A Long Weekend

And it has been very long…. I had been hoping to blog about my time at Flamescon, but alas sickness intervened. I’ll spare you the gory details on what I had, but suffice to say… there was an unpleasant few days.

 

I did manage to pop out and see how the guys were getting on at Flamescon on Sunday and check out some of the releases. Lee and Steve had put together some amazing dioramas, but unfortunately I didn't even think to take my camera to grab a couple of photos. 

 

BF had some of their new plastic units on display and they do look very nice. May have to get some. About time BF.

 

Sounds like it was a pretty good tournament, so I’m disappointed to have had to withdraw.

 

Today is Labour Day (a public holiday) here in NZ and, as I was feeling more alive, I needed to get out and about for a bit. Rob agreed to head out with me and we popped down to the waterfront to see the Tall Ships departing and take a few pics - http://www.tallshipfestival2013.com/auckland.html

 

The longest lens I have is a 250mm and the ships were just a little too far away for some good clear photos, but it was nice to just be out in some sun, rain and then more sun :)

 

So I set the camera to Tv 1/250, Iso 400 and just clicked away. Again, I seem to struggle with getting the right lighting in overcast conditions. I adjusted levels in Photoshop in a few, but I think it has brought out too much blue. Here are a few of the shots anyway:

                               

Didn't look like there was enough rum swilling, yo ho ho's and other general pirate behaviour going on on-board any of the ships. Imagine if one of them had been decked out as an old school pirate ship! :)

Tried turning one into black & white, but need to frame it better I think. A sort of faded look around the edges would work well. Must see Rob for some more software….. :)

A Coast Guard spotter plane was flying around…. so off course I had to take a pic or two :)

A Summer’s Dust and then some…

It’s Sunday again which means gaming day :) And a pretty good day it was too with the sun out.

The guys had rocked out a game of Infinity before I arrived and since there was a couple of us there, we were able to get a couple of games going. Garth & Phil played a game of Infinity while Rob and I had another crack at Dust Warfare.

Based on a suggestion from OldHat on the Battlefront forums, we tried 1’s & 6’s as successes rather than 5+. Statistically no different, but more aligned with the Dust Tactics dice. It’s always nice having a roll of 1 being a success :)

I decided to go a little different and fielded this list (seems I could export the list to a txt format after updating my notebook to Win8.1….):

Sturmgrenadiere Platoon
Kommandotrupp
Battle Grenadiers
Heavy Recon Grenadiers
Beobachter Team
(All with grenades)
Laser-Jagdgrenadiere
Laser Grenadiers
(Both with High Visibility Lasers)
Lothar
Heinrich
Improved Command

Have no idea what Rob took, other than he had his big AA tank :)

We played a scenario again. End result was:
Objective = Break The Line
Deployment = Close Engagement
Conditions = Off Target Shelling

We didn’t have a lot of terrain for this game since the tablecloth was desert coloured… we set-up a ruined SSU lab in the middle of the desert. Here’s the set-up:

Rob advances his walker straight down the middle towards my laser grenadiers. I look forward to going toe to toe with against his walker with them… until I re-read their stats that is…. Only the medium laser could hurt the walker sine it was type 4! Time to hide I think….

In my turn, the Laser-Jagdgrenadiere fire off their supercharged shot only to have it fizzle out. I could be in trouble here with little other heavy duty AT around to deal with the Walker…. let alone the SSU tank! Especially since the Laser-Jagdgrenadiere couldn’t hit anything all game.
 

Rounding the corner of the building, the SSU walker found a more interesting target and makes short work of poor little Heinrich instead of the laser grenadiers. The following couple of turns sees the SSU walker frying most of the laser grenadiers….

 

As for the SSU tank… I basically decided to ignore it… even though it has a target rich environment. Each turn it tries to deal with my infantry units and certainly puts some hurt on them with most units taking casualties. I don’t have many pic’s showing it, but Lothar and the heavy recon grenadiers return the pain each turn decimating the SSU infantry units…

 
As the game draws to a close… the remaining laser grenadier has the last laugh and destroys the SSU walker….



The final result is 2 points to me with 2 units in Rob’s deployment zone. The game was brutally short, but neither of us had really put much thought into army lists or spending off scenario points. I had been a bit worried about a lack of AT to deal with the SSU armour, but focused on dealing with the SSU infantry and the objectives instead. Seemed to work. Some decent shooting from that SSU tank could have made that hard though…

After a short break… we decided to rock out a game of X-Wing since we hadn’t played it for a while and there were some new toys…. I was keen to try out my Tie Bomber and Lamda Shuttle :)

The downside was soooo much choice! On everything…. ships, pilots and upgrades!! I took the Lamda Shuttle (Captain Yorr), Tie Bomber (Captain Jonus) and 2 Tie Interceptors (Pilot level 1 & 3). I gave the Tie Bomber a proton bomb, but didn’t have the points to really make use of all it’s hard points. The Lamda shuttle had a Rebel Captive, Anti-Pursuit Lasers and Sensor Jammers (hadn’t put much thought into the selection, but shuttle load-out was pretty good in review at the end of the game). Rob took 2 X-Wings and tried out his YT-1300.

Our deployment over a fantastic looking Ice Planet gaming mat….

 

The Imperial force heads straight for the YT-1300…. hoping they won’t notice (maybe someone has the right codes?)

Not much happens in the first few turns with most of the Imperial ships taking some damage along with the YT-1300. I think I dropped the Proton bomb too early…. didn’t do much, but at least it negated an X-Wings shields to put damage directly on the hull.

As the game continued… the Interceptors were soon dealt with and I thought the writing was on the wall until this:

The X-Wing just skirts the edge of the universe….but the YT-1300 flies too close to the edge removing it from the game! :) Then…..

…..an X-Wing flies too close to the Shuttle crashing into it a few times. The anti-pursuit lasers make short work of the X-Wing over the few turns it collides (it already had some damage from previous shooting). But, alas, the shuttle is soon destroyed though leaving the Tie Bomber facing off against the remaining X-Wing…… but the Tie Bomber gets onto his tail…..

…..and still can’t finish of the X-Wing….. After a few turns of chicken… the Tie Bomber’s hull points prove the deciding factor as it finally knocks off the X-Wing (with 1 hull point left on the Bomber). A pretty close game!

 

That ended gaming for the day. Photos have turned out well. I had found the menu selection to turn down the flash power, so used quite a low power of flash for all these pic’s. As for the force build, I’d stick with the Shuttle load-out – all 3 worked well and were quite annoying for Rob, especially the rebel captive (attacking rebel ship takes a stress token) and sensor jammers (shuttle can effectively negate a hit – handy with basically no agility).

SInce it was such a nice day. I decided to detour past Ardmore Airport on the way home. The Harvards and the MX-2 stunt plane had been out earlier in the day (our gaming venue is close to the airport), so I was curious to see if anything else interesting was flying. I also wanted to try tracking some moving subjects again as I think I take my finger of the button when I stop taking photos. After some advice from Rob previously… it may be better to keep the button half pressed. So, this is what I tried out :). Wasn’t really much of interest flying (I was too slow to get the camera out as the Tiger Moth took off and flew directly overhead!), but I grabbed a few shots anyway…

 

Not sure on the tracking…. time will tell. Will let you know how I get on after the next air show that I attend :) . Ciao.

Sunday Photography Lessons

The best way to learn about photography is to just head out, try different settings and push the button. So, that’s what I did today. Rob agreed to head out with me to do some shooting and impart some advice on what settings to try. I think this is going to turn into a loooong post! :)

We’d been keeping an eye on the weather all week as it had been pretty changeable with fine spells then heavy showers all week (typical Auckland weather really!). The weather forecast for today was good and with the high winds overnight…. we believed the forecast,…. Based on that, we decided to head out to Miranda to catch the sunrise and then see what migratory birds were around at the sea and shore bird sanctuary. After taking photos of the sunset at Muriwai, I’ve been keen to try photographing a sunrise. As it turned out…. we should have known better about trusting the weather forecast…!!!

But anyway, after getting up at 4:30am (I’d forgotten that hour existed), we met up and headed off to Miranda to meet the sunrise at 6:40am. The wind was still blowing pretty strong (and did for most of the morning we were there), so I’d hoped it would clear any cloud away. Unfortunately some cloud seemed stuck on the Coromandel peninsular and refused to budge meaning the sunrise was pretty average. Still, I think I managed some nice shots…

 

One of the things I’d wanted to try and adjusting the white balance to aim for some warmer colours. Previously I’d just left AWB set on auto, but changed it to shade for a number of shots to bring out more yellow/orange therefore making the shot look warmer. Definitely prefer the shots using AWB on Shade.

 

At that time in the morning (and with the weather), there wasn’t a lot of wildlife around. But… as the sun came up things started to stir. Pied Stilts where the first up and headed out for breakfast.
With the light still low, I thought I’d try a few photos with the Stilts flying past and being silhouetted against the low sun….

 

 

They never really came close enough for me to be able to use my 55mm to 250mm lens, so Rob let me have a go with his 400mm lens. Definitely took a bit to get used (and not just the weight of it!) as it was great for the close-ups, but much harder to find the subject and track it… Overall, the low light, wind and constant showers passing through made photography difficult, but all good fun. Here’s some of the better results:

 

 

And there was certainly a few Pied Stilts around….

 

 

 

I’d hoped to also try getting some good reflections of the birds in the water, but it was low tide and too windy. I did get one good one though…. breakfast is served!

 

And the other wildlife that joined us later….

White-faced Heron

The Heron were pretty wary and weren't keen on us getting even remotely close.

 

Geese

 

And these little fulla’s…. poor guys were flapping their wings against the wind and going nowhere or just straight up before darting down and around the grass. Felt a bit sorry for them :)

 

One bird I have been keen to photograph is a Hawk, but they tend to be quite elusive and quick to escape when spotted. It’s almost like they don’t want their picture taken!?! There was one around coast, but it disappeared quick. On the way to the next stop, we spotted another, but were too slow to react. Third times a charm though…. helped by the fact I was ready with keeping the camera ready to go on my lap :) Not the best focused photos, but still….. I’m happy:

 

 

Seemed it was too busy having a bit of biff with a Magpie to notice us…

 

Last stop was Hunua falls. With heavy showers over the last day or so…. the falls were pretty cool to see......

 

 

Whoever came up with idea of the setting up the picture frame deserves a pat on the back:

Rob suggested I lower the shutter speed to give the water the look of movement…. makes quite a bit of difference:

Whilst we were at Hunua, the local Corvette club popped in… here’s some of the nicer ones. Boys and their toys…

 

Finally…. I had another go at some panoramic sets during the day and was actually pretty happy with the results. I used Photostitch to merge them. Unfortunately you can make out some of the merging of the photos in the sunrise ones as it’s hard to merge them with the light changing quickly. Still… much easier than trying to do it on Photoshop. Thanks Photostitch! :)

 

(The first picture is this post is also a panoramic set.)

After all that it was home time as I was in serious need of a nana nap. A nap and a good workout at the gym brought me back to life this evening ready to look through my photos and update here :)

Total photo count – 756….. still definitely only a beginner.

All in all, not the best day for photography…. could have stayed in bed! But… a good oppourtunity to play around and learn what some of the settings will do before the really good weather comes along. Overall, I’m happy with the results. Next time I’d probably try and check the best time/time of season to be at the sanctuary to see more wildlife! 

Hope you enjoyed :)