First Winter Trip to Hartsholme

The weather gods blessed us this morning.  I checked Twitter (sad I know), and I saw that Chris was heading out to Hartsholme Park.  Checking the weather report it was not brilliant but looking outside there was a hint of blue in the distance.

I arranged to meet Chris there and packed my bag.  A couple of Nikon D200 SLR’s with 12-24mm f/4 and 70-200, f/2.8 lens.  I had a Nikkor teleconverter (X1.7), for using with the telephoto giving me extra reach.

With the promise of good weather this would also be the best change so far to try out my new compact, the Nikon V1, so I also packed that with a 10mm f/2.8 and 30-110mm f/3.8-5.6.

As you can see, I definitely need practice, a number of nearly shots but not great shots. The reference shot of the Tufted Duck is not to bad, and the single bird in flight is so nearly there. I just clipped a wing so it will not be making my portfolio.

As you can see here, Chris certainly did better.

As well as photographing birds I also took a number of landscape shots.

Here is the same shot twice, I have edited this quite heavily in Photoshop to give it a more painterly and artistic feel, the second image is the original.

It was a fun morning but very cold, before we left, I took a photography from the bridge. I took this shot with my SLR, but also bracketed it so I could try a HDR version. As well as using my SLR I also took the same shot with my new Nikon V1 with the Nikkor 10mm f/2.8.

Of the four shots below, the top two are from my SLR. The bottom two are from the little Nikon1.

I don’t think the HDR Version works in this case, but I have to admit the two bottom shots from the Nikon 1 are not to shabby at all. The one in the bottom left is an out of camera jpg, the one in the bottom right is the raw file that I processed in Nikon ViewNX2

The difference in the colours between the SLR at the top and the Nikon1 below is probably down to the fact I used a two stop gray graduated filter and a polariser.

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