[pinholecam] From Alps to Ocean - A bicycle/photo log


Its interesting to me that it took me so long to get this trip going.
In a way, it took decades.
The accumulation of my interests from a young schoolboy who liked camping back in the day to cycling for triathlons later as a younger man, and with photography slotted somewhere in the middle of this.

So since 2 years back, I decided to put them together and do some tours by bike.
Got me a foldable to make it simpler to do multi-modal travel and headed out to Perth on the first trip
That trip here : Going solo - A week of cycle touring in Perth | ClubSNAP



So having read about the Alps to Ocean trail in New Zealand, I decided to give this a try.




The K1 astro tracer proved to be very useful in this situation being able to let the FA31ltd I was using to go over the '500' rule and expose the sky for 40s at ISO3200, f2.8.
If going by the '500' rule, it would have been only 16s and I'd have had to use high iso and a larger aperture.

Super cold and windy night when I ventured out to shoot this.
I had to do a lot of moving around to keep myself from freezing.

Between 8pm-10.30pm, there are lots of tourists coming to shoot the church with their phones, light interference from car headlamps will be common until about 10.30pm.

---------- Post added 04-20-2018 at 07:09 AM ----------

[redpit]

Those images are superb!

[pinholecam]

Those images are superb!

Thanks.




Pentax K1+FA31ltd

A view travelling along the Mackenzie region during a long day towards Oamaru.

[pinholecam]

K1+Samyang 14/2.8



I finally reached the town of Oamaru near sunset.
Not too soon either as the clouds had been gathering for a day and rain was imminent.
So decided to just head to the accommodation and get a good hot meal after a full day of riding.
The next day was really fantastic and I took my time going around town to snap more shots.

[pinholecam]

K1+Samyang 14/2.8

[Photogoof]

These are truly exceptional; well done!

[blues_hawk]

Excellent work on all your photos. I wanted to bike tour but never got the chance. I spent most of my healthy cycling years pounding out the same bit of singletrack and a state races. Love that small wheel bike. Bike science says they're more efficient(ask poor OBree).

I'm sure I'm just saying this for fun considering the level of your work but have a suggestion to make this one even better next time to you do(or anyone does) it. if you have time to do it twice and carefully focus stack star trails vs. church for an even better effect. I've also found that smallest star(focus) is not alway the brightest on the display, nor is it always the end stop of a lens, and I have a few that won't reach infinity at all when tested against the stars. Some cameras(ie. my canon gx1) will jack up exposure times on the live view when you manually increase exposure times, and getting a bright star in the 5x magnification box also helps, but I find that testing with short 3-5 second exposures at higher iso than you will shoot is a good test of bloat/growth/focus of stars. All that said, I've never found good foreground subjects in my decimated hovel riddled area, mostly due to the tall scrub trees that take over almost instantly as if to say.."this guy lost his job too".

Ramble on!