Gorilla’s breakfast answering “how sharp is it?”
Does this photograph of a gorilla’s breakfast show how sharp this lens can be?
Melbourne Zoo on New Year’s Eve
New Year’s Eve at Melbourne Zoo was hot, but the otter’s enclosure is well shaded.
Playing with water
This ibis drinks from water on top of a sculpture at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney.
A Bee Forever Foraging
This bee was making its away around the centre of a massiv sunflower, seemingly on an endless quest.
Galactic Centre
They say the Galactic Centre contains many stars, all revolving around a supermassive black hole, surrounded by interstellar dust and molecular gas. Some stars explode and become supernovae, generating relativistic jets (beams of ionised matter).
Why
I was asking myself this question when I saw this eclectic collection of books and plants on an alley near Reservoir St Surry Hills.
Australian kestrel in flight towards me
After having a barking owl flying directly at me, I was delighted to have a pretty little Australian kestrel flying towards me, but these little raptors don’t fly in straight lines.
It was a heavily overcast day, and somewhat windy. These images were all shot with a Sony 70-200mm GM II lens at 200mm, at ISO 500, f/2.8, 1/2000.
Here is the sequence in a gallery that you can click on to see the details – these are 24 consecutive images, shot at 20 frames per second, so you are seeing just over 1 second of flight here. None of these frames have been cropped.
Yes, those last three frames clip the bird’s wing. I was doing my best to track the bird’s flight, but the images above are just over one second of flight. I had expected the bird to fly to camera right. You can see the strange way it moved to head towards me. If you keep an eye on the fence post launching point, you can see how much I had to pan. As I looked through these images, I was impressed at how tightly the eyes were glued on me, and how well the A1’s eye AF worked.
Portal
This feels like a steampunk portal into a different universe or dimension. It is actually a children’s playground, part of the Albert Sloss Reserve.
Lazing on a Sunday afternoon…
Summer has started a little hesitantly where I live, but the first Sunday in December was a lovely day, barely a hint of a cloud, bright sunshine, but not too hot. The reflection in the water is pristine, so there’s not a breath of wind. It’s a good time to relax, soak in the sunshine, and maybe listen to Queen’s song.
Shot with the new Sony 70-200mm f/2.8 GM II on a Sony A1. The shot above was take at 111mm, f/2.8, 1/2000, ISO 200 (due to auto-ISO). The image is uncropped.
To demonstrate that it wasn’t just the hippos taking a leisurely approach to the day, here are a couple of lions luxuriating in the warmth. The younger of the two clearly thinks the older makes a good footrest.
This shot was taken at 148mm, but all the other settings are the same.
The Sony 70-200mm f/2.8 GM OSS mark II is proving to be a very pleasant lens to use.
Wynyard Station
This is the new entrance to Wynyard Station from George St, Sydney, after refurbishment. The building containing this entrance has been renamed Brookfield Place.
Forgotten Songs
This is an installation of 110 empty birdcages in 2009 by artist Michael Thomas Hill.
Watch for Cyclists
I found this brightly painted car parking entrance with lots of warnings about cyclists. I wonder if this is a response to a prior incident.
