It is always hard to travel to difficult places and tours are often a good way to get in touch with places
that might not even be thought of. My family lived in Sydney twice and we did rent a car and travel west,
eventually touring along the Great Ocean Road, which is spectacular, and took a quick ferry to Kangaroo
Island, seeing the fairy penguin colony, an Australian seal beach, and Remarkable Rocks in the SW part of
the island. We did have great luck visiting Uluru and the Red Center by engaging WayOutback, a camping trip
organization that still exists and arranges really great camping experiences, including road trips, hikes, and cabins. So I would recommend a month's visit, with side trips planned. A long trip to be sure, but there is a lot to see.
Have a great trip, mate!

Indeed. And the little ones will soon follow. Still...have a great time!

The Gamecock Cottage in Stony Brook NY (now under renovation) at the opening of West Meadow Creek is one of my favorites for photos. Here is the first goose family of spring rising with the tide past the cottage. This was a particularly nice cloudy background day. No post, no AI.

Yes yes they don't call it the "Red Center" for nothing. Here is another image
from a nearby place called "The Olgas". This is the image I got straight from
Kodak. Using the same ISO 100 Kodak Ektachrome film, taken with the mighty
Contax G2 with 21 mm Zeiss lens (do you know this lens? a beauty).

Attached file:
(Download)


(Download)

Love to see pictures of Uluru - Here is mine from 2000, taken with Ektachrome film, using a Contax
G2 with Zeiss 21 mm lens. I still have the camera, but the film was available in Australia. We were
camping and somewhere I have the sunrise photo from another location.

Thanks for your recommendations. I will get a cat. And hope you have a nice day.

This is the wikipedia definition of pancake lens:
"A pancake lens is a colloquial term for a flat, thin camera lens assembly (short barrel). The majority are prime lenses of a normal or slightly wider angle .."

In other words: there are no very good definitions accepted. Fits my Panasonix lumix F 1.7 20 mm; fits my Fujinon F 2.8 27 mm. Fits my air-focus pancake lens. Fits....

I don't think Fujifilm is very popular with UHH folk, but I strongly recommend tha Fujinon 27 mm 1:2.8 lens, mated to the wonderfully small X-T30 body. This is about as unobtrusive a kit as you can have and is excellent to use. Lens runs about $300.

Really lovely shots! In Buffalo there were clouds but they winked in and out on the upside,
so I got nice shots like yours. We did see Baily's Beads, but totality was a washout and the backside was largely obscured by clouds. So congratulations! Although we did have a great time yelling when the clouds opened!

So marvelous!
My blad story: was photographing annular eclipse with a 5” reflector with a focusing screen. Sun was perfect with solar rim. Squeezed the trigger…nothing. Again.. nothing. My 6 yr old says “dad”. Again nothing. “Dad!”. “Dad, pull the thing out!” Pulled out the protective slide..bingo. Perfect bw shot! “Thanks, Nathan!”

I used the following for autofocus shots of an annular eclipse.
Fujifilm XT-4 camera
Fujifilm 100-400 lens. F 5.4
Multiplier (x 1.4)
Hoya 100000F filter for 15 F stops
With this I can use autofocus to focus on the sun and got good shots last
Fall at the annular eclipse shooting at Albuquerque NM.

My previous experience involved an annular eclipse at Saratoga NY, where I
used a Hasselblad medium format camera to take shots of an image of the
sun focused on a screen through a 5" reflecting telescope. Clearly had to
use manual focus for that one!
Jeff

This is a really interesting solution - to have a rubber ring around the focus. But i wonder: is manual focus really necessary for sun pictures? I photographed the annular eclipse last fall and just used autofocus. It worked brilliantly. I used a stack of lens and multiplier and it still worked well (ca 800 mm equivalent). I wonder if others have had the same luck and whether a full eclipse will work as well as an annular eclipse. I tried regular sun pictures with autofocus and got good results as well.

It is hard to beat the Nikon 105. Great for flowers. Dogs are trickier because of depth of field issues. I would go with a shorter lens for those guys.

is that a saltwater or freshwater marsh?

These lovely pictures remind me of the mathematical arrangement
found in many flower centers (like sunflowers): the fibonacci sequence
https://www.montananaturalist.org/blog-post/flowers-the-fibonacci-sequence/
Think it might be in one of these pictures.