Category: Landscape

The road from Queentown to Glenorchy in New Zealand has been described as “one of the most scenic drives you’ll ever experience”. The road runs along the edge of Lake Wakatipu, the third largest lake in New Zealand. The drive itself takes about 45 minutes although I must say that we took longer than that with all the stops for photography we made! 😛 The spectacular and surreal scenery we caught was certainly well worth the time spent!

Canon 40D technical report: One of the interesting features on the 40D that I like is the Highlight Tone Priority setting, which is supposed to expand the dynamic range for highlights, ideal especially for the scene above where exposure is critical to ensure that details are preserved in the bright clouds. I find that I get less blown highlights with this mode turned on although I have read that this is at the expense of more noise in the shadow areas. Definitely a good feature to have for landscape pictures!

We caught some spectacular displays from Mother Nature during our trip to New Zealand. This impressive display of clouds was taken at Lake Pukaki while on our way to Mount Cook Village (you can see Mount Cook in the background here). A polarizing filter helped to increase the overall saturation in the skies while the turquoise-blue of the lake was a result of natural glacial or rock flour. Dad has coincidentally an almost exact version of this same picture although we were using separate tripods and equipment!

We arrived in Christchurch on the first day of our trip to New Zealand. Setting off the next day, we drove past the towns of Ashburton and Timaru, before settling down for the night at Oamaru. I was half-expecting to see immediately the famed landscapes that New Zealand is well-known for, but the Cantebury plains that we passed through on our journey seemed just so-so. The above was taken at a viewpoint overlooking the Oamaru Habour. I love the pristine blue of the Pacific Ocean waters which complimented the bright red of the boat and the yellow-green of the grass perfectly.

Canon 40D technical report: Even though the 70-200mm f/4 lens (non-IS) is one of my favourites in terms of optical sharpness, it was frequently let down at the long end when using slower shutter speeds without the stability of a tripod. The 40D can produce near-noiseless images at ISO 800 (compared to ISO 400 for my old 20D). This came in handy as the higher ISO allowed me to use a faster shutter speed even at long focal lengths, enabling me to hand-hold the camera for such shots with confidence 🙂