Winding trip through scenic country road took us about an hour and a half, plus an awful breakfast break at a little cafe on Candidasa beach. Candidasa water garden which normally quite a scenic place for landscape seemed rather dull, so we just passed. Getting to the destination without any hassle we found the weather was quite nice, with deep blue sky especially on the direction towards the sea. The holly Mount Agung behind the site remained cloudy though.

Shit happened when we I started to took my gears out of the bag to prepare for a few pre-shots after a little orientation. I realized that I left the memory card in my computer back home. Fortunately mu girlfriend had her D40x with her, so after a little while elapsed to calm myself down. She refused the model session, I did not know why, maybe she did not confident enough with the camera setup or she had something else in mind. I had no other choice than taking a few architectural and landscape shot.

I used to use the same Nikon D40x before I got my Nikon D200 with a few better lenses and finally change my whole setup into Canon. Now I found myself disappointed by resulted picture. The picture of the main house taken through the frame of an old window here took me some time and five masks in post processing to gain rather desirable dynamic range and tonality. Still not comparable to supposed result of my Canon though.

I will definitely come back with my Canon EOS 5D full-frame camera, Canon ultra wide 17-40mm F/4 L lens, and at least the CPL filter for better landscape and architectural shots. Of course if I am lucky enough to get a model coming along, my favorite lens Carl Zeiss Planar T* 50mm F/1.4 will get its turn as well.

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.