petesmedia

We left the rain and headed north on Sunday night stopping at Newcastle to sort out Pete’s lease and get some essentials from woolies. Another stop for Maccas then onwards to Smiths Lake. The drive was was good with minimal traffic. We arrived around 11pm and setup the WDTV for some comedy entertainment of The IT Crowd and South Park to relax after the drive.

Monday

More South Park then a trip into Forster for a big mammoth grocery shop to last the week were our oves for today. Then off to the beach then a spot of fishing to take us to dinner time, making the best of the weather and sunshine!

The beach turned out to be psycho with a massive swell. We had to stick with knee deep frolicking but even that didn’t last long as the seaweed was getting churned up and we were out of there to organise a bbq. Our bbq was a solid cookup with steak, spuds & salad although we were bombarded with kookaburras and funny turkey looking things.

Ross is making a delicious home made chocolate pudding for dessert to get us started with super desserts.

Tuesday

Woke up about 9am to another gorgeous, sunny day. Checked the surf report online while we watched a selection of music videos. Pete strolled in last and we decided to make pancakes for breakfast. Ross whipped up the mix and Noor took over with the spatula to cook the little suckers up. Some lemon, sugar, bananas and a copious amount of maple syrup later we were all ready to hit the beach.

We thought we’d better take advantage of the good weather so we headed out to Seal Rocks. We brought along our collection of high priced cameras and took some photos of the Sugar Point lighthouse.

The water looked gorgeous from high above the beach and it was. We spent a good hour body surfing and another on the beach soaking up the sun before we decided to head home for some nachos.

More to come…

This photo has been created using high dynamic range photography (HDR). This has been my first successful time shooting for HDR and the results turned out impressive. The image shows the underneath of the Victoria Bridge crossing the Nepean River. Notice the detail in the pilons and how the graffiti shows up.

Ross and I went down to the Nepean River Weir for this photo adventure. It has been raining a fair bit lately and the weir was overflowing. As we walked along the banks Ross spotted a Eastern Water Dragon. I thought it was pretty amazing to see such an animal in this type of environment as there was plenty of rubbish and pollution in the area.

I picked up one of these from Dick Smith today for $15. Mainly to be used with my Samsung U10 as they’re so handy to mount literally anywhere and are small enough to carry around without taking up too much room to be annoying. The Samsung U10 can’t sit on a flat surface so this little guy is practically essential to get some steady shots. Here’s what it says on the back of the box.

Comparison in size against my HTC Touch Pro

This was an impulse buy off Catch Of The Day for $150 but it has some neat features. Mainly being that it can record in full HD with a resolution of 1920×1080 @ 30 fps. It also has some timelapse features and the ability to take photos. It can also record at 1280×720 @ 60 fps.

Below are some test videos showing the difference between 1920×1080 @ 30 fps and 1280×720 @ 60 fps. I prefer the look of the 60fps. I don’t think youtube really shows the difference as they’ve been re compressed but I’ve added the raw MP4 files for download.

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Download this video 1280×720 @ 24fps

I went out with Ross & Noor to have a go at shooting the full moon on Saturday night. There was a bit of cloud around so we waited for some clear sky. I was pretty happy with the results.

It was a bit of a trek to get out to the lookout. Not remembering how far it was, we walked for what seemed like 500m and then finally we arrived at the clearing. The moon was slowly rising above us, but it was touch and go to see if we were going to graced by the presence of the moon, lingering behind the thick cloud cover.

Alas, the clouds dissipated briefly and provided us with a good couple of hours from about 8.30 till 10.30 at night to take a few shots and play with the camera’s before the rain promptly ended our night.

These are my 4 pic Best of photo’s – Ross

Hope you Enjoy!