A walk with my daughter :-)

Out for a walk at Duder's Regional Park a little earlier today.

I can't say I was feeling the best at the start of the day, so the suggestion that I went for a walk with my daughter seemed a much better idea than working in my office.  We headed off to Duder's Regional Park which is between Clevedon and Maraetai here in South Auckland.

My daughter enjoying the view.

The plan was to take the usual route up the hill to get some views from the high points in the reserve.  However, tempted by a route to a beach, we headed for the water.  As it happened, the tide was out, so we managed to walk right the way around the headland.  It was wonderful.  We had a great time and thoroughly enjoyed the walk.  We'd always been much higher up looking down at the sea, but now we enjoyed quite different views.

View from the coast as we walked around the headland.

Getting back to the car was rather more of a challenge than we expected.  Some challenging hill climbing was necessary to get back on the track and thankfully neither of us was injured nor was anything dropped.  I must admit that the hill was significantly steeper and higher than we originally thought.  Views from the top were quite special, but as you can see from the photos ... we need rain!

Most of the images may be viewed larger than you see in the post if you click on them.  The first image should go quite large.

My daughter enjoying the view from close by the trig point

View from the trig point.  As you can see ... we need rain!

Looking out toward Kawakawa Bay.  Such lovely blues in both sea and sky.

St. Luke's Anglican Church

Fisheye lens view of St. Luke's Anglican Church in Manurewa.

I must admit to being more that a little intrigued with the history of my local town, Manurewa, here in New Zealand.  You may recall an earlier post about Orford Lodge?  Orford Lodge was the second home of the lawyer Mr. Edward Russell after whom Russell Road is named.  Mr. Russell's first home, "Sunlands", used to be accessed via a long driveway from Russell Road, but it now has a reduced section size and is just another house amongst many others in a South Auckland sub-division.  I was going to take some photographs of the building, but as it is now a private residence I wanted permission first.  It's certainly interesting to see the similarity in style between Orford Lodge and Sunlands.

Vertical fisheye view of St. Luke's Church

Besides having two houses built in a similar style there was also an Anglican church built that has a similar appearance.  I found it quite interesting to see the same style of exterior wall and window in the two houses and church.  This church still stands today and in this post I've added a few images for your amusement.  There is an early photograph of the church from the 1920's that may interest you.  The church seems very similar now to back in the 1920's.  The trees are considerably larger now and the building seems also to have grown in length!

I suspect there are a few more buildings of interest in Manurewa, but they're a little hard to find!  However, should I find anymore I'll be sure to post some images on here.

Downtown

Old Government House, Auckland, New Zealand

I've been meaning to do this for some time now, and for some reason it's just never happened.  Well, that all changed this morning and I managed to get into Auckland City just to relax and take some photos.  I've been quite busy over the past couple of weeks and must admit to feeling more than a little frustrated with the photographs I've been taking of late.  I don't know if it's tiredness, lack of inspiration or just being bogged down with other things, but many of my photographic efforts have been pretty "ho-hum" and I felt I needed something to give myself a bit of a kick.  I can't say I was impressed with today's efforts, but I could sense a change in mood and attitude and could feel myself starting to look at things a little differently.  Perhaps another trip later this week will help a little more?

I took just two lenses.  Nikkor 12-24mm f4 and the Samyang 8mm f3.5 fisheye.  I also took a tripod - always a good idea :-)  The car was parked in Parnell and then I walked up to the University.  There's some lovely old buildings near the University, so I thought that may be a good place to start.  I've been meaning to take photographs of Auckland's old buildings for some time now, and hopefully this year may see the start of that project.  I'll keep you posted!  After a delicious coffee on campus I took refuge from the rain in the library, then headed towards the Old Government House.  I've seen this place before, but never really paid much attention to it.  More fool me!  This building is quite a treasure.  Taking your time provides opportunities to chat to people and observe your surroundings.  According to the gardeners the Queen stayed here with her family and a young Prince Charles played on the lawn you can see in the first image in this post.  It was a no go area for the locals, but that has all changed now and you can go into the building, soak up the atmosphere and get a coffee and muffin should you feel so inclined.  I must admit it brought back memories of Manchester's town hall!

Auckland's Old Government House

The grounds are quite lovely and well worth taking time out and enjoying a wander through.  If you pop over in the next month or two the roses will be in full flower and I can only image what that will look like.  Maybe I'll see you there!!

One of the issues with which I've been frustrated is getting a wide angle shot without distortion.  Part of today's exercise was to use wide angle lenses and then see if, by choice of angle when taking the shot or in post processing I could perhaps remove the distortion in the image.  Besides getting curved verticals, I was also keen to see if I could correct the effect you often see when a building looks like it's falling backwards.  I really wanted verticals to be vertical and parallel, but how much would Capture NX2 or Photoshop let me "correct"? Also, how great an effect did my selected viewpoint have on the image.

Liveview was great for these experiments as I could raise and lower my tripod and change angles of view.  Sometimes there's just nowhere to go and the building looks like it's falling over, but Photoshop does provide a pretty good range of "correction" options.  Shots three and four may give you an idea of my feeble attempts at straightening the shot.  My Camera was on a tripod and I tried to line up my verticals with the left edge of the clock tower.  The effect of this was that other verticals have become less than vertical!  Check out the leaning lamp post for example.  After a quick tweak in Photoshop my verticals look a little better.

University Clock Tower ... original

University Clock Tower ... straightened

I also made a few changes to the first two images (also taken with the Nikkor 12-24mm)  in this post in an attempt to make the verticals vertical.  The next question was how much correction could I achieve with the 8mm Samyang?  I must admit to not holding out much hope, but perhaps let me know what you think?  Shot 5 was taken with the Samyang and isn't too bad from a distortion point of view.  Things look a little odd on the building to the left of the image and I suspect this would be corrected if the camera was raised a little more.  Using the Samyang I find I get easier to correct distortion if I have the horizon smack in the middle of the image ... that is not looking up or looking down onto the subject.  In the fifth shot I'm looking up slightly, hence the greater degree of distortion.

Auckland's Old Government House, 8mm Samyang Fisheye.

I'll leave you with another shot taken with the Nikkor 12-24mm looking towards the clock tower.

Auckland University Clock Tower.

Some new glass :-)

Ligularia in flower at Auckland's Botanic Gardens

I'd been taking some shots for a friend where a wide angle lens was required.  I was using a 12mm focal length lens on my cropped sensor D300 and whilst looking OK, the shots didn't have the impact I was looking for that a seriously wide angle lens could provide.  I'd also noticed some quite stunning shots by Pawel Tomaszewicz and thought I should get something wider than 12mm.  After pondering for some time I bought the Samyang 8mm f3.5.  The lens requires manual focussing and use of the aperture ring rather than the wheel on the camera body.

My desk with 12mm lens

But just how much of a difference is there between the 12mm lens and the 8mm lens?  I suppose I was expecting a much larger field of view, and as the lens is sold as a fisheye, quite a bit of distortion.  The first shot in this post was taken with the 8mm Samyang and doesn't look too bad.  The main problem I was having in this shot was the light.  The sky was quite bright, even though overcast, and the foreground somewhat in shadow.  as such, this image is a blend of five shots taken at 1EV intervals.  Distortion is definitely there, but the shot isn't overwhelmed by its presence.  The bamboo to the right of the image should be vertical, but its leaning into the shot adds to the shot rather than detract from it.

OK, but just how much more can you get in the shot with 8mm instead of 12mm?  I set up my tripod next to my desk and took two shots from the same position, one with a 12mm lens, the other with 8mm.  Quite a difference don't you think?  What's more, in this shot the distortion is rather more apparent than in the first image in the post.

My desk with 8mm lens

The computer screen and window frame are seriously bent in the 8mm image, whereas are surprisingly straight in the 12mm shot.  But just look hoe much more "stuff" you can get into the frame, and it's reasonably sharp as you look to the edges of the image.

Quite a fun lens with heaps of potential for creating quite striking shots.  Maybe take a look at Pawel's images and you may find yourself becoming inspired to get a fisheye lens yourself ;-)