Archive for ND

Scenic Outlook – Brief Moments

What with one thing and another I’ve not had as much time over recent weeks to get out with the camera, but on this particular December weekend I have an empty slot on a Sunday morning. Friday’s weather report says that Saturday will be rainy all day but that Sunday will be cloudy with sunny intervals. Right then, decision made my cousin Steve and I make arrangements Friday afternoon to meet up early Sunday morning at Winchelsea beach. Saturday comes and goes with not a drop of rain all day, I look at the weather report on my HTC…Sunday=rain. Oh well, I decide that I’ll go out anyway however the weather should turn out. I text Steve to see if he’s still up for a meet and a moment later he replies to say that he too is up for getting out whatever the weather. Sunrise is about 7.40am so I decide to set my alarm for 6am.

5.35am my phone rings. ” Are you up Dave” says an all too alert sounding Steve. “I am now” I reply, trying to open my eyes. “I woke up early so I got up and now I’m about to head out the door” Steve said, “OK, I’ll meet you there” I say, fumbling about trying to find my things. Right, I’d better get a move on.

6 seconds iso200 @f22, ND4 filter, Grey Grad

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Scenic Outlook – What Gear Do I Need?

So you’ve seen all these amazing landscape shots from various photographers and you think to yourself, “I’d like to do that, but what do I need to get started?”. I’m assuming here that there will probably be people reading this that may be very new to photography and are looking for some sort of guidance. So what I’m going to do is compile a short list of things that you might want to consider getting hold of at some point or another, though there is no need to go out and get it all at once.

The simple answer to that question is a camera and a tripod. Is that it I hear you say. Well yes and no. If you’re a total beginner with only a compact camera who’s looking to delve further into the photography world then yes you can start to get out there with no more than these two items. Something to take the picture with and something to keep the camera as steady as possible. This is all I had when I started and it did me fine until my experience started to grow. I would recommend that you find out where the self timer is and use that to take your landscape pictures as this will prevent you from jogging the camera during the exposure. I will cover camera settings and things like composition in a future post.

As your knowledge begins to grow you’ll find that you start to need more and more bits of equipment. Purchasing a more versatile camera would be the obvious first choice, personally I would skip the bridge cameras and go straight for a DSLR system as this will give you more options in the long term. The standard zoom that ships with most cameras is actually a very good range for the landscape photographer and is in fact the zoom range that I use 90% of the time albeit that I purchased a better quality lens.

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