Return to Coalcliff

I arranged a mini photoshoot at one my my favourite spots this morning. This is my 3rd visit and I took arranged to meet up with two people that had never been there. The spot is Coalcliff near the Sea Cliff Bridge I posted the other day. Although a dawn shot and the weather promised 57% overcast with the chance of a shower developing, it was nothing like that and was quite a fizzer of a sunrise as there was virtually no cloud and the little there was all at the horizon.

Even so, I have been putting into good practice what I have learnt recently and extended the shooting time pre-dawn out to 60 seconds at f/6.3 and ISO200. This resulted in a much a lot less noise than my usual underexpose and push to get the details. No bracketing with this shot either.

As usual, taken with my Olympus E-P1 and Olympus M.Zuiko 9-18mm however it has been cropped a fair bit so is probably equivalent to around 12mm and it was about 1 hour before official sunrise (and about half-an-hour before "first light").

 

I always shoot RAW+Large Fine JPEG under those conditions. That image came out of RAW. The JPEGS get used when I am lazy.

 

It is already a 60 second exposure and I don't have a timer.

Also, my locking remote got claimed by the sea a couple of weeks ago so what the self-timer and pre-set shutter speeds cannot do, I cannot do.

 

It sounds too good to be true. More often than not, I want fairly long exposures to get rid of the ripples on the pool or to give the sea a misty appearance. Once the sun starts to come up, I do use HDR or more often exposure fusion. For noise control, lately I have started using Noiseware Professional which seems to do a good job without introducing artifacts.

I might give PhotoAcute a look once they get a profile for the M.Zuiko 9-18mm lens.

Cheers

Peter