Oxford Falls

Aug

2013

Mountain Biking at Ourimbah and Oxford Falls

Mountain biking at Oxford Falls on Sydney’s north.

Sunday I took my Einstein strobe out for a play. I use Odin triggers by Phottix to fire my flashes remotely. They are fantastic with my speedlights allowing me to access all functions of my speedlights from my camera. Just recently Phottix released a firmware update for the triggers which included giving me the power you use hi-speed sync with studio strobes.

Einstein syncing at 1/1000th

Normally I cannot use my Einstein past a sync speed of 1/200th of a sec with my 5dmkii. With the new firmware update I can now push the speed up to 1/1000th of a sec. giving me much more stopping power. This means that even in the shadows cast by the Einstein I will be able to freeze motion. Its all still early days and it takes a bit of fiddling around to get the settings right. I can only seem to sync them at full power at the moment which is kind of limited. I will need to make myself a cheat-sheet and write all the working settings down.

So I took it all up to Ourimbah downhill track on the weekend to test it all out. I had a bit of a dual reason for visiting there as next weekend is one of the Redass Downhil series races and I wanted to get some ideas for shots. On the way back as I still had time I swung by Oxford Falls downhill track to see if there was anyone there and got to fire off a few shot there too. So at this stage I am looking forward to next weekend.

: Mountain biking on the Ourimbah trails north of Sydney.

: Mountain biking on the Ourimbah trails north of Sydney.

: Mountain biking at Oxford Falls on Sydney’s north.

: Mountain biking on the Ourimbah trails north of Sydney.

: Mountain biking at Oxford Falls on Sydney’s north.

: Mountain biking on the Ourimbah trails north of Sydney.

: Mountain biking on the Ourimbah trails north of Sydney.

: Mountain biking on the Ourimbah trails north of Sydney.

: Mountain biking at Oxford Falls on Sydney’s north.

Dec

2012

Lens Testing at Oxford Falls Downhill Track

Downhill, Oxford Falls, Australia

A couple of months ago I handed in my 28-300mm L lens to my local repair centre. It had been a long time since it had been serviced and it certainly gets enough abuse. It had a broken roller and wasn’t moving through the focus range smoothly. They were quick and prompt with the service getting it back to me before the week ended. I was quite happy with the service until I actually came to use it. From what was a broken roller I now had issues with my aperture, my image stabiliser and the lock that let me keep the lens shut. After jumping up and down in frustration at the camera repair man who more or less told me it was all in my imagination I took my lens directly to Canon. Almost 4 weeks later and nearly $1000 out of pocket I got it back so this weekend was spent putting it through its paces to make sure that it was all running smoothly again.

I spent a few hours on Saturday and a few on Sunday up at Oxford Falls downhill trails just shooting with a few friends and a couple of random riders. Quite happy with the shots. It’s great to have my old faithful back again and Canon, despite taking a silly amount of time to repair the lens, have done a great job at fixing, it. Thanks to all who were there and let me shoot them.

Enjoy.

: Downhill, Oxford Falls, Australia

: Downhill, Oxford Falls, Australia

: Downhill, Oxford Falls, Australia

: Downhill, Oxford Falls, Australia

: Downhill, Oxford Falls, Australia

: Downhill, Oxford Falls, Australia

: Downhill, Oxford Falls, Australia

: Downhill, Oxford Falls, Australia

: Downhill, Oxford Falls, Australia

May

2012

Downhill, Oxford Falls

I went for a bit of a shoot at Oxford Falls on Sydney’s Northern Beaches today. It’s quite a tricky place to shoot at due to the mixed lighting conditions, strong sunlight filtering through the trees makes everything heavily contrasted. If you are lucky though you can find spots where the sunlight will work well to light the rider. A little bit of flash to separate the rider from the background and these are the results.
A big thanks to Josh from walking up and down for me all day.

Dec

2011

Downhill Mountain Biking at Oxford Falls

Yesterday I met up with local rider Nick Turnbull at the Oxford Falls downhill track here on Sydney’s Northern Beaches area for a bit of mountain biking. Its a short track but with a few nice jumps and obstacles. We also met up with another local rider Tom Sanders. Despite being a Friday afternoon we had the track to ourselves so we had plenty of time to set up shots. Here’s a selection from the afternoon’s shoot.

Sep

2010

Mountain Biking and Flashing

With studying lighting at school I thought I should take my new found knowledge into the field. A friend, John Harbord, has been kind enough to volunteer his skills on a mountainbike. We took the show up to Oxford Falls in Sydney’s Northern Beaches area. Also met up with another friend, Josh a BMXer, at the nearby Freedom Jumps. The following is a few of the shots.

: John Harbord hitting one of the jumps at Oxford Falls in Sydney’s North.