Another walk at Mt Coot-tha

Rusty car. Fuji X-E1 & XF55-200mm

Mt Coot-tha is an amazing place if you know where to go and don't mind some off track hiking. I am still puzzled how this car made into the middle of the forest. No roads nearby, and the slope is very steep. Cannot find any info about this rusty thingy.

The picture below was taken on a separate walk around the Simpson falls. Usually there is no water in the creak bed during dry season but this picture was taken shortly after a strong rain.

The Simpson falls. Fuji X-E1 & XF55-200mm

Walking around Simpson falls

Storm over Mt Coot-tha, Brisbane. Fuji X-E1 & XF18-55mm

Mt Coot-tha dominates over Brisbane. The area is cover with a dry eucalypt forest with a number of tracks, picnic areas and some local attractions such as an abandoned gold mine. The area is a very popular destination for Brisbanites during weekends. Most tracks are fairly easy can can be accessed through numerous entry points at different locations.

Austral Sarsaparilla. Fuji X-E1 & XF18-55mm

Another wet day is coming to Brisbane

Small rain cell at outskirt of Brisbane, February 24, 2013 | Fuji X-E1 & XF18-55mm

According to the weather forecast, Brisbane is about to get ~100-200mm of rain in next 24 hours, and  some area along the coast may receive up to 300mm. It is smaller than ex-cyclone Oswald but still significant. And it is not 2011 when some places around Brisbane got 250+mm for couple days in a row, on top of several rainy weeks. It is not windy yet. When the ex-cyclone Oswald hit the city a strong wind trashed local power lines.

This wet season is a bit strange. Brisbane have not got much rains in November, December and first half of January but at the end of January the cyclone brought heavy rains.

Both pictures were taken from the lookout at Mt Coot-tha, a very popular place with nice view of the city.

First rain of the wet season 2012-2013, September 24, 2012 | Fuji X10, in camera panorama

Going out with Olympus E-30

Kennedia rubicunda | Olympus E-30, fill-in flash

It is nice season in Brisbane now, end of the "winter", so a lot of plants are flowering. The temperature is very comfortable during daytime, and the humidity is low. On weekend I went on short hike in local bush (dry eucalypt forest) near Mt Coot-tha with Olympus E-30 and 14-54mm lens. The camera is not used much since we got Fuji X10, and it seems that forgot how to use it properly. It turned out that many images were blurry or not sharp. I blame wind and mirror slap for that. Generally I use the camera at low iso (200) and for flowers I need big DoF, so the shutter speed is low.

It is so pleasant to take pictures within a couple hours without even thinking about battery. Optical viewfinder gives a good view even in bright sun. It was good and pleasant walk, and I got quite a few pictures of plants for the identification.

My DSLR camera is about four years old. In these days I can buy early models of Olympus mirrorless cameras with similar sensor, such as EP1, for 300AUD in Photo Continental.  The current models are more expensive, for example, in Teds Cameras Olympus PEN E-PL3 is priced for 650AUD, which is a small fraction of the price I paid for the Olympus E-30. So, now I can get a camera with the image quality similar or better than my DSLR for a fraction of the price.

No doubt, Olympus OM-D E-M5 is better camera than early PENs, and I like it more than PENs (I love buttons) but for that money it is possible to buy two E-PL3, and Sony A55 with its marvelous 16MP sensor costs 700AUD for the body only. 

Hardenbergia violacea | Olympus E-30

Goanna

Lace Monitor, Varanus varius | Fuji X10 | Brisbane Forest park, April 9, 2012 | flickr

Lace Monitor, or Goanna, is a biggest lizard around Brisbane. It is about half a meter long without tale. The picture was taken on Simpson falls picnic area. On this day we spotted three goannas in this area. The lizard on the top was not scared of people and passed just a couple meters away from the place we stayed. Kids were quite scared when they saw "the dragon" walked towards them :)

The picture was taken with Fuji X10, cropped on the top and bottom, and resized. I applied blur on background in order to reduce the image size. It didn't help much, so the image was saved at low quality. As usual, unedited 100% crop from the original JPEG is below. Tech: iso 100, F5.0, 1/600 sec.

100% crop from the original image