Hong Kong Harbour

Victoria Harbour is the harbour that divides Hong Kong island from Kowloon, the mainland side, and due to its unique formation is one of the key advantages for making Hong Kong a successful trading centre when everything depended on trading ships.

 

Hong Kong Street Scenes

Some street scenery from Hong Kong, November 2014.

Queen's Road, Central, Hong Kong

Wan Chai, Hong Kong

The Tunnel

The Pound Bend Tunnel is a man-made tunnel to divert the Yarra River in the Warrandyte State Park area. It was originally dug in 1870 for diverting the Yarra River, such that alluvial gold in a 5 km long section of river bed could be mined. 

Spring Kangaroo Pt II

More photos of the kangaroo spotted in the wild.

Spring Kangaroo

 Kangaroo with their joeys found in the wild.

Grey Melbourne Skyline

Melbourne city as seen from the Shrine of Remembrance.

The State Library of Victoria

The State Library of Victoria is the central library of the state, located in Melbourne. The library holds over 2 million books and 16,000 serials, including the diaries of the city's founders, John Batman and John Pascoe Fawkner, and the folios of Captain James Cook, and also houses the original armour of Ned Kelly.

The landmark Domed Reading Room opened in 1913. The octagonal space was designed to hold over a million books and up to 500 readers. It is 34.75 m in both diameter and height, and its oculus is nearly 5 m wide. The dome was the largest of its type in the world on completion.

Super Camera Shootout - Battle of the 35mm

This is a comparison of three very different camera packages, each delivering a high quality 35mm equivalent field of view.

Our first contender is the Nikon D600, equipped with the Sigma ART 35mm F/1.4. The D600 is Nikon's first affordable full-frame DSLR, with a 24 megapixel sensor and relatively small body for a full frame camera. The Sigma ART 35mm is widely acknowledged as an excellent lens, rated above both Nikon and Canon equivalents.

Our second contender is the Sony A7 with Sony Zeiss 35mm F/2.8. This is the smallest full-frame autofocus interchangeable lens camera package you can get with 35mm equivalent view. Also a high quality 24 megapixel sensor and a body so small that you can't believe it's full frame. The Zeiss has also been very well received and reviewed, with many praising it for sharpness, but also complaining about lack of large aperture.

The last is a bit older, which is the Sony NEX-7 equipped with the Sony Zeiss 24mm F/1.8. This still comes in lighter weight and smaller than the Sony A7 package, but of course it is only APS-C crop frame. The Zeiss lens has also been well reviewed, with the common complaint just being it is too expensive for what it is. A 24mm F/1.8 makes it pretty much equivalent to a 35mm F/2.8 in terms of depth-of-field equivalence.

Camera Comparison - Nikon D600, Sony A7, Sony NEX-7

General Sharpness

The test scene was shot from a tripod, under relatively consistent lighting conditions, and the following parameters:

• All 24 megapixel sensors.
• 35mm equivalent field of view prime lenses.
• ISO 100, for best possible quality.
• Aperture priority mode, set to F/2.8.
• Shutter speed selected by the camera's own metering.
• Autofocus using live-view, targeting the camera test chart centre.

Here are the individual shots, and will be followed with 100% crop comparisons.

Nikon D600 with Sigma ART 35mm - General Scene

Sony A7 with Zeiss 35mm - General Scene

Sony NEX-7 with Zeiss 24mm - General Scene

The first 100% crop comparison focuses into the camera test chart. Each camera shows a bit of colour artefacting with the very dense lines on the page. The Sony NEX-7 is clearly inferior to the other two, with the image being softer.

Between the Sony A7 and Nikon D600, I'd slightly favour the A7, as it seems the lines and the texture of the paper are more crisp in the Sony A7 crop.

The colour artefacts are less wide-spread on the A7, but the area around the 6 mark is very obvious, whereas the D600 has artefacts that are less distracting. The NEX-7 with its general softness hides most of the colour issues.

100% Crop Comparison - Camera Test Chart Scene

The second comparison scene is also a 100% crop, focused on the Lego Simpsons car. This scene produces an obvious winner, with the Nikon D600 showing a much more sharp and crisp image. The Sony A7 and NEX-7 come in second and third respectively, again showing obvious performance differences.

With this level of difference between the D600 and A7, I'd suspect there may have been some minor differences in the focus.

100% Crop Comparison - Lego Simpsons Car

Dynamic Range

One other significant performance indicator that is important for me, is the dynamic range of the camera sensors. In previous comparisons, I had found the D600 to have a clear performance improvement over the NEX-7, probably attributed to the fact that the full frame sensor simply has more area to work with. This raises the question whether the A7, also with a full frame 24 megapixel sensor, could be better.

The follow comparison was done with the following parameters:

• Lights off
• Wii U Gamepad with screen on
• Manual exposure settings, ISO 100, F/2.8, shutter speed 0.5 seconds.
• Lightroom post-processing with +100 Shadow Recovery, -50 Highlight Recovery, + 1.0 exposure.

Nikon D600 - Dark Dynamic Exposure Test

Sony A7 - Dark Dynamic Exposure Test

Sony NEX-7 - Dark Dynamic Exposure Test

The results from this test first confirm that the NEX-7 is at a disadvantage, with much higher noise in the shadow areas, serious colour shift towards green, and unable to recover the text displayed on the Wii U gamepad.

The Nikon D600 still manages to defeat the Sony A7, with better controlled noise around the shadow areas. Recovery of the blown highlights on the Wii U gamepad seem equal, although slightly sharper on the D600.

For reference, this is what the scene looked like before any post-processing:

Dark Dynamic Exposure Test, as shot without post-processing

Conclusions

Cameras are getting better every day, and the Sony A7 was a significant breakthrough in getting a full frame interchangeable camera into such a small package. The performance champion in this comparison is still the Nikon D600, if size is no issue. Also keep in mind that the D600 itself is still a pretty small package for a full frame DSLR.

For my own shooting preferences, I have found that the Sony A7 satisfies my photographic needs 90% of the time, and that's what I'm carrying most often.

Size comparison of the Nikon D600, Sony A7, and Sony NEX-7

Mushrooms

McLaren Falls Park, Tauranga, New Zealand.

Light in the Forest

Rays of sunlight filtering through the trees. McLaren Falls Park, New Zealand.

Yellow Autumn

Row of trees in the autumn season, in McLaren Falls Park, New Zealand.

Sunset

HDR photograph during the late afternoon at the corner of Khyber Pass Road and Broadway in Newmarket, Auckland, New Zealand.

Sunset

Open Safari

Animals in the open range safari at Werribee Open Range Zoo, including the antelope, giraffe, and camels.

Hungry Hungry Hippos

The hippopotamus, from the ancient Greek for "river horse", is a large, mostly herbivorous mammal in sub-Saharan Africa. It is one of the largest land mammals.

We have a baby hippo in the water looking for its mother.

Big Cats

Cheetahs formerly ranged in Asia, Western Iran and throughout Africa except for the true desert areas. The Cheetah can now be found in the eastern and southern regions of Africa. Their main habitats are open country, from semi-desert to dry savannah, including light woodland. The Cheetah is the fastest land mammal on Earth, reaching speeds up to 112km/hour, although the average speed of a chase is around 64km/hour.

Lions are the only cats to live in a large family group, called a pride. A pride can be as large as 30–40 members, mostly related females, their cubs and a small number of resident males. Dominating the pride is a single male, but more often a coalition of males. Competition among males to take over a pride is intense, and on average, the length of time in control of a pride is 2–3 years.

Monkeys and Meerkats

Vervet monkeys are found in a number of areas around Africa. They are mostly vegetarian monkeys, and typically have black faces and grey body hair color. They range in size from about 50 cm for males to about 40 cm for females. Meerkats are a small mammal belonging to the mongoose family, and found in parts of the Kalahari Desert in Botswana, the Namib Desert in Namibia and southwestern Angola, and in South Africa. 

Vervet Monkey

Vervet Monkey

Meerkat

Total Eclipse of the Moon

A total lunar eclipse was observed across Australia tonight. A total lunar eclipse occurs when the earth sits perfectly between the sun and the moon, with its shadow blocking the majority of the light from reaching the moon. 

This creates a "blood moon", with the moon appearing in a dark red colour, and is caused by the scattering of light around earth's atmosphere and reflecting off the moon. This red colour is significantly dimmer than the usual white moon.

A total lunar eclipse was last observed in December 2011, and the event of 15th April 2014 is actually the first of a series of four, known as a tetrad. The remaining lunar eclipses will occur in October 2014, April 2015, and September 2015.

The earlier photos show when the sky hasn't completely darkened yet, but that is when the total eclipse occurred and the moon is fully red. The later photos show a partial eclipse, where part of the moon is fully illuminated by the sun, but a shadowy red part remains.