Chthonic Wildlife Ramblings

It's been a tough few weeks for photography as work pressure and turbulent weather has got in the way of employing the camera. I recently got a Sony 2x Teleconverter (off Trademe) and have been hoping to test it out. I've been happy with the 1.4x TC for a while but appreciate that image quality does take a small hit with a TC. On the other hand, my longest lens is a 300mm G prime. While this has superb image quality it isn't always long enough for nature photography. The 1.4x TC extends it to a useful 420mm focal length. The 2x takes it out to 600mm.

Once you start shooting at these kind of focal lengths (my rule of thumb, 500mm or more) stability is an issue. This is why tripods are normally used as an adjunct for the big lenses.

I didn't really have time to pack and setup a tripod however on Sunday, so I did it the hard way with a handheld shot. I'm usually pretty steady with a camera and lens (which helps with a lot of the macro shots I do), but cranked the shutter speed up to 1/1000 sec and ensured the camera stabiliser was working. This should buy me a few extra stops of stability.

Tuis are starting to increase in abundance our way, so I went out for some snapshots. Lighting conditions weren't ideal. I like to have a bit of directional light with our native birds, especially as they often have a metallic sheen to them when the sun hits them at certain angles.

Anyway, this is my hand-held, manual focus shot of a local tui.

One of the reasons to attempt photography at night time is you get the chance to see behaviours that don't occur during the day. This means nocturnal creatures come out, spiders repair their webs and other high-risk activities occur. One of these is mating. For arthropods, mating is a high-risk activity. It means you have to abandon the usual routines that protect you from predation. You have to search for a potential mate, succeed with the liaison and avoid predators while exposed. One solution is to attempt this at night time because many avian predators will be fast asleep- or have difficulty locating you.

This led to the spotting of two crane-flies locked in coitus





This shot used my new Macro twin Flash with the side-arm on the right extended and angled to give some side light and pick out more fine detail on the antenna and body hairs. I also had a 6x Raynox adapter attached to the macro lens.

This is (surprise surprise) another fungus shot, aided with the assistance of my Macro Twin Flash. The diffused side light from the right helps to show up the relief on the gills, without dark shadows concealing features.



Of course, if any local mushroom experts want to help me with an ID, I'd be very appreciative.

The Mokoroa Stream includes a waterfall. In fact, it consists of twin falls as two streams feed into it.

This fall is quite spectacular, but the constant water spray ruined many of my shots


The other fall is more picturesque than powerful. The mature trees at the top of the falls gives some idea of the scale.


The flow of water over the rock faces is appealing.


Larger versions of these Mokoroa photos can be viewed at:
|Zenfolio Albums| or |Committed Photography|

New Zealand has three frog species introduced from Australia in the 1800s. This along with a four native and very archaic Leiopelmid frogs make up all the amphibians we have. The frogs have not been immune to the global amphibian decline and many of these Australian frogs have disappeared from former ranges.

I found this Southern Bell Frog (originally a native from Tasmania) on my trip to the Mokoroa Stream. The effect of it sitting in the dewy grass appealed. As I didn't have a macro lens with me at the time, I used my Carl-Zeiss 16-80mm zoom with a 20mm extension tube.