This years Dark Mofo festival has come and gone and one of the features this year was seeing the Tasman Bridge lit up in red for the duration of the festival.

Hobart’s Tasman Bridge with Dark Mofo red lighting

I shot from Lindisfarne as I did two years ago when the “Articulated Intersect” light show was on. This time around, as well as capturing the red bridge, I was keen to get to know my K1 a little better and used the cameras WiFi feature to shoot through my phone.

Hobart’s Tasman Bridge with Dark Mofo red lighting

Pentax K1 WiFi

The WiFi option is new to me and while I thought it might be more a novelty than anything, I am in fact finding it to be quite useful. I shot many of these shots via my phone, and tested out focus as well as shooting in bulb.

Regarding bulb mode and WiFi devices – set Custom Menu C6 (Bulb Mode Options) to Type 2, which allows you to tap your shutter release (on the phone) once to start the exposure and once again to complete the exposure (rather than Type 1 which is holding the shutter down continuously). One wish I have is that bulb shooting would display a timer (either on the camera itself or at least on the smart phone App) so you can see how long you have been exposing rather than either counting or using another timer.

Pentax Shake Reduction

Another part of the Dark Mofo festival is the “Tempest” exhibition at TMAG. Again, giving the K1 a bit of a test run, I had a crack at some hand held shots in the very low light of the gallery. The results were actually stunning – I could get a sharp image at 1/3 second!

Pentax K1 shake reduction in action – ISO 5000; f4 at 1/3 second – hand held!

Pentax K1 shake reduction in action – ISO 5000; f4 at 1/3 second – hand held!

Pentax K1 shake reduction in action – ISO 5000; f4 at 1/3 second – hand held!

Much has been made of the 5-axis image stabilisation in the K1 but these results were truly exceptional – very impressed and very much enjoying getting to know this camera more and more 🙂