Coffs Harbour Escape

 

Well, It's been a month and a half since I posted and here we are in the throws of another lockdown.   The whole of New South Wales is in lockdown due to Covid Delta ripping through Sydney and now the regional areas, mainly thanks to those who believe the whole virus to be a hoax or, those who have no respect for the community they live in and blatantly travelling out of area taking the Delta with them.

But, there was a time before lockdown.  A time when we were lucky enough to fit in a few nights at Coffs Harbour in early July for a well earned getaway just before the lockdown came in!  

And, of course, I took my camera with me!

Our daughter Rhiannan also had some time off work and came with us.

It was great to roam around and, except for one day, the weather was very kind to us!  We ate out or got takeaway.  Went for drives through the countryside to visit some of the smaller satellite towns and visited the local attractions.  A lovely relaxing time before returning to the rigours of working life and the eventual lockdown that we are now in.

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Looking west from our Penthouse AirBNB Unit.  Wonderful to sit on the balcony having
a breakfast coffee.

Whenever I am in Coffs Harbour, I love to check out the Marina area, especially the fishing boats.

 Top and Below.  I love this massive jetty!  It's great to have a wander on the boardwalk and then go

 down onto the beach and get the views from underneath.  The colour and texture of the wood

      plus the play of light and shadow from the structure look great.

        We went for a visit to the Butterfly Farm at Bonville.  So many Butterflies drifting about 

         going from flower to flower.  Got some lovely shots as you can see. 

        Although the Canon EF-S 18-135mm has done a good job at f3.5, visiting here and taking

        these photos has given me thoughts about getting a dedicated Macro Lens that will open up a

        whole other area of photography for me to explore!

   We took day trips to a couple of small satellite towns around Coffs Harbour.   Dorrigo and 

    Bellingen.  It was bloody cold and drizzly up at Dorrigo on this particular day.  We visited the 

    Dorrigo Rainforest Centre and walked out onto the Lookout Skywalk to get a full view of the 

       surrounding area.  We didn't stay long on the Skywalk as the cold wind was blowing right through us!

     We did get out and go for a wander around Bellingen where I was able to get in a few Street Photos!

Another town we visited was Woolgoolga!  It is this lovely seaside town north of Coffs Harbour.

Woolgoolga is a derivative of the Aboriginal word 'Weelgoolga' - meaning 'bush plum' and

describes the Lilly Pilly trees that grew there.  The locals simply refer to it as 'Woopi'.  It is

an easy going place with a good beach and walk up to a grassy headland where you can get 

views up and down the coast.  Well worth stopping for a Coffee too!

Fuji NPS 160 Medium Format Film - Bronica ETRSi

 

I have a range of expired films in the freezer.  The majority are 35mm but thankfully I also have some Medium Format rolls in there as well.  All are Fuji films and some Kmart brand Focal.  The Medium Format films I have left are Fuji; NPH 400, NPS 160, Velvia 100, and a dozen Provia 100F.  For the most part I have been using the negative films; the slide film is so expensive to develop and scan because I have to send it away to Sydney and postage doubles the cost.

This is the first roll of Fuji NPS 160 that I have used out of the collection.  In its day it was billed as a daylight film to be used for portrait and weddings in daylight or under electronic flash, low contrast and low saturation.  Because it is primarily a professional portrait film (in its day!) it was also said to have an extremely low grain.

I didn't use the rule of thumb for shooting expired negative film which is to drop the exposure value by 1 stop for every 10 years of expiration.  The film has been frozen for ages and I have always shot my expired film at box speed.  It has never caused me any problems and it has been the same for this roll.

I guess this film is 16 years or so past expiry, which is why it doesn't appear to have that 'extremely low grain' that it was originally billed as having.  It does have the low contrast feel to it and I had to tweak contrast slightly in Lightroom to get a pleasing (to me!) look.  The saturation also, does not appear to me to be 'low saturation'.  The colour in the majority of the photos is fine although, the photos that were taken on the brightest day, have a slight yellowing of the colour I think.

The photos taken on Lake Macquarie at Valentine were taken using a Cokin Circular Polariser filter.  This has given those photos a much bluer sky than the others.  I have only had that filter for a short while and I am looking forward to getting out and about with it more often.

I love shooting with the Bronica ETRSi and the Zenzanon Eii 75mm f2.8 lens is so sharp!

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The motorcycles were lined up on the main street of East Gresford, a small town in

the Hunter Valley.  Must have been lunch time at the local pub for the group.  It

was a pretty overcast day with spots of Sun shining through at times

These two were taken at Soldiers Point on the Karuah River.  Bright sunny day with a little

scattered cloud.  Not sure what is happening with the colour of the green moss on the rocks in 

the photo above while the photo below shows the signature low saturation of the film.

Taken at Tocal in the Hunter Valley on the same day trip as the Motor Cycles above.  Virtually

full sun for this photo.  The saturation for this photo has a slight yellow tinge the same

as the rocks in the photo above; the grass looked a lot greener in real life.

The three photos above are of this quaint church 'St Marys on Allyn' at Allynbrook in the 

Hunter Valley of New South Wales.  The day had turned darker by the time I

got here and I took the exposure reading from the Church walls.

  By the time I got home it was torrential rain!

For these last three, taken Valentine on Lake Macquarie, I used a Circular Polariser I had just 

picked up for my Cokin system.  It has certainly brought out the blues in the colour!

Hunter Valley Rural Safari

 

Well it's been a while since the last post but a lot of paint has run off the brushes and rollers since last time I posted!

I did manage to get an afternoon in for a Rural Photo Safari.  Just a leisurely drive and stop off when something grabbed my eye.

I left home and went through East Maitland to Tocal, Paterson, Vacy, East Gresford and Allynbrook.  

It is such a lovely area and is sure looking green at the moment!

Stopped off on the Tocal Road to get a few shots of the Tocal Homestead.  Beautiful place with awesome looking fences of thick timber; a real rural scene!  Tocal Homestead built in 1845 is now a wedding venue and is the perfect backdrop for such a function.

From Paterson then, up to East Gresford.  As I drove through town I saw a lot of people and horse floats down at the local Showground.  Of course I went and had a look!  It was a fairly busy gathering for Team Penning; where teams of riders will separate a calf from the mob and try and coerce it into a small pen within the larger corral.  It was really great to see the skills from horses and riders and reminded me of the Campdrafts that used to be held in my town when I was a kid.

From East Gresford, I went to Allynbrook, a small rural locality on the Allyn River.  My main interest here was a Church.  St Mary on Allyn Church with cemetery alongside. The church is constructed of grey granite and was built and constructed in 1845.  A history of the church can be found here.

The weather closed in toward the end of the afternoon and, on the way home, I took the time to capture some typical farm buildings in amongst the gum trees just on the outskirts of Paterson.

I had actually taken more photos than you see here but, on first inspection of the files in Lightroom, I noted that the focus was out slightly and in some cases was very soft.  I had shot with a Tamron 18-270mm  lens.  I reviewed all of the files and noted that this affected all of the photos taken at 18mm and up to about 35-40mm.  I was very disappointed.  These are the best of a bad bunch!  More about that focus problem next post!

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Canon T50 & Focal branded Lenses

 

Always on the look out for something different, I came across this camera and lenses on Facebook Marketplace at the end of January.  The camera however, was not as interesting to me as were the lenses. They are Focal FD mount lenses which are also compatible with my Canon AE-1 Program.

The camera is a Canon T50 35mm SLR.  Released around March 1983, Canon took the functionality and the automatic working of a point and shoot camera and moulded it into an SLR body.  It's a bit clunky looking but is very simple to operate from an absolute beginners point of view.  The thing I like about this camera is that you can throw your cares to the wind and use it as a point and shoot.  It has the added benefit though, of being able to change lenses.  From prime lenses to zoom lenses, there are many FD Mount lenses that you could use with this camera that would give some excellent results.

This camera does not allow for changing the aperture setting.  The camera has a fully automated shutter with speeds of 2 seconds to 1/1000 when selecting automatic mode (point and shoot) on the lens.  Once moved out of auto mode and manually setting the aperture, the shutter has just one speed of 1/60 second (which is also the flash synch speed) so there is a good chance that the shot taken with aperture selected manually will not turn out.  

The camera came with 3 lenses; all Kmart Focal brand.  As with all its Focal branded gear, Kmart would have other companies build the product and Kmart would simply put its own brand on it.  Kmart acquired Sears in 2005 and it was known that Sears sourced their lenses through Ricoh.  Kmart also sourced from major manufacturers like Haking and Cosina.  

Haking (est. 1956) was a camera and binocular manufacturer based in Hong Kong selling cameras under the brand Halina.  In 1978, Haking bought out the US firm ANSCO and its trademark (which originally started up in about 1841 in Binghamton, New York as a daguerreotype gallery).  Long story short, in the 1950s, ANSCO was selling rebranded imports that were built by AGFA, Chinon, Ricoh and Minolta.  This rebranding was obviously continued after the takeover by Haking in 1978.

Cosina is a Japanese camera and lens manufacturer and founded in 1959 under the name Nikoh.  The company has produced cameras and equipment under its own name but is better known for making equipment for other brands such as Canon, Contax, Nikon, Revue, Olympus, Vivitar and Yashica!  I have also read that some Focal lenses are rebranded Makinon lenses.  

It's pretty confusing but the long and short of it is; I have no idea what the original brand name of these lenses would be!  

Three lenses came with the deal.  A Focal MC 28mm f2.8 prime, a Focal MC 80-200mm f4.5-5.6 zoom and, a Focal MC 28-70 f4 Macro zoom.  Unfortunately, the last lens appears to have been dropped at some stage.  It has a dent in the area around the glass and won't zoom out past 35mm.  I might look at this at a later time to see if I can do anything with it.

I Googled these lenses prior to use and was a little concerned with some of the reviews I read.  Most said that they were cheap (and let's face it; they are!) with soft focus and some went into some minute detail about chromatic aberration on the edges and this and that.  I have never let someone else's review make my own mind up though. Different lenses will give different results - embrace the differences, take note of how lenses can work to achieve a desired outcome!

The film I used for this was a Fuji Colour Superia 100.  It was expired in 2006 or thereabouts.  At the start of the roll I was shooting with the 28mm prime and then swapped over the the 80-200mm zoom.  

I am very happy with the results from the 28mm prime; some nice sharp photos.  The 80-200 zoom faired well also, although when zooming into those ships on the horizon on an overcast and hazy day, there is more grain due to the lower light I think.  Both lenses have a split focus system which I like but, I have found that sometimes, it is a little difficult to get the correct part of my  multi-focal glasses just right when focusing through the viewfinder.  

I went for a wander during my lunch breaks down to the beach and from atop the bluffs in James Fletcher Park in Newcastle to shoot these.

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28mm Prime

My fav from the roll taken with the 28mm prime.

28mm Prime

28mm Prime

28mm Prime

28mm Prime.

28mm Prime.

28mm Prime.

Zoomed in for the yacht race just off Newcastle Beach.  Very hazy and overcast day.

Nice capture with the 80-200mm zoom.

Subject is sharp here - 80-200mm zoom.

My panning shot worked!  80-200mm zoom.

80-200mm zoomed right in on the T&G spire in Watt Street.

80-200mm zoom - Terraced houses in Watt Street, Newcastle.

Looking down Watt Street and over to Stockton.  80-200mm zoom.

A hazy Nobbys in the distance.

'Straya mate!  80-200mm zoom

Post Box - 80-200mm zoom