Brandon Country Park Afternoon

Still cold but with cloudless skies, we explored other areas of Brandon - first I did my annual visit to a colony of slime moulds on a rotten conifer trunk (Trichia decipiens) and then to the area of conifers and silver birch where there were abundant Fly Agarics. Various techniques tried from wide-angle single shots to 20-image stacks, mostly with Fuji X100V.

 

Brandon Country Park Morning

Yesterday was my annual visit to Brandon Country Park for fungi (accompanied by members of the RPS Nature Group) and we were so lucky with a beautiful sunny day and very abundant specimens. Here some from the morning session - I was concentrating on the smaller unusual species in the leaf litter etc and on back lighting in the early morning sun. The first image Spathularia flavida is not recorded on the NBN atlas for the area so one for i-record and was complemented by the Hare's Ear fungus. Afternoon finds next!!

Brandon Country Park

Yesterday was our annual CCC fungi photography day at Brandon so a party of 20 members explored the area on a cold and later rather wet day. There were plenty of species there but a lot were damaged or eaten. However, still plenty to occupy the group and some very pleasing clumps etc. I was focus-bracketing (25 shots) with my Fuji X100v, sometimes with close-up filter, at around F4. I did a comparison shot at F4 and F2 (images 7 and 8) and the comparison shows the lens is a bit less sharp wide open though still very acceptable - the toadstools themselves, although in focus throughout from the stacking, are less 'crisp' - a dilemma as I do like the more diffuse background. Images 5 and 6 are shot at F8 and F11 and not stacked

 

Playing with Lighting at Brandon

A third visit to Brandon, this time in the company of several CCC members and an attempt at some creative lighting. I was using a continuous LED light and, by accident, discovered different colour beech leaves make excellent colour filters brown, green and yellow. Some good species found including a very pristine Death's Cap.

Brandon Country Park - Experimenting with Fungi

Beautiful autumn day on Friday for our visit to Brandon Country Park. Although not a bumper year, there were enough fungi to keep us happy for the day. As usual, I tried various techniques - in the comparison pairs here, the lefthand images are single shots either with 10mm (1) or 50mm (3,5,7) lenses, F18-F5.6, while the comparison images (2,4,6,8) are all focus stacked with the 50mm lens using 30-40 images at F2.8. In 9 and 10, the difference between the 24mm and 10mm ends of the wide zoom on the Fuji are apparent