 3,258 images from our trip begins. Stay tuned for the results.

Canon 1D-X Advisory

I need to check my body.

Here's a link to a post over at Canon Rumors

http://www.canonrumors.com/2013/06/product-advisory-for-the-eos-1d-x-eos-1d-c/

And the same link at Canon USA

http://www.usa.canon.com/cusa/support/consumer?pageKeyCode=prdAdvDetail&docId=0901e024809120b7

Backup x4. You'll be glad you did.

Not long back from a 6 week around the world trip. Had a fantastic time and will post some pics here shortly.

I need to get a new Macbook Pro first, because the one I had got stolen in Paris. These guys are professionals. I literally turned my back for seconds and "poof!" gone.

I'm yet to confirm 100% but I'm confident I haven't lost one image.

1. The MBP backs up to my time capsule at home.
2. I have a separate backup of my Aperture Libraries at home and another one at work.
3. All my documents are also in cloud storage.
4. Whilst travelling I keep a copy of the pics I take on the camera (CF Cards) even if I've copied them on to the Laptop.

The only reason I didn't replace the MBP while travelling was that with WWDC next week there's a good chance of a spec update. Assume prices don't go up, insurance should be happy to pay for the updated unit.

So yes it was a major pain in the neck to be hit by these thieves. But with a strong backup regime it didn't hurt as much as it otherwise might have.

So team. Backup your images!

Oh and the added bonus of OSX? I could remote wipe the MBP from my iPhone.

Time Lapse - Night Sky

We went bush camping again for a couple of nights over Easter.

I was keen to try our the new CamRanger (CR) with the 1D-X doing some time-lapse photography.

One of the great things about the CR is the ability to view the image live on the iPhone, so getting focus is much easier than the sometimes awkward angles you get in to see the screen whilst pointing the lens to the sky.

Hooking the CR up is so simple. Plug the USB into the unit and the camera body. Switch it on, connect the iPhone to the WiFi hotspot created by the CR and volla! live view on the iPhone.

I fitted 24-70mm L Series Canon glass to the Canon big gun and did a couple of test shots to get the right exposure.

I ended up using ISO 8000, F8 to get a 20" exposure. Any shorter than 20 seconds and you need a higher ISO, any longer and the stars stop being dots and start to become lines due to their apparent movement from the earth's rotation. The f8 aperture was to ensure the trees were in focus as well as the stars.

Next step was to dial into the CR app on the iPhone 300 shots 30 seconds apart - thats a 10 second movie at 30 fps covering 150mins of rotation.

Hit start and wait......

150mins is a long time in the cool night. I had a campfire to keep me warm and occupied. If you look carefully in the movie you will see some sections show a reddish hue on the trees - no doubt when a few extra logs went on the fire.

So why isn't the movie 10secs long? A simple but stupid answer. The camera battery went flat. Note to self. Don't do a long time-lapse sequence with a camera battery on half charge.

Anyway the result is pretty pleasing albeit short.

Enjoy.

To produce the movie I export the pics from Aperture to JPG then I use Time-Lapse (available on the app store from Microprojects) to put the pic into a movie. In this instance I have produced the movie in iMovie to add the titles and music etc..

OT - Google Reader Replacement

Up front apologies to my photofile readers but I didn't have anywhere else to post this. I just it might be helpful to any die hard Google Reader (GR) users. Please bear with me while I go off topic.

I've tried 3 of the recommended options for replacing GR when it is pulled on July 1, 2013

First I tried ifttt - this is a really cool service that allows you to create "recipes" which are like web based macros for dealing with information on the web. You can link emails to Evernote to DropBox to Facebook etc... It works reasonably well but not perfect and its a bit clunky as a replacement for GR. I set up an RSS to email recipe which sent an email to a new Gmail account. It posted fine but too many moving parts.

Second I tried theoldreader - not bad. It has the familiar GR feel but is suffering badly at the moment due to high demand. I got sick of waiting.

Lastly I tried feedly - I should have come here first. For an inexplicable reason I didn't want to load another app into my chrome browser. Its a stupid thing I have about keeping this clean. I'm guessing it comes from the bad old windows days when a system would slowly grind to a halt after loading too much stuff onto it - even if you removed the software the system would still run like a dog. Anyway if I can get away with not installing another application I usually will take the pure web alternative.

Well silly me. Feedly (dumb name) works just great. Sure I am taking one big bet that these guys will deliver on the promise to migrate to their own rss api. At the moment they are simply a new front end for GR but they have promised to deliver a stand alone alternative. I'm backing them in to do so.

Oh and BTW the IOS app for feedly looks and works great. It has a bit of a windows 8 feel to it but I like that. I actually think IOS is in desperate need of a refresh but that another post - another day - maybe.

Anyway - "Go Feedly".

Under the Southern Cross - Night Photography

This past weekend we went back to Tassie on business. The place we stayed at was near the Freycinet Peninsular - Coles Bay.

The dominant geological feature are the Hazards, which a bit like Uluru are constantly changing. I was hoping to get shot of a strong orange sunset shining on the Hazards to bring out their natural red colour.

But there was cloud on the western horizon so no strong red sunset.

With a relatively clear southern sky I decided to go back 90 minutes later to get the Hazards as a silhouette against a starry sky including the souther cross.

This was the first night sky picture I had taken with the Canon 1D-X. My only prior experience was with my old 7D where noise is a real problem with higher ISO's.

I attached the Canon 16-35mm F2.8 wide angle lens. Set the ISO to 800 in order to get the exposure I wanted within 30secs. Anything greater than 30secs (with a wide angle lens) and you run the risk of the movement of the earth causing the image of the stars to be stretched rather than dots. At long focal lengths a higher shutter speed is required.

Getting a sharp focus is also a bit tricky in these situations (usually auto focus does not work in these conditions). I was using a gorilla pod which makes this even harder because you need to get down on your hands and knees to see through the view finder. So I use live view and zoom the image on the screen onto a bight star and manually focus. I have since bought a CamRanger which gives full functionality on your iPhone.

I used an aperture of F3.5 this allowed a stop over exposure for the image.

And here are the results.



Wow! I was blown away by the results. I have bumped the exposure up a fair bit in Aperture but this turned out heaps better than I expected.

See if you can pick out the Southern Cross.