Mount Wellington Fungi

Mount Wellington Fungi

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Found quite a few fungi last Saturday. Could have spent 12 hours messing about, but I think we need a few days of rain to really bring them out, without any severe frosts. I had a good walk around the lower slopes, including Myrtle Gully, where there are always a good range of fungi types. The mountain itself was seemingly covered in frost, maybe snow at higher levels. There were solidly frozen puddles at The Springs carpark anyway. See the Photos on Picasa.

I've been using the Nikon DSLR (D90) to take fungi photos. The depth of field is even more difficult than with the old Panasonic (DMC-FZ50). In addition, the Panasonic had a flip-out screen, and in fact the Panasonic's fixed lens was easier to manually focus than the cheap kit lenses I have on the Nikon. Nevertheless, some of the photos came out quite well. I have a mirror for focusing on the LCD screen from above. The D90, unlike earlier DSLRs has Live-View (LV). This means the mirror will flip up and allow the sensor to read the light in real time like a P&S camera. For this sort of photography, this is invaluable, despite some semi-amateur eejits on forums deriding the LV feature. The flip-out screen will also come to be seen as very useful, at least for some applications. Many of the photos were taken using the camera mounted upside-down on my big Manfrotto tripod. This was much easier than trying to balance the camera on bags and things at ground level, and then point it in the right direction. Having it upside down made for an interesting logic puzzle though, especially when using buttons and dials on the front of the camera - which way do I dial the wheel?

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