Photo Review

‘I was nosy as a small kid,’ says Rachel Mounsey. ‘Once I stole the neighbours' letters out of their letterbox. I didn't open them of course, but took them home, just so that I could hand deliver them – and get a look inside their houses. I guess I've always wanted to look in other people’s houses and find out about their lives. I really liked that. And I really liked meeting people.’ Rachel grew up in the Victorian town of Moe during the 1980s. It was still mainly an industrial town where most of the workforce was employed in the electricity sector’s power plants and brown coal production. ‘Mine was a typical working class family, you go to school, come home, you don’t over dream. But I was a dreamer,…

I was able to spend 90 minutes with a rather severe-looking beaked sea snake, tracking it to the surface and following it down again. At first glance, the online book Wakatobi Reef Life looks like an underwater photographer’s dream assignment. In fact, it was an epic, unpaid labour of love, and putting its photos of about 400 tropical fish and invertebrate species into a book was an afterthought. Perth couple Pam and Wayne Osborn have been going to Wakitobi Dive Resort in Indonesia once or twice a year for 11 years (except when the trip wasn’t possible due to COVID-19). On a typical day, Wayne has exercised his passion in retirement for taking underwater photos from offshore dive boats – 400 scuba dives and counting. Pam has sometimes gone with him. But…

Why Visit? People come to the Mount Lofty Botanic Garden for many different reasons. Some come to see the plants; others for bird-watching and photography and still others to explore the walking trails that run through the 97-hectare site. These range in difficulty from wheelchair-accessible paved paths to relatively steep climbs. The maze of paths also offers different horticultural experiences. The Nature Trail shows some of the native flora that would have populated the region before European settlement. (It’s worth noting the iconic Heysen Trail passes through this section.) The Lakeside Trail, which was officially opened in 2015, was designed to provide access for everybody, from young families with prams to the elderly with limited mobility. It also caters for people with limited understanding of English and people with disabilities, their families and…

Correct exposures rely on three inter related parameters: aperture, shutter speed and ISO sensitivity. Change one parameter and its influence will affect at least one of the others. This relationship is often depicted in an ‘Exposure Triangle’ graphic, which is shown on this page. Lens aperture The aperture of a lens controls how light passes through to the sensor that collects the signal. Unlike your eyes, where the iris diameter adjusts automatically in response to changes in ambient lighting, lens apertures must be adjusted, either by the camera when one of the auto-exposure modes are selected or by the photographer in manual exposure mode. Aperture settings are specified in f-stops, which are expressed as fractions that indicate the ratio of the focal length setting to the effective diameter of the opening in the…

If you’re venturing into video, you should understand how video recordings are created and viewed and the terminology used for describing video. Over time, changes in technology have led to some confusing terminology which is often reflected in cameras’ menus. Video codecs Each video recording must stipulate how the video and audio signals have been combined, using a ‘codec’ (coder/decoder) that also specifies how to play the recording back. The encoded data is held within a digital container, as shown in the diagram right. Hundreds of audio and video codecs have been created for different uses. Some are compatible across many hardware and software platforms, while others are specific to professional equipment. The most popular consumer codecs are MPEG-4 with the MP4 and MOV containers and Sony’s proprietary XAVC and XAVC-S codecs. Apple’s ProRes…

There comes a time in every keen photographer’s life when carrying a heavy camera kit puts a brake on activities that would otherwise have been both possible and enjoyable. It’s usually – but not always – associated with increasing age; you just can’t carry the amount of gear you could a year or so earlier. But many people of all ages would simply rather travel light. There are a number of ways to reduce how much you carry, all involving serious thought and some compromising. You might opt for just a smartphone, which is fine if you only view your image on screens and don’t want to bother with challenging shot compositions. Fortunately, if you want to take a ‘proper’ camera, you needn’t burden yourself with heavy gear. There’s plenty of lighter…