[ivanvernon]

Fabulous flower images with wonderful lighting and presence. There's also a lot of dimensionality. Well done.

Thanks for sharing,
barondla

Thanks for the kind comments. Flowers are my thing.

[itshimitis]

Milford Sound May 2018 - Missing travelling...

Z and 28 -45

[barondla]

Milford Sound May 2018 - Missing travelling...

Z and 28 -45

Stunning landscape. A masterpiece. You've captured a special image. I wouldn't want to leave this area. I also miss traveling and hope everything returns to normal soon.

Thanks for sharing,
barondla

[itshimitis]

Stunning landscape. A masterpiece. You've captured a special image. I wouldn't want to leave this area. I also miss traveling and hope everything returns to normal soon.

Thanks for sharing,
barondla

Thank you. Twice I have picked up a camper van in Christchurch and done a trip around the South Island. It is very difficult to resist just spending time in Fiordland.

[itshimitis]

Eglinton Valley on the road too Milford:


Z and FA 80 - 160



BW

[RICHARD L.]

Oh ! New Zealand ... I thought these were images of Norway. Very nice ! I dreamed of visiting NZ for a long time (didn't happen) but I'm too old now (sniff).

Regards

[ivanvernon]

Oh ! New Zealand ... I thought these were images of Norway. Very nice ! I dreamed of visiting NZ for a long time (didn't happen) but I'm too old now (sniff).

Regards

What is the maximum age for visiting New Zealand? :>)

[RICHARD L.]

Good one, Ivan ! No it's because I've had both of my knees replaced and I can't any longer walk like I used to. Airport terminals are usually quite huge and necessitate a lot of walking. Plus I can't swim and remaining for 12 hours over the Pacific makes me nervous ... ha ha !

Regards

[Knebelphotog]

It is sure tough posting in this club with all the fantastic talent and wonderful landscapes, but I will dare to offer a single pink dahlia from our garden.

KIT: 645D with Pentax 67 55mm f 4.0.

Love the rich color

[TDvN57]

Thanks for the kind comments. Flowers are my thing.

Ivan, I find flowers the most difficult to photograph. To me it sometimes looks like a close-up and a macro all combined and if the sun is out, the dynamic range is huge. I started to go smaller aperture and exposing for the highlights and found slightly better results.

On vacation I once saw the most beautiful wild orchids (I think it was orchid) but no matter what I tried, I couldn't get a single good picture. It was like taking a good picture of a bride dressed in brilliant white silk on a bright sunny day.

Really appreciate your flower shots, thanks for sharing, inspires me to keep trying.

---------- Post added 2020-09-19 at 08:08 AM ----------

Good one, Ivan ! No it's because I've had both of my knees replaced and I can't any longer walk like I used to. Airport terminals are usually quite huge and necessitate a lot of walking. Plus I can't swim and remaining for 12 hours over the Pacific makes me nervous ... ha ha !

Regards

Richard, you need to play the 'help me card'. Once we were on a long haul flight and connecting somewhere and I was still sleepy and groggy at the connecting boarding gate, they ushered me and my wife to the special line and let us board first. I thought it was a case of mistaken identity with someone special, but the attendant's remark clarified everything. She asked my wife if she was assisting me.....

Now I'm still young, my wife a couple of years younger, but looks much much younger, so much that strangers sometimes think she is my daughter.

In the end the first boarding privilege didn't help, we still had to wait for everyone to board before the plane left.

[ivanvernon]

v

Ivan, I find flowers the most difficult to photograph. To me it sometimes looks like a close-up and a macro all combined and if the sun is out the dynamic range of huge. I started to go smaller aperture and exposing for the highlights and found slightly better results.

On vacation I once saw the most beautiful while orchids (I think it was orchid) but no matter what I tried I couldn't get a single good picture. It was like taking a good picture of a bride dressed in brilliant white silk on a bright sunny day.

Really appreciate your flower shots, thanks for sharing, inspires me to keep trying.

---------- Post added 2020-09-19 at 08:08 AM ----------

Thanks for your comments. I also find white a difficult color to photograph, along with red. In making images of white and red flowers, I generally under expose by as much as two or three stops, which seems to work pretty well. I like to shoot wide open for flowers in order to achieve a gradation of focus from front to back of the flower and in order to capture the bokeh behind the flower, so I really tend to treasure lenses which perform well when not stopped down. On the other hand, I am aware that I need to be more flexible and to try more stopped down shots. All my photography is self-taught, and I have improved a good deal over the last several years, but I still have a great deal to learn.



Richard, you need to play the 'help me card'. Once we were on a long haul flight and connecting somewhere and I was still sleepy and groggy at the boarding line, they ushered me and my wife to the special line and let us board first. I thought it was a case of mistaken identity with someone special, but the attendant's remark clarified everything. She asked my wife if she was assisting me.....

Now I'm still young, my wife a couple of years younger, but looks much much younger, so much that strangers sometimes think she is my daughter.

In the end the first boarding privilege didn't help, we still had to wait for everyone to board before the plane left.

Richard, of course I was just joking, and I totally appreciate your situation. Over a 20 year period of international business consulting, I went around the world maybe 30-40 times, but today I am more than content to stay at home and engage in gardening and photography. The idea of towing luggage through an airport holds no attraction whatsoever for me. I have, unfortunately, never visited either Norway or New Zealand, so can sympathize with your inability to distinguish between the two nations. :>)

ivan

[rdenney]

Thank you. Twice I have picked up a camper van in Christchurch and done a trip around the South Island. It is very difficult to resist just spending time in Fiordland.

I did that in 2000, 20 years ago to the day, but we picked up the camper van in Auckland and did the north island, too. We thought next time we’d fly into Christchurch and forget the ferry. That was going to be for our tenth anniversary, and we just passed 20.

I made lots of pictures, but all small format and all (of course) on film. I need to back and look through those.

I saw lots of tourists at Milford Sound, but we took the tour bus from Queenstown to avoid the crowds. A mistake.

Rick “honeymoon pics—not art” Denney

[RICHARD L.]

Thank you for your kind words, Theuns and Ivan. I traveled a little in my time (France, Switzerland, Mexico, Brasil, and of course all over the U.S. and Canada) but now I stay close to home and try to find beauty in things and places surrounding me.

Regards

[StephenMerola]

Just a photo of my cat. Pentax 67 with 105mm @ f2.4. Kodak TriX 400, developed in Cinestill DF96. Scanned with my K3 and Sigma 105mm macro, converted in Dark Table. TriX 120 is a beautiful film in my opinion.

[TDvN57]

I received my 6x7 55-100 yesterday and quickly took a couple of test shots out the backyard. I also compared it with the same composition at the same settings with the 645 80-160 zoom and both at 100mm. The time between the two test shots was as quick as I could swap lenses on the 645z, I am fairly fast at swapping lenses. At first I did my customary pixel peeping and found that the 55-100 is indeed a bit sharper than the 80-160, but only marginally sharper. Also keep in mind these are handheld shots, so I would call it a preliminary observation.

However, when I got my head out of the pixels, I saw something I have never seen before. The mountains in the background show a lot more detail, I'm tempted to say, yet both showed the same detail, just with the 55-100 the detail is much more pronounced. I tried to recreate the same effect with the 80-160 in post, but could not get even close. This is a first time revelation for me to see the dramatic difference between two high-end lenses and the one outperforming the other to this extent.

If any of you had observed the same kind of difference with lenses, please share, because as I've said this is a very new and very pleasant discovery. Perhaps the veil has been lifted for me for the first time.

Here are the two pictures. I cropped out the foreground to bring attention to the mountain. BTW, I saw the same "popping" effect in other areas of the same picture, especially the greens with high contrast. The jpgs uploaded with this message dulled the difference somewhat compared to what I saw on my screen.

The first picture is the 80-160 and the second is the 55-100