This week’s Blog is a walk-through of the shots this week in the Australian Botanical Gardens, Mount Annan, plus my first outings with my new toy. A Gimbal head for the tripod.

Been waiting a few weeks for this one to come in and it finally came in last week so managed to take it out two days this weekend, the first three shots are the unboxing of my new toy. 

The first day out I had a few issues with the camera and Lens not talking not each other, Had a few issue with this the last few weeks but only once or so a day, Saturday was a constant issue having to turn the camera off drop the battery out and restart, not a fun time and missed a few shots, on a whole Saturday wasn't the best days shooting.

The Next few shots not the best were of a wattle bird as it darted across the grass areas near the main lake, but the Gimbal head was smooth and kept the camera steady, the shots are pretty heavily cropped in, but the first signs of a good thing, a lot easier than the ball head and steadier than hand holding. 

Sunday was a better day and after taking he lens off the camera trying it on the other body and shaping lenses around trying to see if it was lens issue or Camera issue I put it back on the right body and didn't have problem all day so a better day all round. 

First shot for the day was a Mushroom, little messy in the foreground so not the cleanest of shots, but interesting enough, I do like the reddy brown cap and the cream stem.

I wanted to try out the Gimbal head so I headed down to the lake to see what was flying about and quite a bit actually so plenty of birds in flight shots, some better than others and a few pretty heavily cropped in, but no trouble tracking the birds as they flew so that was a good thing, Some of these are from the same flight sequence so you can see the tracking and how it kept up, especially with the white Intermediate Egret (Andea intermedia) as it landed in the Sheoaks on the Island. Some of the Magpie shots aren’t the best as it was flying straight towards me s not the best for the camera to track thought still I seemed to do a reasonable job, Though none of these shots are that great, But a good start to the first time out with the new tripod head, bit more practice and should be fine, but certainly from what I've seen happy with this one. 

After that I decided to see what I could find in Mushrooms and while looking for them I found a small group of Superb Fairy-wrens (Malurus cyaneus) and managed this one, again not the happy with it but not that often I get a clean shot of the males. The Females are usually a lot less shy.

From there I found a few mushrooms and for once they were in one of the elevated gardens so they were taken with the camera on the ground of the elevated garden bed and I could stand up to take the shots for this series which makes a change for mushroom shots. So I took a few here. Also had a play with a few of them in Topaz again so a few the same shots here some before Topaz others after.  Tried one here a little less heavy handed which turned out OK.

While shooting the mushrooms I notices a few Spotted Doves (Streptopelia chinensis) laying around on the woodchips. 

So that’s it for this week’s shots, certainly happy with the Gimbal head so far, the Shots aren't the best but that will come but for not managing to track the birds keep them in the shot, so the rest is just practice. which is always fun. So all good. A few decent mushroom shots again this week as well, and still getting the hand with Topaz Impressions as well. 

So that wraps up this week’s blog, thanks for dropping by. Be back next week with more. 

Glenn.