A Little R and R

Specialising in any one area of photography means you accumulate specific gear for the job. That's great. But it also means that a range of other tools tends to be set aside. Working as a Wedding Photographer pushes fast lenses and highly portable, flexible gear to the top of my gadget bag, and other interesting things get left out... But never forgotten. This week I have taken a break from my regular schedule, and pulled some of my more neglected equipment out of mothballs. I am in the temperate rainforests 300Kms north of home photographing birds, wildlife, fungi and native flora. Here, my principal tools are my 500mm IS lens (800mm in 35mm terms), my 90mm macro and a new "O-Flash" which converts my hot-shoe flash into a ring-flash. I'm using this opportunity to get familiar with it before using it in earnest, and I have to say it's performing very well so far, adding great, shadowless light to macros and head shots. Very impressive given that it costs only about a tenth the price of a dedicated portable ring-flash. It's winter, and the rainforests have not been rainy... The days have been sunny and bright around our cabin, but cold under the shelter of the trees. There are only two cabins here, and many, many kilometres of rough, steep pathways through the woods. The managers have mapped out and named many paths, grading them for difficulty and marking their routes with little bits of pink plastic tape, so there is little chance of wandering too far off the beaten track, yet the solitude and sense of wilderness rests on everything. Many streams and small rivers penetrate the dim woods and the forest is full of sound: the streams, unseen animals and barely glimpsed birds and insects are a constant companion to our footsteps, but beyond this....silence. Outside the woods, the gravel roads are little trafficked; just the occasional farmer on his way too or from town, and twice a day, the school bus. For the rest of the day, the roads are ours. We walk them, or dive slowly down the middle of the road. Wildlife spotting. In the last few days we have seen endangered Palmers Wallabies, Black Faced Wallabies, Pademelons and Eastern Kangaroos; there are numerous wrens and thrushes of many varieties and the common currawongs, kookaburras, magpies and ibis. Every days we see white-faced and grey heron, magpie larks, superb flycatchers, and around the cabins, beautiful brown and yellow thornbills entertain us. The possums come around at night, and yesterday morning we were visited by a Satin Bowerbird. Most of our sightings have eventually been recorded, but not all as well as we might like. Those creatures not so shy that they vanish at the whirr of an autofocus motor are still hard to catch in the viewfinder, especially at dusk and near dawn, or in the dim of the forest. At the far stretch of an 800mm lens at an ISO of 1600, images of small, moving animals are sometimes less than crisp! Nevertheless, we are gaining ever greater respect for our Canon and Olympus cameras and their optics. Just by way of comparison, we have virtually abandoned the superzoom compact that came along as an alternative to the DSLRs. On paper, and under more "normal" conditions, it is a respectable camera: 20x zoom f/4 lens, 4 FPS burst rate and full manual control: it has yet to produce one acceptable image. I strongly suspect it will be finding a new home on eBay next week! Just two more days to go, and sad we will be to leave: but, on the other hand, how miserable would we be to miss Peter's and Kylie's wedding!