This is an article written for the Canberra U3A Photography Group newsletter in June 2022.
I've published it here to add an appropriate number of photos.
Bali, Photography and Equipment
In early May we visited our family in Bali, our daughter Cara, her husband Greg and our two gorgeous grand daughters Safia and Eloise. Greg has built/managed two eco villages and is now in the process of building individual houses. This was our fifth visit, Cara and Greg have resided in Ubud, an artistic town in the higher midlands close to Greg's work and now his work has taken them to the coast in Canggu, about 1.5 hours from Denpassar Airport.
The holiday was varied and rich in experience, locals and airport staff welcomed us back with typically friendly smiling faces. It was lovely to be there and experiencing again the soul of a place we have loved for many years. Overseas trips are great for photographic pursuits in fact I travel for that, and our cultural/ epicurean adventures. So, what equipment to take?
I decided to travel light, while recognising that landscape, portrait, sports and macro needed to be covered. I have previously taken Canon, but I find that my D80 and lenses are too bulky now.
I mulled over taking the Olympus EM5 mk 2 with the excellent 12-40 pro and the very capable 75-300, plus the mighty Oly 60mm macro, or the Fuji XT30.
This time I chose the Fuji which I bought in December 2020. The XT30 uses the same 26mp sensor as the more expensive XT3 and XT4 and is far more wallet friendly, as is the XC50-230 mk11 zoom (75-345 equiv.) with OIS which provides 3.5 stops and can produce good macro images. I also took the XF18-55 OIS for general purpose shots, and the Oppo phone which has a pretty good camera. Our daughter Cara had booked a boat to take us 40 minutes off the North West coast to Menjangan Island, adjacent to the mysterious imposing volcanos of Java, to snorkle the reefs. Did she have an underwater camera? Yes the renowned Olympus TG6, and I could borrow it. Perfect!
First morning an early Bali coffee at Echo Beach with the daughter to view surfboard riders.
I noticed at least six photographers, many with serious looking equipment, tripods and big bazooka lenses but I thought that a combination of OIS and a fast speed should suffice, it was a sunny day.
The surf was running at about 2-3 metres breaking around 150/200 metres off shore. So, my XC50-230 zoom should do it. I've been encouraged by bird shots, the SOOC 'straight out of the camera' JPEGS large/fine have been very good. So, snap a couple, magnify them in the LCD, looking good. I set the speed at 1000, and let the camera determine ISO and the aperture. Checking the data later, the aperture varied between 6.4 and 6.7, and the ISO between 160 and 320, but around 200 for most. My focal length was between 120 and the max 230 (350 equivalent), most were close to the maximum due to the distance.
I prefer to take single shots using a small focus point. The Fuji has three convenient dials on top, retro style, one of which provides rapid burst continuous at two speeds as well as various other functions including video, the other dials are shutter speed and exposure compensation. I remember meeting an American couple in the ANBG and he'd spied a Tawny Frogmouth sitting stationary in a tree hole up above. He blasted it with machine gun fire from his camera, quite loud, and he was obviously proud of it. I drily commented 'well, there'd have to be a good one somewhere in that lot...' We left on amiable terms, my irony flew up in the tree and the Frogmouth had a chuckle.
Continuous shooting can be advantageous, particularly in sports' photography but I didn't use it with the surfing. However I did come away with almost all successful images, so it was an excellent result. On a previous trip I'd used my Olympus with the 75-300 (150-600mm equivalent) and also had many successful images but the Fuji was better – I'd had to denoise a couple of the RAW Oly images, not so the Fuji JPEGs. Also, Fuji's 26MP allows you to drill in and maintain excellent definition, as can be seen above. There's no imperative to use RAW files for standard goals, although the camera provides both. I did tweak images slightly in post processing. I use ON1, check the effect separately of each of the two 'auto' buttons and adjust if needed, back to manual adjustment perhaps, plus add a bit of 'structure' and 'haze' which are ON1's equivalent of Adobe's 'Clarity and 'Vibrance'.
This is the first of a two part article. Next month we check out the colourful reefs and fish at Menjangan Island, the trip over the mountains, the Covid project of the Penestanan villagers,
and son-in-law Greg's village creations.
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