Scout Images

It has been a while since I have uploaded anything (well 9 days in fact) so I thought I would share some of the adventures that I have been up to.

Yesterday, I headed to the Australian Museum to see the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition, which included an interactive photo studio component this year. Armed with my Nikon D60, Nikkor AF-S 35mm f/1.8 and Sigma 180mm f/3.5 Macro I headed in. A prime kit? Between these two lenses I have everything I want, from close focus ability to candid captures, throw in the SB-400 and the Phottix Duo Cable I am ready to take on anything.

That evening I attended the DSLRusers/ex-SURCAS/current SURCAS fire night, an event that I had organised with the help of my friends from SURCAS. Although I was officially there as part of the photographic party, I was too tempted with the thoughts of playing with fire and spent a fair bit of time with the staff in hand. My D300 spent most of the night in the company of the Tamron SP 17-50mm f/2.8 and my Manfrotto 055 Pro B/322RC2 combo. The Tokina 10-17 fisheye and Nikkor AF-S 70-200mm f/2.8 VR also made appearances.

I have been waiting for this addition to my kit bag for a few weeks now. Since buying my Nikon D60 (refer here) I have been looking for a good lens to match this camera. My predicament was my lack of small, lightweight AF-S lenses (my only AF-S or equivalent lenses being the 24-70mm f/2.8, 70-200mm f/2.8 VR, 180mm f/3.5 macro) leading me on a search for an inexpensive AF-S lens to match the D60, the AF-S DX 35mm f/1.8G being high up on my list of lenses in consideration. A good friend of mine headed over the USA just after Christmas, and sure enough, just before new years I was awoken by a phone call from New York, asking for lens advice. In the end my friend offered to pick up a copy of this lens for me (they were at B H Photo Video and were going to buy a copy for themselves), so I became the owner of Nikon’s standard DX prime. My friend arrived back in Sydney yesterday and we caught up today.

The AF-S DX Nikkor 35mm f/1.8G

We had lunch then had a stroll through the city centre.

Over the last week or so I have not had much time to take photos (been trying to get this website up and running again) but I did manage to get a few shots in last night at dinner and today at the Fish Market and in Glebe. So here are a few shots that I thought I would share.

These were taken with my Nikon D60 and the Nikkor AF-S 24-70mm f/2.8. Some of the photos in this gallery used the Phottix Duo Cord + Nikon SB-400 combination as well.

On another note, my venerable Nikon F80D is out on loan again, this time accompanied by my Tamron SP 28-205mm f/2.8 and my Nikkor AF-D 28-80mm. This means my current gear status is….

Finally, after another whole day of working on this website, full functionality has been restored. However all the image links posted prior to this evening are now broken. I dont have the energy to fix all of these (they have to be done manually) but I may slowly go back and fix them in the long run.

You will also notice that I no longer run Contact Form 7, this plugin appears to conflict with WPG2 so I have opted to leave it out.

Just a TEST…

I have just rolled back my my WordPress database with the hope of clearing things up, but it has failed to do so.  Until I can get this issue fixed I ask you all to be patient.

Please use THIS LINK TO VISIT THE GALLERY.

Hopefully I will be able to get WPG2 working soon.

In the meantime there are a lot of images in earlier posts that are not showing, I will get onto fixing these eventually.

Cheers

Cameron

Just thought I would share some of the pictures taken over this last week. The D300 has been out and about a few times lately.

First up was Wednesday night’s photos of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, we headed out there with the intent of recording the illuminated symbol from NYE but to our dismay the signage had been switched off early. Regardless we took a few snaps to continue what is becoming a New Year’s tradition.  These were all taken using the Nikon D300 and a variety of lenses, but most importantly they were all placed on top of my trusty Manfrotto 055 Pro B tripod, GPS data captured using a Phottix Geo One.

The D300 came out again on Friday night, when I headed over the Strathfield with some friends for dinner. This time it was no tripod, high  ISO and the Nikkor AF-S 24-70mm f/2.8 + Nikkor AI 135mm f/2.8 coming out to play.

Finally, Sunday was spent out and about along the coast south of Sydney. Thirroul, Sea Cliff Bridge and the nearby beaches. Once again the combination of the D300 and the 24-70mm was given the work out. Interestingly, I used a mates Nissin Di 622 flash for some shots, this flash works really well and would be a worthy SB-600 alternative especially with the very low import prices for them available at the moment. Included in this set is a 9 shot HDR bracket which has been processed with Photomattix, not my best efforts with this piece of software but an interesting result all the same.

I just wanted to apologise to anyone who has been trying to access this website during the last two days as it has been inaccessible.

I was exploring some SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) options that were available for me when two things happened. Firstly, my web host’s servers developed a problem (I think it may have been a malicious attack) which disabled all access to my website including the back end via cPanel. After a brief live chat with the technician’s this problem was reported and fixed.

However, unknown to myself, some of my wordpress files had been corrupted causing this site to have all sorts of server problems and being completely unable to load, with the standalone gallery still being accessible. This required a reinstall of wordpress (which I have just completed).

Once again, apologies for the interruption in service, and hopefully this will not happen again.

I received an offer to be part of Phottix Journal‘s Photog Friday section a little while back. I was pretty happy to participate and completed the questionnaire and submitted a few images.

This morning I got a very nice surprise when I received an email from Phottix letting me know that I have been picked to be this weeks featured Photographer, and consequently the first photographer featured for 2010.

Have a look here.

Just thought I would share some of the dodgy photos I took on New Years Eve and some that I took today whilst at Mamak with my baby Fuji F100fd.

I have to admit that I have often underestimated my needs, and NYE 2009 was just another occaision. I was thinking travel light, travel discreetly, so as a result I kept my gear to the smallest, most unassuming kit that I could. This resulted in:

• Nikon D60 – light and unassuming
• Nikkor AF-D 50mm f/1.8 – small and light, BUT manual focus on a D60
• Nikkor AI 135mm f/2.8 – small and light, BUT manual focus and no metering on a D60
• Tokina AT-X 10-17mm fisheye – small and light, BUT manual focus on a D60
• Nikon SB-400
• Nikon ML-L3
• Phottix Duo Cable
• Joby Gorillapod (Thanks Mr Ken)

With this kit, I assumed that any fireworks images would not be a big problem, unless I wanted a longer exposure to get trails (which you would when your friends are doing so). But this was not my largest problem, whilst setting up for the midnight fireworks down at Darling Harbour, a group of young ladies asked us to take a few pictures of them (using their compacts). After the fireworks we took a few more photos for theses ladies, afterwhich we asked if they wanted us to take some photos for them using our cameras (they will be getting their photos soon). This is when I found myself caught short, really short. The AF-less lenses that I had with me were fine up until that point, but for portraiture they proved to be a nightmare, esepecially since my saving grace (the SB-400 on the Phottix Duo Cable) required a hand to hold off camera. In the end I had to borrow my mates 18-200 and eventually comandeer his D90 (Sorry Mr Jod).

Here are some of my dodgy, hand held fireworks images (I used the Joby for some of the Ferris Wheel shots).

As I have mentioned earlier, I was at Mamak today and took a few images of what I ate. I have to admit that they make a damn good Roti, and I am addicted to their Sambal. These were taken with my now found again Fuji F100fd.