My Nikon P610

I have tried to post a new page about my new camera (twice), but it won't show.  Apparently I'm not alone in this so I will just have to continue my news about it here.  I bought it for the zoom 60x, and I have had some lovely images with it.

Black Swans on Linear Park at Fulham

Another great close up was of a Koala, up a gum tree on Linear Park at Klemzig.  He was hiding behind the leaves but still not a bad shot.  I was impressed that I could see the details of his fur when he was so high in the tree.

Koala, Linear Park, Klemzig

I've also been looking at ripples and reflections - with the sun low in the sky, I am delighted with the appearance of the river, with the ripples and reflections appearing exactly like when we dyed the Fortuny scarf at college.  This was just one image - I ended up with a couple of dozen, kept finding more beautiful reflections.

ripples and reflections looking like a dyed scarf

More on my experiments soon.

Changing the ISO

Today I decided to follow the advice of some literature I've been reading and changed my ISO back to 100, instead of keeping it up higher, (800 and even 1600, because of photographing birds).  I wasn't really happy with the exposure on my images, so I shot the whole session today with ISO 100.  I was very happy with the results, the shots don't seem so harsh.  I've been shooting early in the morning when it's still cool, but the sun is still very bright and harsh as it usually is in the Aussie summer, and often I am aiming at the sky.  I am however mostly walking in shady areas.  So I never really was sure about the exposure.  I stayed with Aperture Priority and shade or cloudy for the white balance, but taking into account that I am often shooting up to the sky, I have found the ISO 100 has given me much better results.  I especially noticed it with the koala - yes, it's still in the same tree, still way up but in a different branch so I was able to get more open shots of it.  He noticed me and kept his eye on me the whole time, even when I tried to change position.  They can suffer harassment from some people and from dogs.  A kind person had left a plastic ice cream container of water at the bottom of the tree for him - they don't usually drink water but in heatwaves such as we have now they will gladly do so.

Koala  optical zoom ©Christine Linton

Technical details: Aperture Priority, F/2.8, shutter speed 1/10, ISO 100, AF 23 area, white balance - cloudy.

Koala optical zoomed x24
Technical details: Aperture Priority, F/2.8, shutter speed 1/4, ISO 100, AF 1 area, white balance - cloudy
I was focusing on his eyes here, but being far apart, I went for the closest one (his right one).
©Christine Linton

Koala

Out looking for flying bird shots this morning, I just happened to glance up a tree (hoping for a sleeping owl) and glimpsed a brown lump - went back and found this koala.

koala in Klemzig

©Christine Linton

There was only one place where he could even be seen, he was so camouflaged by the gum leaves, so I couldn't get a better angle.