Early Morning at Elgol

The Cuillins from Elgol (Canon EOS 5d Mark II, 17-35mm lens at 30mm, ISO 50, 30 sec at f/22, Variable ND Filter, Tripod)

An early start this morning to try and catch the first rays of light on the Cuillins from Elgol Beach where I met up with Yvonne MacDonald and Audrey Campbell.  I took all my gear with the hope of trying out the new large format film camera.  However, it was a wee bit breezy and I was having some difficulty sorting out the dark cloth that is needed to shade the view on the ground glass of the camera and could not get the focus to work.  Not sure if it was set up properly but suffice to say it worked when I got home and tried in the comfort of the house.  Better luck next time I guess.  Anyway, I did take a couple of images with the medium format Bronica ETRSi and will look forward to seeing them when they are develped.  As a result though I did end up using the trusty digital and here are a few of the images.

The above was taken close to the shore among the large boulders looking towards Loch Coruisk with a variable ND filter attached to my wide angle lens.  This produced a long exposure of 30 seconds and with the waves crashing among the rocks it produced quite a nice misty effect.  Not sure what is going on in the top right corner though as I had a bit of flare there, maybe just an aberation of using a cheap filter.

I took a few other shots focusing on the intersting rock formations on the shore and using an ND8 Grad filter to try and balance the brighter sky witht he relatively dark foreground.  The image below was the best one I got.

Rock Striations at Elgol Shore (Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 17-35mm lens at 22mm, ISO 400, 1/5 sec at f/22, ND8 Grad Filter, Tripod)

On the way to Elgol the sun was rising above Knodart and despite wanting to get to Elgol fr the sunrise, and being a bit tight for time, I decided to stop at the top of the hill above Kilmarie and took this shot towards Ladhar Bheinn.  I was in a bit of rush so instead of setting up the tripod and digging out the lens tripod mount I simply took this hand held resting on the roof bars of the car.  The Sigma 150-500mm lens does have pretty good image stabilisation and I opened the aperture wide open to get as fast a shutter speed as possible.  Only afterwards did I think I could have increased the ISO as well.  One day I will remember all these things, even when rushing.

Sunrise on Ladhar Bheinn, Koydart, from the Elgol peninsula (Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 150-500mm lens at 150mm, ISO 400, 1/4 sec at f/4.0, handheld)

On the way back home we stopped at the side of Loch Slapin for the ubiquitous shot of Blabheinn.  I took this as a panorame of two shots using my ND8 Grad filter again to balance the exposure.  I really like the bright colours in this one, lit up by the sun from the south (left on the image).  Also, the fact that there is cloud on the very top of the mountain adds interest I think.

Blabheinn from Loch Slapin (Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 17-355mm lens at 17mm, ISO 50, 1/3 sec at f/22, ND8 Grad Filter, Tripod, Panorama of 2 shots)

Finally I stopped at Cille Chriosd church for a couple of architectural black & white shots.  This old ruined church is a favourite photo stop witht eh old buildings, grave stones and monuments and the old yew trees.  These were taken in colour but converted to black & white using Nik's Silver Efex Pro with a red filter added to darken the deep blue sky.

Cille Chriosd Church (Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 17-35mm lens at 17mm, ISO 100, 1/20 sec at f/16, ND8 Grad Filter, Tripod)

Cille Chriosd Church (Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 17-35mm lens at 22mm, ISO 100, 1/80 sec at f/11, ND8 Grad Filter, Tripod)