Photo walk - Muriwai Beach, Auckland, NZ

With Tomomi and Hinachan still in Japan, I'm left at home with only a pair of cats for company, both of whom are indifferent to my presence. I'm trying to make the most of the free time I have, and not being short on cat photos already, I'm trying to get out and take photo's in places that aren't practical to do with a 6 month old baby in tow.

This week's Saturday morning mission was out to Muriwai Beach. Located around 45 minutes drive from Central Auckland, it is the northernmost of the Auckland West Coast beaches. The settlement and main access to the beach are located at the most southernmost point, and from there the beach stretches for a glorious and uninterrupted 50 kilometers, give or take.

Google maps location is here

Muriwai is a very popular beach given its relative proximity and ease of access to Auckland. Being a west coast, rough and rugged, black sand beach it's not really the type of beach to setup for a day in the sun, sand and surf though plenty of people do. 

There's more going on and more to do. Surfing would be the most popular pastime as the water is rarely calm and there is a surf club. Fishing as well of course, either off the rocks or further up the beach into the surf. Lastly, four wheel driving. The beach is technically a public road, drivable for a good chunk of the 50km length, with a couple of access points located further up, namely Rimmers rd and Wilson Rd. If you have a capable 4WD vehicle it is well worth doing so at least once. It is quite surreal cruising down an endless beach without another soul in sight. Just check the tides though, you'll want low tide lest you get stranded or worse.

I changed to a new camera for this session from my M43 gear and in the next section I'll talk a bit about that, followed by my shooting experience today. Go straight to the bottom if you just want to see photos.

Sony RX10 III

Following my session last week, I was sick of changing lenses despite only carrying two. I love telephoto but then anything even remotely wide I would need to change. I honestly felt like I was doing it every few minutes to get every shot I wanted, and I simply could not have managed with just one lens. Carrying a second body to negate lens changes does not appeal either. I've also been suffering from a bit of Gear Acquisition Syndrome and there were still lenses that I wanted to buy despite having a bunch of good performers already. Not good for the wallet and too much time researching gear rather than taking photos.

My solution to this was to buy a bridge camera, also known as a superzoom. I love this category of camera for their versality and reach, but with no such thing as a free lunch, all of them have rather small sensors, with the largest being 1 inch. One of which is a camera I have coveted for sometime, but put off by the $3k price tag, and that is the Sony RX10. Unfortunately, the latest model, the mark IV, is discontinued. I was fortunate enough to find an open box mark III instead. The key difference between the 2 versions is the IV has phase detect autofocus, now having not owned a camera with that before I'm not going to miss it, despite the apparent huge improvement in autofocus ability.

The RX10 III is a large camera, weighing in at over 1kg but packs in a 24-600mm full frame equivalent lens and combined with a 20MP 1-inch type sensor.

I only received the camera yesterday, and last night I spent a few hours familiarising myself with it and getting it setup to my liking. 

A few early observations on the Sony RX10 III:

• Build Quality - Superb. It's a hefty and solid lump that oozes quality. Everything tactile feels great from the grip, to the buttons, dials and control rings.
• 24-600mm full frame equivalent lens - you can frame and take just about any shot. f/4 at 600mm is pretty fast all things considered.
• 3 Control rings on the lens barrel - Aperture (can be set to smooth or clicky) Zoom, and Focus (with peaking)
• Sony's interface - Everyone says the Sony menu system is rubbish.  I can't see what the fuss is all about. They are clear and easy to navigate. This camera has enough good controls and customizable buttons (and a quick menu on the fn key) that you won't need to regularly menu dive if at all.
• No touch screen - Any camera without one gets criticised for it. I actually disabled touch input on my Lumix cameras as I was tired of my noise changing the autofocus point when using the EVF. I've managed just fine since.

Sony RX10 III

Today's shooting

I started the day by parking up at Māori Bay which is just up the hill from the main surf beach, as the access to the Gannet colony is easier from there. To my dismay, the walking track was fenced off with no access due to some previous land slips making the path unsafe. So it was back in the car and back down the hill to the main carpark. The tide was high, and the track access I was looking for involves traversing a rock shelf that had violent waves regularly drenching it. I judged the timing of the waves to ensure I wasn't going to get wet and scurried across. Once again to my dismay I found this track closed as well. Sigh. I came here for the Gannets. October/November is the best time as it's nesting season. 

I lingered around for a while wondering how to make the most of the morning. I had some fun trying to take pictures of a few surfers who were very far out in the rough surf. At full 600mm zoom and with the surfers constantly disappearing beneath waves it was rather challenging both for me and the autofocus, and I did manage to get some half decent shots. The waves crashing over the rocks and spraying water into the air gave me some good practice for freezing motion using fast shutter speeds, though difficult to get an interesting composition.

Without much else left to do I regained my resolved to see the Gannets. There is a track from the lower carpark which takes you up to Māori Bay through the bush, so I simply followed this track and then veered off into the thick bush in the direction I knew I needed to be going.  Technically with no rules broken, I eventually I came out onto the Gannet track close to the colony, and I found the entire place to myself. Absolutely bliss except for the smell, being downwind of thousands of Gannet nest's is rather pungent.

I spent a good half hour running the RX10 through its paces with the Gannets, and best of all, they were the perfect subjects for BIF (birds in flight) practice! Constantly gliding around, above and below me, I simply put the RX10 on continuous autofocus and snapped away, I didn't even use burst mode. The most difficult part was tracking at long focal lengths, with the smaller sensor I want to avoid having to crop, so it took some practice and I'm happy with some of the shots I got, even if they weren't fully framed how I wanted. It is probably asking too much to track a moving bird at full zoom, filling and centering in the frame and then sharp and in focus too... I tried.

Another aspect of the RX10 that I enjoyed is that I didn't need to fiddle with it too much. The lens apparently has its sweet spot at f/4 to f5.6, so I just settled at around f/4.5 in aperture priority mode and snapped away. Aside from my water shutter speed experiment, the only other settings I changed were experimenting with the autofocus modes, and changing to continuous autofocus when tracking birds in flight. 

I think I've waffled enough, so please enjoy my photos below taken at Muriwai Beach today.

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