A bird in the bush

Today I am going to share something very different to yesterday, I took a short road trip and enjoyed a couple of hours in the nearby rainforest so rather than give you something to learn I will give you a little story.
Last weekend much of Queensland was battered by a severe and long lasting storm that has left in its wake immeasurable damage. Damage to homes to businesses and to farms. It has also done a lot of damage to the bush. In monetary terms this is not a national worry, the bush heals. The communities in small towns divided by bush are not so lucky though, the damage to the bush created road closures, gigantic trees fell over roads, landslips and rock slides created hazards to be cleared and access to these small places was compromised.
From my home to the top of the mountain where a small township called Springbrook is situated the roads were cut in several places but amazingly by today the roads were passable. Road crews are still busy and I could see how much had already been done. Colin, my husband, and I decided to take a look at the National Park that wraps around the town of Springbrook. It is one of our favourite places.
The park has many rainforest trees which are characterised by their buttress roots - rainforest trees are shallow rooted, the moisture is filtered through the canopy of the trees and lies on the surface of the soil and in the leaf litter so the roots do not need to penetrate deep into the earth.

Sometimes it seems as if these trees can grow on solid rock, their roots wrap around boulders and stretch over the surface of rocks. They trap the leaves  for their nourishment and the leaves trap the moisture to keep the tree watered. Nature is at her busiest in a rainforest.
We could not go to the National Park without going to see at least one waterfall! The largest and easiest to walk to is named "Purlingbrook". It is a few days since the big rain so the waterfall is not running as fast as it was in the peak of the storm, however it still looks magnificent.

There is a walking track from the lookout that takes the energetic down into the valley and right under the falls, but the deluge had created several hazards - land slips - that made the track unusable so the gate access was locked. A walk to the lookout at the top of the falls was not to be either because debris had been washed down and onto the causeway/footpath and piled up against the safety railing making passage impossible.
Colin and I retreated to a picnic area where we made ourselves comfortable and were joined very quickly by a bird of the rainforest. A scrub turkey.

Not all scrub turkeys are this friendly but many learn that seated humans usually have food that they are willing to share! It is not breeding time -- or if it is, this fellow is not searching for a mate! How do I know? That wrinkly yellow bit on his neck is like a small yellow ruff. In breeding time it relaxes and droops down almost to the top of the legs. The lady turkeys must think it looks really grand!

Our Scrub turkey friend stayed until he was quite sure we didn't have another crumb of our blueberry muffins left and off he strutted to find another free meal at another table further in the park!
To be honest, I quite enjoyed his company because I could use my camera and the new off- camera flash unit I had recently acquired! The bush is quite dark under the trees even on the brightest day - in the first picture you can see that the sun is shining brightly - the bird would have been a full silhouette if I hadn't used the flash. In the second picture the bird is much closer to me and was very difficult to see (very hard to focus on something you cant see!) I held the flash lower than the camera and I was really surprised at how bright the shot came out.
I hope you enjoyed  the shots from our mornings entertainment!
AJ

Ring light

Today I opened another Ebay purchase - a Ring Flash for a macro lens. I had always thought these specialised lights to be very expensive so when I was able to purchase one for $62 including postage I jumped at the chance! The camera with macro lens has been promised to me so I felt that this item would be invaluable as a companion to it.

Opening the package was a surprise, the quality of the goods looked to be robust and well constructed. There also seemed to be a lot of things in the box!
Taking out the ring light I found six different sized adapter rings to fit almost any sized macro lens.

The camera I was to fit this light onto is a Canon D40 and has a 58mm lens.

The adapter ring is flat, as you can see, with a raised ring screw that fits neatly inside the lens ridge. The ring flash then slips onto this ring.

The controls for the light fit onto the top of the camera in the hot shoe - but the connection is NOT a hot connection.

There are two inputs on the control, one is for the lead to the light (as shown) and the other is for a power connection that is also included - along with a conversion adapter for Australian power sockets.
I installed two Alkaline AA batteries and switched on . . . .

Don't ask me why I was surprised that it actually worked - but I was! Hence the photograph!
Next thing to do was to find a few things to try it out on so here are three examples.

I had printed this train timetable from a web site so the print is not brilliant - but is as was printed - the reason I chose a paper with type on it was to see how even the lighting was from the ring light (not a flash, it is on all the time the switch is in the "on" position).
Since I actually need this light to help a friend put together some good macro photos for a book he is writing I chose a rock as one of my subjects.

Now I could see yet another advantage to the ring lighting - hardly any shadows! I have not done any clever Photoshop work on any of these photos - just adjusted the levels and added a little sharpening.
Last photo needs no explanation but gives an idea of the distance I was from my subjects shown above.

This is a Twenty Cent piece 28mm diametre. The picture has not been cropped.
This light is going to be fun to use!
AJ

Using the flash gun

This month our Visions group of photographers and video makers have "musical instrument" as one of the topics for the photographers. I had not used the flash gun on my new Nikon D90 up to today so when I realised I had a musical instrument sitting ignored and silent in the hallway this was the trigger for me to fire the flash! (very "punny"!)
To begin with the camera decided it wasn't going to recognise the flash and my spirits sagged.
I removed the flash and replaced it and set the camera to Aperture priority - on f/5.6
I wanted a fairly shallow depth of field - there is no point having a decent camera if what you take looks like a snapshot from a point and shoot! Unfortunately I am slipping into the DSLR "snobbery" of making my shots look "special"! Well, why not! When you have a good camera , you should try to take good photographs!
The first photograph I took was educational. I knew that the flash needed to be bounced but I did not realise just how the angle of the bounce would make such a huge difference to the lighting. It makes sense of course but this is the first shot. The timber at the far end is over bright and has a cloudy appearance. The position of the camera is not good either - the nearest side of the electric organ is an unsightly blur in the foreground and is very distracting. The blur seems to hold the eye rather than the eye be taken to the sharpest part of the photo.

f/5.6 1/30 sec 52mm ISO 200

The second photo is a lot better both with the bounce of the flash and the angle across the keyboard. The flash was tilted to 90% so that the bounce comes from the ceiling - which is quite a low ceiling at 9'. To get the camera down to the level of the top keyboard I went into "live-view" which then allowed me to see my subject without trying to keep my eye at the viewfinder. The bounced light has definitely improved the colours and the definition of the shot.

f5.6 1/30sec 26mm ISO200

Still not really comfortable with the end result I tried for a shot from the opposite end of the Electric Organ, I think that this one is the one for me! The lounge chairs in the background are a bit of a distraction and with a bit of playing around I could diffuse them so that they were not so obvious - but this little exercise was to show the results of the flash not the results of my Photoshop abilities!

f/5.6 1/30sec 24mm ISO200

By the way, I should point out that the day light had gone and I had to turn on the wall light to enable my camera to have enough light for the focus to work! The alcove where this instrument is positioned is not bright and the wall light gives a soft light so has been completely over-riden by the camera flash.
AJ