For one startrail shoot on my D810 the mechanical shutter goes up and down between 600 and 1000 times. The D850 can do the same amount of images with only one actuation of the mechanical shutter, which occurs when it flips the mirror up to enter Live View mode….

Progrey recently released another holder, the G150Z, which looks similar to the G150X but there are some significant design changes compared to the old holder.

The G150Z is available to suit the Nikkor 14-24, Canon TS-E17, Zeiss 15mm, Tamron 15-30....

Comparing the Lee and Progrey 0.9 soft grads, the Progrey has a slightly softer transition than the Lee. Color balance looks slightly different when holding them side by side, the lee has a slight purplish tinge when held next to the progrey.

Here's my ten favorite shots for the year so far (I still have a week to go so it might change). I didn't do a lot of shooting, and what I did do was mainly landscapes & seascapes. Nine of them were from a 2 week trip around Tasmania.

I've been using a modified Lee SW150 filter holder on my Nikkor 14-24, recently I've been having some issues with the threads jumping when screwing the rings onto my lens. I wasn't happy with the response from Lee, and didn't want to buy another SW150 as there are some serious design flaws with the Lee system...

There's nothing worse than shooting for 10 hours and later discovering that the last 8 hours of shots are unuseable because dew has formed on the lens element. There are a number of ways to prevent/reduce dew formation but first we'll look at how to determine if dew formation will be a factor given the current weather conditions...

I've done a post on this before but my loadout has changed quite a bit since then. Recently I've been concentrating more on landscapes than seascapes, and there's a lot more effort involved in getting to the locations, and some different gear required.

I've just finished packing my gear...

This post will cover my planning process for a shoot, in particular the various software I use to do so. I run all these apps/websites on my iPad, which I carry with me when scouting and shooting.

I came across this old pier a while back in Port Phillip Bay, while scouting the location I decide...

This tutorial will cover the contrast masking technique I use to blend a foreground image with a stacked startrail image. It can also be used on a single image to isolate the sky from the foreground for the purpose of applying selective processing, and can be used to replace skies or other elements in an image...

I never got around to doing one of these posts for 2013, better late than never.

Tripods and saltwater are a bad combination. Here is a breakdown of the cleaning process I use whenever my tripod has been in the ocean.  The tripod is a Gitzo 3532s, but the basic principle is the same for all tripods.

Make sure you have everything you need...

A while back I upgraded from the D7000, 10-24 and Lee 100mm filter system to the D800E, 14-24 and the Lee SW150 filter system. While the camera and lens were big upgrades, the SW150 filter system was a step backwards from the standard Lee system in a  few areas...

There are a number of different ways to stack images in Photoshop CS6, I've found this method to be the fastest and it uses the least amount of PC resources.

The number of images you select at a time will be determined by the amount of available ram you have in your PC...

The bag is an F-Stop Loka with the extra large ICU (internal camera unit). The F-Stop website doesn't list the extra large ICU as an option for the Loka but it does fit, although there's not a lot of space left in the top compartment. I also have the large ICU, the dividers in the picture are from both the large and extra large ICUs...