Rokinon 14mm Ultra Wide-Angle f/2.8

2015-02-26

Week 9 | Door(s)

Nikon D5100
14mm Rokinon Ultra Wide-Angle f/2.8 lens
ISO100
f/2.8
SS 8 sec

Struggled to think of anything inventive for this week (it’s been a busy one) and we’re away for the weekend so figured I’d nip across the road from work and shoot the historic Sydney landmark come shopping centre, the Queen Vicotria Building – afterall, it is a nice doorway (and I figure doorway falls under the brief of Door(s)).

To get rid of the late night shoppers I opted for a few long exposure (30 seconds f/22) but even they were full of ‘ghosts’, this shot was massively overblown but when exposure corrected in photoshop it proved to be the best in terms of lingering people. Spent a bit of time in the lens correction as the distortion was quite evident at this distance, I also tried to adjust a little for the tripod not being happy in portrait alignment too (overhand a little, for the life of me I couldn’t lock it square on).

As with last week, not massively happy with the image, maybe it’s because the first few weeks offered such a chance to do so many different things and I’m simply at a loss on how to be inventive with the brief, so maybe I’m not happy with myself, rather than the picture.

2015-02-23

Wattle Bay After Sunset

Had a wander up to Annandale for dinner (Bar Asia – great place) and captured these on the way back, it’s amazing how the lighting affects as the same views on the way up just weren’t appealing (or maybe my mind was more on the delicious tea it was expecting) but as soon as the sun had dipped I had to break the camera out – will be around for a few more on a less cloudy night as there were many more I wanted to capture on the way around the bay on our short trip home but couldn’t afford the time (had a few, erm, let’s say pressing matters to attend to – the foils of a post-dinner shoot)…

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click to enlarge

All shot with my Nikon D5100 using the Rokinon 14mm Ultra Wide Angle lens at ISO100, the first two are f/6.3 for 30 seconds and the latter f/2.8 for 20 seconds. Reasoning was I wanted to the maximum time to get the water still and the plane descending but didn’t have the remote on me so couldn’t use the bulb setting. The larger aperture and shorter time on the third was to prevent star trails whilst allowing as much light in as possible – I could’ve probably risked upping the ISO here as even 2-300 shouldn’t see much noise given past experience, but then I don’t want so many stars it detracts from the ones there (again, have this from past experience) – I think Orion in the bottom left stands out quite well, below though I’ve doodled over so you can see more clearly (worked from a google search, his bow may not be 100% accurate..):

[edit]

Went back the day after and got another two pictures (now showing as four and five in the row above) that I missed, took me tripod this time and remote shutter – this meant I could dial the aperture all the way down to f/22 and leave it running for 150 secs to really smooth out the water and get some really big starburst on the lights. Downside is the stars you can see are smeared across the sky, I could photoshop them out but I like to keep that to a minimum.

2015-02-14

Luna Park by Night

Though, to be honest, it’s more Sydney Harbour. Pam wanted to nip up to take her picture for this weeks 52 week photography challenge so I thought I’d try out my new ultra wide angle lens for some nice panoramics of the harbour (frowned upon by ‘real’ photographers, as ultra wides aren’t for “getting it all in” but hey, I like to experiment :p )

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