Shaun Johnston

Dawn looking east from Shorncliffe Pier, North of Brisbane.

Taken on a Meopta Flexaret IIa Twin Lens Reflex, using Fujifilm Velvia 50 slide film.

Here is a view of Stoney Creek in Far North Queensland. My friend Margot and myself went for a short walk up the Weir Track which runs parallel to the creek, and took a few photographs along the way.

From the Wet Tropics Website:

Stoney Creek is a popular swimming spot for locals and visitors. You can swim in the creek near the carpark or climb up the old rocky roadway to some isolated and pristine swimming holes amidst the boulders upstream. The walk narrows to a rough path above the creek valley which levels out and meets the creek at the small concrete weir after a kilometre.

Link to the page

I have also made this into a wallpaper, over at flickr.

Fujifilm Velvia 50 is renowned for its rich colours. It has only recently come back into production so I thought I would give a 120 roll a whirl with my Flexaret TLR while holidaying in Victoria. Here are some results:

I will certainly be using Velvia 50 again.

In a nutshell:

1. Melbourne’s traffic is crazy (hook turns aplenty), but somehow seems more pedestrian friendly than Brisbane. Much larger footpaths in the CBD.
2. There are a hell of a lot of little alleys with cafes, and many alleys with decidedly more dodgy things.
3. The Great Ocean Road is spectacular, Torquay is a dusty glary overpriced mediocre town, Port Campbell is much nicer … amazing picturesque sheltered bay, nice cafes.
4. Warrnambool is a very well maintained, beautiful town with many beautiful buildings. If I had more time I would have taken some photos there.
5. Bojangles Pizza in Warrnambool is highly recommended. Far from being a stock standard pizza takeaway, it is a friendly dine-in and takeaway establishment providing quality service, decent prices and spectacular fare.
6. There are many chocolate shops in Melbourne
7. Max Brenner is Satan incarnate.
8. If you ever have the opportunity to see and Iron Maiden show once in your life, take it. F-cking Awesome. Twenty foot flames, pyrotechnics, and an 8 Foot Eddie walking around the stage, anyone? Not to mention Bruce Dickinson’s downright amazing vocals and stage presence, and a nearly-thirty-year back catalogue of classics. Brilliant.
9. Go to Imax and see a 3D movie. Doesn’t matter which one, just give it a shot. Also, the museum is great - okapis and live funnelwebs!
10. Next time I’m going for longer

Here’s a photo from the great ocean road - more to come later.

Buy a print at RedBubble

It’s been a while since I last updated. A couple of things have happened in the interim period, nothing too outlandish though.

I bought an eeepc, which is an ultra-portable laptop, which I intend to set up as a tethered shooting computer with my 400D. At the moment though it’s more of a web surfing / portable entertainment device. I’ve hooked up a Lacie portable hard disk which expands its capabilities somewhat. I also installed Age of Mythology on it yesterday and it seems to run pretty nicely.

I’m pretty excited about going to see Iron Maiden next week, however I have to say that I am actually more excited about going to Melbourne for a week and hopefully going on a road trip down the Great Ocean Road. I’m going to take the Flexaret TLR and the Horizon 202 with me so I’ll be stocking up on film before I go. I’m also (obviously) taking the 400D with me. Should be pretty sweet.

I finally had some medium format film developed from the Flexaret on the weekend - here are the results (images link to flickr):

And a couple from the Horizon 202:

We swapped over our internet connection yesterday to a 150gb TPG plan. I’ve been getting ’status’ emails from them letting me know how the setup is going. The connection should be active on Wednesday, at which time I will upload some photographs I took from the flickr meetup on the weekend.

In the meantime I have been experimenting photographing my slides with a macro lens plus closeup filter. It seems to do the job pretty well, though I think I need to get another closeup filter in order to fill my 400D’s frame. Currently I get a 1950 pixel high image from a 35mm slide (my camera allows for a height of just under 2600 pixels). I’ve been doing it in relative darkness, using a lightbox and covering for the area around the slide. Even with this setup it’s still quicker than using my scanner, and there is so much less noise. Also, there is the distinct advantage of being able to shoot it raw and adjust the colour balance etc afterwards, and when I run a USM I am pretty much getting grain level sharpness (though the slides were taken with a cheapie kodak camera in the 60s so they are quite soft). I’m actually pretty impressed.

I was sifting through my ever-growing archive of images today and found a couple I thought were worth touching up and putting on Flickr.

One of my lenses (a Contax mount Carl Zeiss Jena 35-70mm f/3.5 macro - I took my yellow posy photograph with it) fell apart about a month ago. I took a closer examination of it today and found that two screws that attach a sliding mount (it is a zoom lens) have sheared off, which made the front element pop off. Short of drilling out the screw remnants and replacing them, I’m not sure if the lens is salvageable.

I have started a small gallery of my favourite photographs, which I will be adding to slowly but steadily.  The ‘Gallery’ link in the main menu bar will lead to the photographs uploaded thus far.  Each photograph’s page has a short description, purchasing options and various wallpapers to download.

One of my images has been published on the Schmap Neighborhood Guide for The Valley.

I hadn’t suspected this photo would garner interest from anyone really. You learn something new every day.