Sunday, March 1: Warm and sunny with barely a cloud

Tramping: 1.7 km

Robert’s

• GPS/Topo

I had gotten a fairly good night’s sleep and was up and about just before Robert, and we had breakfast together: Cornflakes, a couple of poached eggs on toast, and coffee. After getting the stuff together that I needed for photography, I set off for the Bridal Veil Falls for the walk and photo session #1.

The turnoff is a couple of kilometres down the road, and then a farther turnoff into the Kawhia Road led to a car park. Unfortunately the road is a dead end, otherwise I would have considered taking it to Kawhia, just to see the town again after 2009. Will have to see what alternatives there are.

At the car park there were plenty of cars and not many signs of break-ins, so I took off in crocs as it was an easy walk. The waterfall is quite high (55 m) and the track starts at the top where the water disappears over the edge. There are a total of four lookouts, two at the top, one in the middle and one at the bottom. I started taking photos at the bottom with a time lapse of about half of the falls (first without, then with the filter) and repeated at the middle lookout (where the shooting had to be portrait orientation to capture the whole image) and at the top I got a time lapse of the water disappearing and a single shot of the “No abseiling” sign, although it is strangely out of focus.

The intervalometer needs to switch off bracketing, possibly as an “else” clause where the bracketing value is set, when the continuous or single modes are needed.

Quickly back at the car I set off for the surf beach to try to get some time lapse with the sun in a favourable position. Tried the beach where the surf lifesavers are stationed with zoom, and then the rest of the beach in full. Two guys came along to take their own pictures and I demonstrated the pol filter to them.

Time for other things. I drove back to Robert’s and set the car radio clock to real time, so that I can see what time it is when driving. Downloaded the GPS tracks for the tracker and identified today’s walk in GoogleEarth. Then it was down to the i-site to get a map of central New Zealand for driving tomorrow, followed by a stop off at the closest bakery for a pie ($3.5) for lunch. Very meaty, and as I was eating it, Robert passed me and recommended said bakery.

Back here I sorted out the photos from this morning and set PPP to work on the brackets. In the meantime I downloaded Create Synchronicity to start backing up the data, and installed it. PPP seemed to need a bit longer so I decided to go to the beach for a swim. Just then Robert’s mate Bill turned up to say how much he appreciated my book and all of the walks that he had done as a young man (he has written a book on the Spiders of New Zealand – let’s see if Lynne Kelly knows about this) and I showed him a hacked camera. Then he was back outside with Robert and I was on my way to the beach.

Slightly higher waves today and even less suitable for body surfing than yesterday. Got thrown around quite a bit but it was nice just being in the water.

Decided on an early dinner and wanted to try some lamb so I headed down the road to the Harbour View Hotel which had lamb shank with mashed potatoes, beans (barely cooked) and gravy for $27, and a handle for $7. Quite tender and very filling.

Back here the backup (50 GB) still needed a little time, so I completed the day’s entry while the computer was chugging away. Robert had mentioned that the pedestrian bridge over the river was lit up at night, and I grabbed the opportunity of a reasonable sunset to try a bracketed panorama of the bridge, the setting sun, Venus, and a jetty.

Which almost didn’t succeed. Most notably the first bracket was done without the RAW images being shot. Should have been repeated. Secondly, there was some movement in a couple of the pictures, quite possibly due to the light tripod. Thirdly, the darkest image ramped up the ISO rating leading to the presence of quite a bit of noise. The solution to the latter two problems would be to use a fixed ISO for these brackets. Also it was very late, so an earlier shoot would have been better. Sunset was at exactly 20:00, with civil and nautical twilight ending at 20:27 and 20:59 respectively. The pictures were taken between 20:41 and 20:48. But for all of this – partially still the result of jetlag – the pan came out surprisingly well.