So, How'd it go Greg?

Hoping to see a few photos.

Homer

Hey Homer and others,

it was a great little meet up at the Alexandra Hotel. We were running a little late as the key to the room we booked was accidentally taken home by one of the managers and it had to be dropped off. Whilst we waited we waited till very one gathered in the bar and we just had a yarn.

The room was on the small size, but it was enough for the following attendees:

Shane Eckerbicer
Renee Eckerbicer
Lee Scott
Shane (Lee's friend)
Michael Thompson
Lisa Pearson
Michael Keene
Grant Burgess
Greg Sorenson
Nathan Morris
Michael King

A great effort for each of these people making it - many of whom travelled many hours on the road - esp Shane and Renee - all the way from Melb!!!!

We kicked things off with a quick heads up on the ASWA agm this year at the Gold Coast. I outlined the 3 days of the awesome weatherfest being organised - including a video evening in a cinema!!!!!How good will it be to see your footage on the big screen.... this will be crazy good!

After the formalities i kicked things off with my season's highlights - including the 20th Jan Bredbo supercell. What a beast that day was! I also included that staccato festival of the 29/30th Nov last year which was responsible of my 100m lighting shot... i also was taking footage at the time so people could gauge my verbal response at the time:) My season was mainly made up of short chases around Canberra, mainly due to financial constraints, but i still think i put together some good footage, my first year of doing so.... i learned a lot, so hopefully with my established still photography skill set, and my new interest in cinematography, i will be able to share a bigger and package to my weather friends.

Next was Michael Thompson. He started off by saying that this was his worst season ever. It pretty much was for a lot of people in the Illawarra area, and the surrounding tablelands. Despite this, Michael was able to show some fantastic footage, including a awesome example of an inflow jet, large hail, and a wombat taking cover from a barrage of hail stones! Hopefully next season allows Michael to have a great season, he's such a respected chaser with a wealth of knowledge, i know what ever he produces will be top shelf stuff.

Next was Michael Keene. Boy did he cover some km's in a tough season for chasers! His hard work really paid off those, too many insane structure - including a nuclear LP barber's pole on dusk that was going nuts! My fav part though was his 7 years of lightning rolled into one vid - he has incredible ability to capture bolts of all types..... some of the staccatos were just insanely good and need to be seen to be believed.

We finished off the proceedings with a video of a talk given by US tour operator Roger Hill explaining supercell structure, with fantastic images. He talked about speed and directional sheer at the various altitudes, and how it influenced supercell behaviour. It was good to draw parallels front he footage shown by both Michaels and myself in regards to super cells that we each caught this past season.

I didn't take photos of the gang unfortunately, however Grant, Michael Keene, Nathan Morris and myself got up early and met up at the 3 sisters lookout to do a sunrise shoot the following morning. All of us i'm sure came away with some great shots, the sunrise was fantastic and our decision to shoo tin that location really payed off. We also went to Leura Cascade, and both Nathan and Michael had a go at the various waters falls in the area. We all agreed that we'd share our results in this thread.....

So, the next meeting.... Lee and i had a quick discussion and will look to come up with a date and location within the next couple weeks. We will be aiming for Sept - Oct, and this give everyone plenty of warning. We know people enjoy these meetings, it's more of a case getting people to them! So we sincerely hope more people will be able to attend and be apart of it.... cause it's a lot of fun:)

A couple photos from the weekend:

Leura Cascades Sat morning -



The Three Sisters -

Excellent wrap up Greg!! It was a great meeting, and I really enjoyed it. Good footage all around! The photoshoot on Sunday morning was excellent,and i'll share some pics abit later this evening. Cheers!! PS- Lovely shots Greg!!

I almost got there I organised around customers a bit but then a customer came in to work right on closing and was there until about 1.30, damn.

Love your two photos Greg - I have not been down to the Cascades yet (don't know why) but will make sure I do soon after seeing that lovely shot.

Well guys, as promised heres a few pics from the great photoshoot on Sunday morning

Photobucket has smashed the quality, but you get the idea.

hard to pick my favourite Michael, they're all fantastic!

Yeah great shots fellas, but what settings did u use 4 each of ur shots? I hope to get a few up in the next couple of days, but i doubt they will be to that standard lol.

The Blue Mountains shot was 2 shots stitched together but had the same settings:
Exposure 0.5
Aperture f/16.0
Focal Length 17 mm
ISO Speed 50
Exposure Bias -1/3 EV
Aperture-priority AE
Used a 3 stop ND grad filter to balance sky and foreground

Leura Falls:
Exposure 13secs
Aperture f/16.0
Focal Length 17 mm
ISO Speed 50
Aperture-priority AE
Exposure Bias -2/3 EV

Awesome, thanks heaps for that Greg, will definitely help me next time i'm out & about with the camera . Could I take it one step further though & ask you the reasons behind why you used each of those particular settings for each shot? I note you said you used Aperture-priority AE, does that mean the camera automatically adjusted some of those settings to get the best outcome for you?

Thanks Greg You photos are awesome Greg as always!!

Gday Grant

The first Leura Falls shot- 6second exposure, Appeture F-16, Focal lenghth 24mms , Iso 100...I was using a Polarising filter and I think I had the ND filter on as well. The long exposure time gives the water that soft and milky effect. You can achieve this effect with a 2second exposure, however since I had the polariser and ND filter on, a 2 second exposure was under exposing. I really wanted the detailed foreground and waterfall in focus so I used a reasonably small appeture to achieve this effect... I originally posted a cropped version of this photo, however I much prefer the uncropped version now. (see below)



The second Leura Falls shot- Almost identical settings to the first shot.Same exposure, but only Iso 50 this time. F-11 as opposed to F-16 compensated for that.

Three Sisters- 4seconds F-18- Iso 50- Focal length of 24mms.....I was using a polarising filter and a 2stop ND... I admit I probrably shouldn't have used such a long exposure in this situation. I probrably should've reduced the F-stop a little,and increased the Iso to 100, allowing a 1 second exposure. It didn't hurt the shot in the end, but I had nothing to gain by using such a long exposure. It just means theres more chance the tripod will move slowly, especially if its windy- it doesen't take much! But I got away with it.

Cant wait to see some of your photos Grant

geat shots aswell Ping, i tried for that same spot you took your 2nd one but there was a slightly large tongan fella camped there for over a hour and i didnt really find it wise to tryn shove him aside! A fair amount more water flowing then my shot which i posted in the autumn thread. Did you take the shot from just left of the railing under the cave? i could have sat at that spot all day listening to the water echo back off the cave

Thanks for your question Grant. AE is great when you have a certain depth of field requirement in mind - aperture of the lens not only controls light coming into the sensor, it's consequence being that it also controls depth of field as well. So when you have a SMALL aperture of f16- f22, it means that the light rays hit the sensor in a more precise manner, thus making the whole image sharp and in focus. A landscape shot such as the great vista of the Blue Mountains deserves everything to be in focus, so i used the f16 setting in AE mode, which then automatically sets my shutter speed as seen. Just a quick note to add, the sharpest that most lenses operate at is f16, not f22 and it mainly has to do with the physical parameters of most lens designs.

I used an low iso setting of 50 because it is common knowledge that the lower the iso used, the less noise you will get for longer exposures. The 5d mk2 has really low noise, even at iso800, but still, i like to eliminate potential errors where ever possible.

awesome little bit of a pointer greg, i only ever really use manual. I'll be giving AE a little more of a play next time im out

Well, here are my efforts as promised. These shots are all straight from the camera with no editing - all are clickable thumbs.

This first shot is from the Mt Boyce lookout - had a quick look around for the AWS but no luck lol.


This shot taken from Pulpit Rock


This shot taken from Govett's Leap looking toward Pulpit Rock


This shot taken of Wentworth St, Blackheath


And my last taken from Echo Point. This sadly was my last pic of the day too before my backup battery died. I only replaced it the day before so thought it should easily last the day - never had a problem before! Unfortunately most of my other shots on this day were when light was insufficient. Anyway, live & learn .

This shot is my .jpg version but I also have a RAW version too.

Geeze, pulpit rocks looks to be a really great spot Grant! Must check that one out next time.

My fav is the last one, great sense of depth in that one.

Thanks Greg, yeah hard to take a bad shot in such a picturesque location!

On another note, I was thinking we could look at an ASWA meet in the southern highlands somewhere in the future. Just a thought.

Sorry it has taken me so long to post at least ONE picture - uni assignments are top priority these days - so without further ado, here is my attempt at shooting the beautiful Leura Cascades.

I will post my Echo Point pics once I get around to editing them.

Fantastic write Greg, and great photos by all! It was nice meeting everyone and putting faces to names of those I didn't already know. Will definitely be going to future meetings - in Wagga, hint.. hint.

Great work Grant and Nathan

Nice shot Nath!