Dirt bike & Motocross Photo blog

Bit of a different sort of post for this week, once again I was out photographing with the Australian Motorcycle Trail Riders Association (AMTRA) at their July Family Day in Daylesford, Victoria.  So I thought I would share some of the photos from the day.  They have had quite a lot of rain in this part of Victoria recently so it was very wet and muddy underfoot.  With the speed that the bikes were going at there was mud flying in all directions; good thing the Pentax K7 is weather sealed.

It was a great day, thanks again to the guys from AMTRA for letting me tag along.  To see the rest of the photos head over to my website at Aaron Stott Photography.

The Pentax K7 – What a Great Camera!

This post isn’t really a review of the Pentax K7 as such, it’s more along what my experiences have been with this camera for the past 2 years.  If you’re after a technical review of the K7 then the one at dpreview.com is a good place to start.

When it came time to purchase my first dSLR I did what most people do and spent a while reading reviews about Canon and Nikon cameras and initially thought that was the way I was going to head too.  But then I stumbled upon this review of the Pentax K10D by Richard Martin.  I remembered the Pentax commercials on TV from the mid-eighties (I think) and their slogan “its a Pentax”; however I hadn’t really heard much about them since then.  But Richards review pointed me in a different direction and I started reading reviews about what was then Pentax’s latest dSLR the K7.  All the reviews that I read indicated that the K7 was worthy of consideration and performed as well, if not better, than the alternatives of the time.

Anyway the time came to purchase so I headed off to the shops and looked / held the various Canons and Nikons that I had been reading about.  I have relatively small hands and all of these cameras felt rather cumbersome and bulky.  But then I held the Pentax K7, and this thing fit me like a glove; I didn’t quite hear angles singing but it was close!  Even though it’s a relatively small camera its built like a tank and feels very solid in the hand.  The initial features that attracted me to the Pentax K7 were that it has a magnesium alloy chassis, it’s backward compatible with legacy Pentax lenses and it is fully weather sealed.  This last feature is particularly important to me as I like to spend quite a bit of time bushwalking and camping in the Alpine National Park and the weather can get very savage.

Even at -7C the K7 kept going longer than I could.

After using this camera for more than two years it handles really well and I still find it an absolute joy to use.  To get the best out of the sensor I think you need to pony up and get some decent glass, i.e. the Pentax line of DA* lenses.  Also I am aware that many people comment on the K7 sensors noise at high ISO settings; I don’t go for the whole photographing a black cat in a box under a bridge in the middle of the night style of photography so the noise hasn’t really been an issue for me.  Besides, any noise that I have come across tends to have a film like quality when printed and doesn’t typically have the harsh chroma type noise that often pops up on other cameras.

I mentioned above that the weather sealing was important to me and in the two years I have been using the K7 it has certainly had a workout.  I have had it in snow storms, its been covered with ash from a steam train.

Both the camera and I got covered in ash taking this shot.

I have had it sprayed with sea water, its been rained on and I have fallen over with it; but it still looks in mint condition.  At this stage I think it’s just going to keep going and going.

Fell over in the dark getting into position for this shot. The camera was fine, but I did a good job on my leg.

I have been trying to think over the last couple of days of any negatives for the K7 for the type of photography I like do however none really come to mind.  If there were in the early days I have just gotten used to them or I have adjusted my shooting habits to suit.  I tend to use the camera mainly in manual mode and haven’t really used the other modes all that much.  I have recently been using it for shooting sports, specifically motocross and dirt bikes, check out my website for some examples, and it’s frame rate of ~5.5 fps is more than enough to capture this fast-moving sport.

All in all I am very happy with the Pentax K7.  It really is a fantastic camera and I am now trying to convince my better half that I need another one as a back up.

Two filters to make your landscape photos pop.

Earlier this year I paid a visit to the Wonnangatta-Moroka section of the Alpine National Park as I wanted to introduce my parents to this incredible park and the walk that I had in mind was relatively easy, i.e. flat, for a high country walk.  This particular walk takes in some of the best features of this section of the park including Bryces Gorge, Piemans Falls and an old cattle mans hut; Guys Hut.  Naturally I also took along my Pentax K7 and DA* f2.8 16 – 50 mm lens.  As Mum and Dad were with me they were not too keen to take advantage of the magic hour at dawn for photography since the park is approximately a 4.5 hr drive from Melbourne.  Nevertheless, there was still some opportunity to take some pictures.

Taking landscape photos can present its own unique set of challenges, particularly if you are including a portion of the sky in your frame.  Often the exposure will be a trade-off between capturing cloud detail in the sky without underexposing the land based components you are trying to capture.  Alternatively you can capture whats interesting on the ground but you typically overexpose the sky rendering it completely white.  The photograph below is a typical example.

No filters were used for this photograph.

As you can see from this photo there is no detail in the sky and the colours are relatively flat.  This is where a polarising filter can help!  Briefly a polarising filter helps to ensure that all of the light captured by your camera comes from the same direction.  This allows for richer colours to be recorded and can also reduce or eliminate reflections on non-metalic surfaces like water.  If you would like more information about polarisers and how they work the luminous landscape has a great tutorial on them.  Most cameras are designed to work with a circular polariser and the one I am using is a Cokin P series circular polariser.  The photo below was taken from the same position as the first photo however this time I have included the polarising filter.

Guys Hut with a Polariser.

The inclusion of the polariser has brought out the colours, particularly in the foreground.  And if you look carefully at the sky in the upper right corner we are now starting to capture a bit of detail in the clouds.

We can still improve this image further by introducing a second filter; a split neutral density filter.  Split neutral density (ND) filters have one half that is completely transparent while the other half is darker, with the degree of darkening varying by a different number of stops depending on what you buy.  To use these filters you place the dark portion such that it cuts the light coming from the brightest portion of the scene preventing its over exposure.  The split ND filter I used for the photo below was a 2 stop Cokin one.

Guys Hut with a Polariser and ND filter

By using both a polarising filter to bring out the colours and a split ND filter to allow cloud detail to be captured the photo has a very different look and feel especially when compared back to the first in the series. To finish the image off it could do with a some dodging and burning particularly on the tree closest to the hut.

By using these two filters you have the potential to save yourself some time post processing and get back to taking more photos.