The weather this week hasn’t been particularly inviting, especially as Sydney was in the middle of getting hit by a large cold front. As a result, the weather was going to turn into an unpredictable mess of cold temperatures and scattered rain. Despite this, we were celebrating the arrival of another new shiny product (not for me), that needed to be tested. As a result, an outing was in order!
It was originally planned that we would venture out to The Rocks in the city on Tuesday 7th, where it was predicted that the first half of the day would see good weather. By the time we had woken up in the morning, the forecast had turned ominous, with thick cloud rolling in from the sea, and rain merely hours from the city. If we had headed in, we would have almost certainly met the rain by coincidence.
Instead, we turned out eyes to the Auburn Botanic Gardens – a short trip from the house, almost just around the corner.
Good Morning
Still being reasonably early in the morning, the sun was out to play. Instead of venturing into the gardens, we decided to take a walk around first.
There was a garden opposite the entry, with some interesting hedge work. If you stay long enough, you’ll be greeted by some roaming peahens with some very intricate and delicate plumage. Look at those iridescent feathers!
Next to this garden feature is a gallery of sorts, but it was not open at the time we were visiting. Just opposite that was an aviary, which was open, and didn’t have any gates.
As we were spoilt for opportunities in the Edward Youde (walk-in) aviary in Hong Kong, this one wasn’t anywhere near as special, with its very narrow cage spacings. That’s not to say there aren’t photographic opportunities – you just have to shoot right on the cage with a long lens, and take a slight hit to clarity and contrast, and maybe do a little RAW cheating ;). Where are the cages? I don’t see them …
Even though the sun was out to play, the male peacocks were all hiding in the rear feeding area, hiding from the camera. A little miffed at this, we decided it was high time to head to the main attraction – the gardens themselves.
The Gardens
Normally accustomed to a $4 entry fee, it was our lucky day as there was no charge today according to the sign. This is probably because it wasn’t going to be a heavy traffic day, but normally they charge every weekend, school holiday, public holiday and during festivals unless you’re a resident of the Auburn Council area.
It’s important to note that there are requirements for commercial photography to secure a booking, special booking requirements for weddings which must be booked well in advance and restrictions on drone operation.
The front section of the gardens is designed to resemble a Japanese garden with plenty of manicured trees and rock features.
With the harsh morning sun bearing down, it’s surprising just how much dynamic range can be extracted out of the RAW images – just part of the reason why I went Nikon. The shadows on the walls were almost pitch black on the JPEGs.
The garden is assembled as a nearly ring-shaped path around a central lake, which is very very green in colour. Artificially green, I would say. But the lake itself is pretty decent in size, flanked by trees and ornamental features. Above, the Samyang 8mm f/3.5 CS fisheye is showing it’s controlled flare character – with the sun shining right into the lens.
Some of the features are quite cute – like this small and rather narrow “pier” emulation sans handrails. Lets just hope you don’t lose balance walking along this one …
Even though it was winter, and many trees had shed their leaves, some trees remained defiant.
Sunshower? No … just sprinklers. The crew were busy doing garden maintenance in the winter.
Still just the sprinklers, but probably not for long. Look at that cloud in the sky – where did my sunshine go?
A common saying is “you don’t buy a fisheye lens for its center!” and that seems to be quite true. Here, I was playing with manually focusing on the pine cone in the periphery, while rendering the background in a subtle out-of-focus effect. Maybe it would have been better wide open at f/3.5, but I wanted to see how sharp the cone could come out at f/5.6. The answer? Quite.
At this stage, we’re almost three-quarters the way around the garden path, and there seems to be small features along the way to amuse you, like a small waterfall. The coloured rock path does seem to be rather interesting, but some things seem to be in need of repair.
At this stage, we’ve come to one of the graveled areas which are probably used for wedding congregations. The greenness and stillness of the water reflect the trees very well, making this a good area for a shot.
Even the geese agree! So, I decided to get out the tripod, and stitch up a panorama. Oh hey, another goose got into it! No matter, he’s welcome!
Sadly, at this stage, I was still stuck with the wretched clock-work based time lapse head gadget which likes to bind instead of working smoothly.
Despite attempts at coaxing it, by reducing weight, and trying to balance out the camera, I just gave up and decided to make a time lapse which was “restricted” to about a 90 degree rotation – the amount the unit could do without binding. So here’s another short 4k snippet.
The Rest of the Park
Just behind the Japanese Garden is a memorial reflection pool, lined by trees, with a progeny of the lone pine standing at the end.
The water was tinted a deep blue-black colour, allowing the reflections from the surface to be easily seen. There was an ibis drinking from it earlier … anyway … it does make for an interesting effect when you pull up the exposure.
The bottom of the pool seems to coated in white crushed pebbles, but the surface is covered by random fallen leaves which cause the dark areas. The sky reflection blows out to white here, but it makes an interesting gemstone-like effect.
There was even a rose garden, although being winter, they had been pruned back with very few growths.
Along the side of the park, there is a natural area with quite a large duck population. They get quite chatty, honking and quacking away. This one was just chilling on the rocks, missing out on the swim across the billabong. Oh, and is that Eminem in the background?
Still not fazed, as the straggler in the group rushes to try and catch the group. Maybe there’s some food involved.
The duck-equivalent of fishing? Maybe.
The Shiny
I suppose some may have noticed the number of shots taken with my Samyang 8mm f/3.5 CS fisheye lens. Well, that was sort of on purpose, in order to provide some comparison baselines.
The new shiny under test was the Samyang AE 8mm f/3.5 CS II fisheye lens, which improves over the original CS in several noteworthy ways:
- It has a removable hood for use on full frame cameras for the widest field of view (circular image).
- It has CPU contacts on the rear of the lens which allows the camera to detect the presence of the lens, which enables exposure metering, and hence the lens to be used in all modes other than Manual (the CS will cause a “Lens not attached” error).
It still is a manual focus lens, so you must remember to read the scale and dial the ring around. On the whole, its optical performance seemed to be identical to the CS, which itself was highly commendable. The trade-off with the removable hood is a slightly larger hood on the front, but it does have its advantage as it prevents accidental “fingers in shot” situations.
As a bonus, it seems to have peacock attracting features as standard – the prolonged display made by this peacock lasted over three minutes, and we had hypothesized that seeing his own reflection in the lens may have contributed to the persistence of this bird. Close range manual focus, however, is still tricky.
The Peacocks (and Peahens)
These beautiful and intriguing birds were such a big part of our day that they deserved their own section. In the gardens, they are relatively abundant and are not actually enclosed as such. From time to time, some adventurous individuals roam the park and even cross the road (as evidenced by the shot in the morning). Some can be rather shy, and listening out for noises in the bush might help you spot one …
This one was scratching around just near the picnic area to the side of the reflection pool.
Others can be found just hiding near the front of the gardens, but just outside the fence of the animal sanctuary they have there. There were quite a few males there, in the scrub, along with an almost even number of females. Maybe there’s something going on there …
She doesn’t look particularly impressed … but the tufts on her crown are so delicate.
There was one … very amazing display … made by one very persistent peacock.
Standing in place, he slowly rotated around in circles with his feathers fully on display. Considering the size of the arrangement, it seems rather fascinating that it can be self supporting and opened and retracted almost at will.
A myriad of eyes, with golden-green coloured fronds contrast quite markedly with the aqua blue of the body.
He’s starting to be wary of the photographers. Maybe he just likes the attention and shutter noise?
Get my good side please!
As the colours are formed through iridescence, up-close, it almost looks like a hologram.
An unfortunate thing about the sanctuary area near the front of the park, is that the area is boardwalked and handrailed, so it is difficult to get any shots from any angle that’s not looking down towards their head. That’s not to say that it wasn’t possible to get good shots of their head!
It was at this stage that our day had come to an end – the skies greyed up quite significantly and the light started to fall. After a few minutes, the skies opened and began to bucket down … which resulted in a quick retreat to the shelter – just like the birds.
Conclusion
It was another good day, with a chance to stretch the legs. Unfortunately, it was more like half-a-day due to the weather turning on us, and ruining the light towards the end, but we were lucky enough to have been granted free entry.
I suppose if you like to grab some peacock or duck shots, this is probably one of the places to go. It is quite a big garden, with a rose and native plants area in the rear and an animal sanctuary on the side. Around winter, things are a lot calmer, but in spring, I expect that the walkways will be lined with cherry blossoms making it quite a sight to behold.
