One day in March 2018, don’t know what got into me, I decided to get up early, cycle from home to the Marina Barrage with the complete photo gear AND the drone to take a few pictures and movies.
So, I had the DJI Phantom 3P in the hardcover backpack, a tripod attached to this hard case with a few carabiners, plus a sling bag with the Nikon Df and two heavy zoom lenses over my shoulder. What a stupid idea. I looked and felt like a complete idiot cycling along the Singapore river at 06:30 making my way through other cyclists and dog walkers. The 5 km cycling trip from home to the barrage felt like a 40 km cross-country mountain bike race, I was huffing and puffing upon arrival.
I managed to set up “shop”:
Google Attribution is here
So far so good, but then things went a little off the rail…. I realised that I forgot the ND filter, a fairly crucial accessory when trying to blur the water in the foreground, at home. Secondly, something was wrong with the drone: an error message “gimbal disconnected” kept creeping up. So, my plans of filming myself and the scenery with the drone whilst the Df was auto-clicking via interval timer went south straight-away.
Anyway: with a great mess comes great opportunity. Luckily, I had the polarisation filter with me. With a bit of scrambling I got a few decently looking photographs. Recommendation #1: when taking pictures at dusk or dawn in the tropics, mosquito repellent is worth its weight in gold!!!
Post processing: Colour Efex Pro and Silver EfexPro, a little bit of detail extractor, cropping and some minor adjustments to taste in LR; sharpening and export as jpeg with LR as well.
All done and dusted by 08:00, so I could get myself ready to start working at 08:30. In hindsight: this was very well worth it! Next time WITH the ND-filter.
Here we go. I upload large files for your viewing pleasures:
pictures are (c) www.jrbc.net 2018; please ask for permission prior to reproduction!