Star Swamp
by Graham Leggate on Aug.09, 2009, under Uncategorized
What a lovely day in Perth! This morning the family and I headed to Star Swamp… doesn’t sound too attractive, which is probably why it has taken us 5 years to get around to going there, even though I drive past it twice a day! But what a pleasant surprise it was. It’s like a little National Park in the suburbs! I took the camera along and took some snaps. I had my father in-laws macro with me (thanks Brian), and decided to have a go at shooting some flowers… but the bees kept getting in the way 
August 10th, 2009 on 9:11 am
Nice… especially the been on the lavendar. Did you bring your tripod by any chance?
August 10th, 2009 on 9:59 am
Thanks Kheng. No, I didn’t take a tripod, just used my incredibley stable hands
August 10th, 2009 on 10:05 am
Kheng it is spelled bean and it isn’t a bean it is a bee.
I find the bokeh distracting, it is not smooth enough. Especially on the first one there seems to be some banding through the bokeh on the left above the bee. In the second photo the ‘railing/fence?’ is quite distracting also.
Great composition on both photos though.
August 10th, 2009 on 10:05 am
Impressive no tripod….. what were the camera settings?
August 10th, 2009 on 10:32 am
Cheers Matt. Details are ISO200 for both and f/3.5 @ 1/2000 and f/3.5 @ 1/640 respectively. Yes, I agree the line across the bottom of the second image is distracting. I think it was a stick which I didn’t notice when framing the image… I was a little concerned for the number bees buzzing around me, so one eye looking through the view finder and the other watching out for the bees.
As for the banding in the fist image, I think that was caused by a mix of elements such as; having some strong colours against each other, a really shallow DOF and pushing the vibrancy and saturation a bit. Either way I like the first image the most. I would have like to get the bee a little higher in the frame and a little more focused, however he wasn’t open for modelling directions
August 11th, 2009 on 3:37 pm
I’m afraid i’m not as technical as you gents – i loved the pictures, fabulous.
August 14th, 2009 on 5:56 pm
Hi Graham,
Great detail in both of those shots.
What Macro lense do you have?
Cheers,
Mark
August 14th, 2009 on 7:42 pm
Thanks Naina.
Hey Mark. It’s actually my father in-laws Sigma 105mm f/2.8 Macro. Very nice lens, I think it really holds it’s own against the Nikon, in fact I’m sure it scored better then the Nikon in one of the magazine tests a few years ago.