Bali Photographer / Thoughts and Portfolio

Saturday afternoon of the last weekend was spent with a few Bali photographer fellows at The Sol, a beach front restaurant where we used to hang out for good food at affordable price, drinks, chat, and shoots. Beauty of sunset at Canggu Beach, a spot on the mile span of golden sandy beach along Bali south-west coast is always fabulous. Every time I had a chance to bring my camera there always results in unique fabulous shots. Last weekend was quite special as my friend has just bought a brand new Canon 70-200mm F2.8 (IS) L, the best and most expensive Canon lenses at its focal range.

Obviously landscape is not the keyword for the lens, so after a few trial shots with his lens, I went back to my own old el-cheapo old-crack gears. My own project was landscape with slow shutter to bring dramatic silky effect out of the wave. Rocky beach with quite hard wave was among the perfect scene for this kind of shot, and stunning sunset brought fabulous color into the scene.

Tripod was essential for shooting at very slow speed, so I set my Manfrotto 190 XProB up on the rock. I had a little setup change in my tripod which sometime I may write about. Camera in use was Canon 5D with a Canon 17-40mm F4 L. It was the first time I brought my new Canon for landscape shots. I was still using Nikon D200 and Sigma 10-200mm F4.5-5.6 EX DG the last time I came down to Canggu.

Actually both setup resulted similar width. Whilst the Canon setup went down only to as short as 17mm compared to Nikon-Sigma setup which brought 15mm (out of 10mm focal length in 1.5 crop factor of Nikon D200), the picture was a lot more natural. The Nikon-Sigma setup resulted in too stretched out as it is actually 10mm compared to 17mm.

After getting amazed with the scene I saw through the viewfinder I started to prepare for the first shots, which show me that it was still too light whilst kicking the speed too slow makes the silky effect of the sea too much. So filters kicked in. I put a ND8 (natural density) in front of the lens to allow me to shoot a few stops faster. I found the sky was too bright compared to the sea. So I added an additional G-ND (gradual natural density). Both filters are Chinese TianYa brand at Cokin standard. These filters are among the most popular set for landscaper.