A couple of days back I purchased a Canon 5D body from Jamie after finding out he was selling it at a bargain price. It was an offer that I knew I wouldn’t come across again any time soon, so I jumped at the chance.

Yesterday, I decided to take it out and play around with it a little. Me and a few work mates played a round of golf at Glen Iris Golf Course and I got to take a few quick photos in between playing. The top photo is of my friend Ryan and the one below is one that he took of me. I had to process the top image a bit as it was the first photo I took and hadn’t changed any settings yet. The sky was blown out so I (quickly) added in some clouds from a different shot I took on the day.

I am loving the full frame goodness that the 5D offers. My wide-angle lens actually feels like a wide-angle! I’m looking forward to taking it out on a landscape shoot as soon as I can. Maybe tonight or tomorrow night.

Thanks Jamie.

I’ve been asked a few times on the blog how I find the Nodal Ninja panoramic head so I thought i’d do a little write up on it for all the people interested in buying a panoramic tripod head.

Before I purchased the Nodal Ninja, I bought a Panosaurus, which did the job it was designed to do, but I found it a bit of a hassle to set up each time I wanted to shoot panoramas. I accidentally left it in my car on a hot day and it warped which was the end of that.

Over the Christmas holidays I met up with a fellow flickr photographer, Beau, at Kings park and he was using a Nodal Ninja. He asked if I would like to try it out for a few shots and of course I said yes. It took only a matter of seconds for him to take his camera off of the NN3 and for me to put mine onto it. It was also quick to level with the use of the bullseye level and ezLeveler (the ezLeveler is an optional extra). After shooting a few frames I knew I wanted one. And once I got home and loaded the images onto my PC and watched them stitch seamlessly I wanted one even more. A few weeks later I purchased the Nodal Ninja 3 mkII pack from their website. They were out of stock at the time so I was refunded my money and told that they would have more in stock within 1-2 weeks and I would be notified and receive free express delivery. They delivered on that promise.

The Nodal Ninja 3 is small, lightweight and easy to set up. It came with detailed instructions. Most Canon and Nikon camera and lens combinations have been pre-measured and are listed on the website, which makes the initial set up simple. The default detent ring allows for 15/18 degree rotations. The NN3 package also contains 20/24, 45/60, 72/0 and 90/120 degree detent rings which suit different lenses.

I haven’t had any major stitching/parallax problems while using this product, besides the usual moving water, and would highly recommend it to anybody looking for a budget panoramic tripod head. The main thing you need to do to achieve good results is to make sure the head is level. See some examples of what the Nodal Ninja can do in some of my previous blog posts.

For more info check the Nodal Ninja website.

I have given my main site a makeover and would like to know what you think of it. I will eventually get around to making the blog match but don’t have the motivation right now.

I’ve been getting asked a lot of questions about the Nodal Ninja pano head so I might post up a review later. If I can manage to put some words together, that is.

I thought I’d share another panorama from my trip down to Dunsborough last weekend just to keep the blog rolling. This was my first pano with the Nodal Ninja down in Dunsborough and, like the other two I posted earlier, the light isn’t great.

I think Neal, Dylan and I are heading back down south on the 19th of this month so I might get a second chance at some of these spots and hopefully the skies will be more interesting.

Also, I think I will be purchasing a 5D body sometime in the near future. If anybody knows of any good deals, please let me know!

I’ve been asked to photograph a party this coming Saturday night and I was wondering if anybody has a good Canon party (low light) lens they might be willing to lend to me, as all I have got is the 17-40 F4? A flash might come in handy, too. I would appreciate it a whole lot and will pay in cash or alcohol.

Thanks, guys.

On Saturday after work I drove to my mates place to borrow his GPS system and then headed down to Dunsborough to attend Christian’s course and also take some photos while I was down there. When I arrived I was a little disappointed that there were no clouds in the sky but I took a few photos anyway and they didn’t turn out too bad!

After spending a few hours out and about taking photos I headed towards Christian’s Gallery (which is amazing, by the way) to learn about how he works. I enjoyed myself and would highly recommend the course to anybody who is into landscape photography. I spent the night in my car and after taking some photos the next morning, drove back up to Perth.

The first image is of Cape Naturaliste and is a 7 photo panorama captured not long before sunset on Saturday evening. The Nodal Ninja did a great job and made stitching a breeze!

The second photo is of Sugarloaf Rock and is a 6 photo panorama captured not long after sun rise on Sunday morning. Sugarloaf Rock was much larger that I was expecting and I don’t think this photo really portrays how massive this rock is - I needed somebody in the photo to add some scale.

I think I will have to head back down to Dunsborough again sometime soon and spend a few more days there when the skies are a little more interesting!

I was looking back at some old photos a couple of nights ago, from a sunrise shoot that I did with Neal back in December, and came across this one. At the time I wasn’t too impressed with the photos I took on that morning, but looking back there are a couple that I really like and this is one of them. It is now available as a print.

In other news, my Nodal Ninja finally arrived but I haven’t had time to go out and shoot any landscapes with it. I gave it a quick test run at home and produced a perfectly stitched, 6 photo image with a final resolution of 32 Mega Pixels. I can’t wait to use this baby down south tomorrow! I can already imagine the quality of prints I’ll be able to produce with this new toy…

This is one of the first sunrise photographs I shot with my first Digital SLR almost 2 years ago while I was living over in Queensland. I still quite like this shot but it is interesting to look back on my work and see how much I have learned and how I have improved over the past couple of years. I didn’t know a whole lot about composition, exposure time, aperture or ISO, etc back then but now I use these settings every time I go out and shoot. The location is Miami Beach, Gold Coast, Queensland.

My Nodal Ninja 3 is due to arrive any day now and I can’t wait to take it out. When I ordered it back in February they were out of stock and so I received a full refund and was asked to re-order again in a few weeks. Last week Bill from Nodal Ninja sent me an email to let me know that they had some more in stock and he would post it express for free. Great customer service, in my opinion.

On another note, I am heading down to Dunsborough next weekend to spend an evening with Christian Fletcher and hopefully grab a few nice new panoramic images while I am down there. I am really looking forward to that.

I thought i’d share this find… A little promo vid on one of my favourite landscape photographers - Peter Lik. Check out his website here. One day I hope to be producing quality images like these. Until then, I will keep dreaming.

If you haven’t visited one of his galleries and you have the chance to, I highly recommend it. The quality of his prints are simply jaw-dropping. I wish there was one in Perth!

I didn’t end up going for a shoot the other night because the weather turned to crap, but I did make it out tonight. I only took a few shots as the light conditions weren’t the best. It’s amazing what a difference some nice light can do to a fairly boring scene.

To the right is one of the photographs I took tonight - a pretty boring sunset scene. In case you didn’t notice, the picture in the previous post is from the exact same spot, yet it is much more interesting (for me at least) and i’d much rather get it framed and hung than the one from tonight.

This post goes to show that you have to be patient and persistent to get great results - most of the time. You can’t always just show up to a location, press the shutter a few times and come home with something special. You may have to visit the same location a number of times over a period of a few weeks, or months, in all different lighting conditions before you get that “wow” photograph.

Thanks for reading,
Beau