Last weekend I managed to get out to the Australian Botanical garden's, Mount Annan on both days, so the shots below are taken on Saturday and Sunday. 

This week all round I was a little disappointed with the shots, fro various reasons, but not really some of my better shots this week, but good for learning form the mistakes so hopefully another step to self improvement. 

As normal i try and find at least one Mushroom shot to add to +ShroomshotSaturday google plus feed, The shot below was the best I came up with this one the mushrooms were in amount some rocks so not easy to position the camera and speedlites so that made for a difficult set up, the camera was actually pointed towards me so I had to use the articulated screen to swivel all the way around to line it all up. In this one I could have used a little more depth of field to the shot to get the second mushroom more in focus, So not overly happy with the shot of this one.  Lighting wise its OK but the back mushroom has a little to much light on it for my taste.

While i was shooting the mushroom near by was a small moss covered branch so I tried to get a nice shot of that, Again could have used a little more depth of field and in this case not that excited about the lighting job I did of this one, more practice needed for these.

From there I took a few Bird shots and while taking them there was this branch with lichen growing on it and I thought it would make an interesting shot, not to bad but again missing that extra to make it a really good shot, maybe I'll try with a flash on this one day see how that goes. 

A lot of the bird shots this weekend seem to all have something in the way, be it a leave, twig or branch, but they all seam to have something over the bird to caring degrees. 

Or the Bird was just in the wrong position or looking the wrong way. 

The light was also low so in some of these I could have used a little more ISO to increase the shutter speed, some of these the bird movement was enough to take the sharpness of the shot.

This is probably the pick of the week and seamed to go nuts on my google plus page, my highest plussed shot there yet, the Little Gray fantail was sitting on the stainless steel wire around one of the walking decks in, the wide open aperture blew all the background away nicely making a really creamy background and the depth of field on the wire did a nice job. this one was actually a hand held at 1/160 of at 600mm so the Sigma 150-600mm sports lenses image stabilisation is doing a great job. 

As I was driving out one of the wild wallabies was having a snack of the grass and I took this one one the car window, wasn't till I got home I realised that this one was focused on the grass and not the Wallabies face so this one isn't quite there either. so all in all a lot of shots that are OK but not quite there, But good learning points for next time. 

This weekend the gardens are running one of the usually fully booked out Breakfast with the birds, I've already booked in so you get a guided tour around a part of the gardens with a knowledgeable guid telling you about the various birds and pointing them out then you get a breakfast as well, so we'll see how that goes, I've been on one of these before and with the help of the guide would a stack of birds I hadn't noticed, hopefully this time will be the same. Looking forward to it. 

Thanks for dropping by my blog. 

Glenn.

Astro-photography using the Sigma 150-600mm F5-6.3 DG OS HSM Sport

Something different today, Ive now had the Sigma 150 - 600 lens now for several weeks now, certainly loving this lens, I have it fitted to my Canon 7Dk2. The 7D is a crop sensor camera so in effect the 600mm is the equivalent of a 960mm focal length. I mainly use this for wildlife shots of birds but thought I’d give it a go at Astro photography as well and happy that I did. For my bird shots this lens is so sharp, and with the 7d’s high ISO with little noise I can up the shutter speeds to get some really nice shots, (See earlier blog posts here) So I thought I’d try the Astro photography and see how it went. 

The first thing I tried was a new moon shot, and wow so much detail, I’ve shot the moon before with my canon 70-200 with 1.4 extender but nothing like this.  The details in the creators was so sharp and the image only needed a small amount of cropping compared what I previously had to do. 

Over the rest of this month I took a few more shots of the moon as cloud cover permitted. One of the things I soon learnt was that as the moon became fuller only the only the area around the edge of the shadow really shows up the details of the creators. 

Heres a few of the other shots of the moon as it went thought its phases.

I then thought with this extra zoom I now have I should try for a few other items. Ive never seen a nebula other than photos in books and the web so thought I’d give one of those ago. I knew there was one int the Orion constellation but wasn’t sure exactly where other than in the middle of the trapezium. So I took a few shots around there and started to zoom in n the LCD screen to see what I found and then I found my first nebula. I’ve alway hear that when you see images on the web or books the images are always shot with filters and processed to add the colours, So was quite surprised to see some of the colours in this one.

Lastly I tried a shot of Jupiter. From this shot you can even see three of the Galilean moons the fourth one was behind the planet at the time. Theres not enough detail to see any of the cloud belts there but the moons are clearly visible. 

Presently Saturn is not visible at night from my location so in a few months time I’ll certainly give that a go as well. Looking forward to that now. 

So a few pointers on how I got these shots. at 600mm max length any movement is greatly magnified so you’ll need a really strong and steady tripod. I set ll these shots with live view and magnified to the 10x to get the best magnification. I focused using auto focus and then manually focused as best I could to get a star to a single point. not an easy trick with it bouncing around due to the movement from hand contact. Once focused I set eh ISO to 800 Aperture to f8 and shutter speed to 1/80 sec for the first moon shot. I triggered the shutter for a wireless remote so as to have no contact with the camera. Before I triggered the shutter I waited fro the image to steady down in the live view screen. It takes quite a few seconds for this to happen so not a fast process. 

The Nebula shot the settings were ISO 8000 aperture of f6.3 wide open in this case and the shutter speed of 0.8 sec, and even at this speed there is starting to show some start trails, so ideally the shutter speed needs to be a little faster. 

So far I’m using a lot of trial and error with my shots seeing what works best. 

Once the shots are taken I bring them into lightroom, fro the moon shot I addict eh white balance to get a realistic colour and then boost up the clarity and contracts till I get an image I like with the details, One thing that was needed was to use lightrooms  Lens correction panel and click the remove chromatic aberration this gets rid of some of the issues around the edge of the moon, Other than that I cropped the image to a pleasing image to me and also in adjusted the black, white shadows and highlights sliders to suit.

The nebula  image I increased the vibrance and saturation sliders to bring out the colours and increased the clarity slider small changes were made to the other basic sliders Blacks, whites shadows and highlights but not to much there.  This image was also cropped but not to much. 

Again these images are not the Hubble but for a Camera and lens shots I’m very happy with these shots. I’ll be taking more of these over the coming months, but so far very happy with this lens camera combination.

Hope this helps. 

Thanks for dropping by.

Glenn.

Last weekend We drove down to Canberra on the Saturday for an early morning photowalk with the photowalk guys http://thephotowalkguys.com.au, first walk with these guys after discovering their pod cast the other week, these guys do regular photowalks around Australia and so far seem pretty good.

So Started with the 300 km drive to Canberra from home, when we were just about there I spotted this wedge tail eagle while I was driving. Along the way there are numerous rest/revive stops so I took advantage of one of these for this shot, not the best as he was a fair way away even with the 150 to 600mm sigma.

From there we drove into Canberra had lunch and visited questacon then off to the hotel for the night.  Ready for the early start, the meet up was 5:45am at the lakes edge only 8 minute walk from the hotel so not far away. the morning was a little cool but not cold so all good. The first shot I took was of the hotel, the Hyatt Hotel Canberra. The place was lit up nicely for this shot so happy with this one.

After the shot we walked to the meet up place beside the main bridge over the lake. We the group meet up. We were told what to expect and how it would go based on their experience for the day before. So we walked off to to the Balloon launching area. Sadly there was not much activity there when we got there due to no wind at all, so while waiting for news of what was to be I took this shot of the Australian War Memorial.

Still waiting for news of what was to be I took this shot of the Moon as well, not the greatest as there was light cloud cover at times to the moon wasn't completely clear what I took this shot s not was sharp as the shot  from the other week. But there is still some create details. 

We soon got the news that the lack of wind meant the Balloons were grounded for the day, So instead of flying there would be a few staying on the ground and some short tethered flights. The photowalk guys decided that rather than a complete waste of the walk we'd head down to the lake for some sun rise shots then come back and see what was login on at the balloons. so we walked back to the lake a short walk. Where these shots were taken, the ones of the carillon I was trying to get a decent shot of a seagull in the top left hand corner, this was the best I could do, a little far away.  Then came sun rise so a few shots as the sun neared the horizon. From there back to the Balloons to see what was happening, there were about 5 balloons up and another on the way. So these were taken there. 

My wife took this shot of me as I was taking a few shots, Gives a bit of a sense of scale to the size of the Sigma 150 - 600 Lens.

From there I took several shots of the Balloons.

The temperature soon started to rise and the Balloons came down so we headed back to the hotel for Breakfast as we got back there was a pair of Crimson Rosellas taking a bath in the fountain out the front of the hotel. 

So that was the weekend photowalk. Something different for a change. 

Thanks for dropping by my blog.

Glenn