Trip to Touwsberg

This weekend I managed to fit in a trip to Touwsberg.  We left at 4 am on Saturday and made it to the reserve by about 8 the same morning!  Unfortunately I was not able to photograph the yellow canola fields because it was still dark when we drove past them.

While while we were there we did not see many animals.  When I climbed the hill on Sunday I did see 4 Mountain Zebra but that was about all, and they were too far away for a photo. It did mean I could focus on working on some new landscapes.

I was lucky enough to get to take Dave’s D700 with.  The quality of the image coming out the D700 compared to my old D80 was chalk and cheese.  In fact you can’t even begin to compare.  This is mainly because the D700 is a full frame Nikon whereas my my D80 has a cropped sensor.

Before we left I downloaded this app onto my iPhone called PhotoPills that helps you plot and plan your shots.  It has this very handy feature called Augmented Reality, and you can view the scene you plan on shooting through the camera on your phone, and it overlays the Milky Way.As a result of this app, I was able to get this shot of the Milky Way.  It was two shots, that I stitched together in Photoshop.

We were only there I was there for only one sunset, but that did not disappoint either.  The sky was filled with some very nice clouds, and I chose an interesting tree for my focal point.  What’s fantastic about the D700 and other full frame cameras is that you can pull so much detail out of the shadows without any loss of quality, this means I could create a photo like the sunset below.