Lake Skinner

May 30, 2016

Some photos from my second visit to Lake Skinner – and the first day trip with the new Pentax K1! I posted about this hike once previously, and that trip was in bright blue sunny skies in the middle of summer. This trip was overcast, with light showers, and during the short days of late autumn. Indeed light was fading fast from around 4:00 in the afternoon as we wound our way back to the car!

A “purple brain” fungi (not its official name!) on the walk to Lake Skinner

Of course the fungi was out and this one (above) begged a quick photo stop. Not knowing its official name, we christened it the “Purple Brain” fungi! I shot this fungi a few times, giving the K1’s new “pixel shift” super resolution mode a test run. The first thing I noticed was cleanliness of the images! Even at ISO 100 (which is clean already), the pixel shift image shows remarkable clarity over a non pixel shifted image. I did a test at ISO 3200 as well which again looks very clean with the pixel shift function 🙂

The track passes a beautiful rainforest section of myrtle, leatherwood, pandani and even a few king billy’s

After passing through some beautiful rainforest we made it to the lake and enjoyed some misty moodiness with lunch. The drizzle and mist, and the bare deciduous beech trees really emphasised that winter is closing in. I would loved to have captured the shot below about a month ago when it was full of golden leaves!

Deciduous beech at Lake Skinner, South West Tasmania

The deciduous beech is now completely bare and ready for winter…

Finally, I shot the creek runing out of the lake, noticing (and enjoying!) a few tweaks to the interval composite mode and menu in the K1. For starters, there is now an option to lock the auto-focus after the first shot so that the camera doesn’t attempt to refocus subsequent shots. Also, a few more options now exist in the menu re selecting the drive mode and the time between shots.