For the “Australia Day” long weekend, we went to the Illawarra Fly Tree Top Walk in Knights Hill, NSW. This new tourist attraction opened last year in March 2008. Its main feature is a 500m walk bridge nestled amongst the trees and provides spectacular views of the Illawarra Region. Here are my choice shots for the day.
 Panoramic view from the tower of the Illawarra Fly Tree Top Walk |
 Dragon Lizard |
 Grass Snake |
 Rose Bud |
 Dahlia |
 Australia Day Hats |
 Cheese Factory Cafe - Robertson,NSW |
The panoramic shot is made up of 5 photos, stiched together using the free software bundled with my camera. Digital photography has now remove the need to have specialized panoramic camera to take photos like these.
The dragon lizard and the grass snake were exhibits just outside the ticket counter of the park. I was shooting in program mode and auto focus, took a lot of shots but very few effective ones. Most are focused on the body instead of the eyes. I’m yet to understand how to simplify selective focusing. The same for the snake, I wanted the head to be in focus instead of the hand.
As for the flower shots – I’m afraid I’ll be taking a lot of this type of photos from now on. It is so easy to do it with an SLR and looks impressive.
I don’t like the results of the Cafe shot. This is an example of an evaluative metering gone mad. The outside is overexposed and the inside is under. What I wanted is for the outside view to be exposed correctly and the inside severely underexposed. I should have gone for a center metering or even spot metering.
Hello again Kuya! Nice pics ^_^ Im saving money for a good camera because I really like taking pics too… I hope it is okay with u i tagged u pero for a good cause naman kasi, please check na lang po my latest entry (My Blog prayer brigade).. tnx in advance! God bless!
No problem – iha :-). I have to find out what it meant to be tagged. I’m sure I’ve done it before – just can’t remember what it is for.
the rest of the pictures are good and as you said, the results are not that good with the cafe shot. i am not an expert but the focus is superb.
Quite good composition… I like the panoramic effect. Which free software did you use? By the way, did you lock the aperature/shutter speed to take these 5 pictures? The exposures seem not consistent… I wonder if the “stitches” can be hidden…
And you are right about the last picture. I possibly will take the centre-weight metering or even spot metering and then “AEL” the settings. Then you should be able to get the right exposure. Or if you really want to get right exposure, you can do the “bracketing”.
About focusing, I hope it’s NOT the problem of back focusing. Some people said the auto focus on the camera may not be correctly “tuned”. To fix the problem, ensure the focus is correctly obtained. I usually trust the centre spot only. And you may make smaller aperature so the depth of field is deeper… the chance of out focus should be lowered.
Comment emailed by Chris – published here with his permission.