Ronald Cross & Loddon Bluff

[MJD]

Some pictures from our recent walk to Ronald Cross and Loddon Bluff. After parking on the Lyell Highway under Mt Arrowsmith, we dropped down to the Surprise River and up onto Eucyrphia Lead to Ronald Cross. There was a mixture of open forest, light scrub and thick scrub before we broke out above the treeline.

These were taken with my new toy (well, that's what the wife called it): a Pentax K5 using the basic 18-55 kit lens that had turned up the night before. Very nice camera.

(Got three messages to post including this one.)

[MJD]

Great views: north to Gell, the Eldons and the southern peaks of the Cradle Mt - Lake St Clair NP; east to the King william Range; south to the Denisons and Prince of Wales Range; and west to Frenchmans Cap with Jukes and the Tyndalls visible from time to time.

We camped in a nice sheltered spot half way between Ronald Cross and the Needle Rock Tarns.

[MJD]

After setting up camp, we continued on through some annoying light scrub past Church Pk and onto more open ground closer to Loddon Bluff.

After climbing Loodon Bluff (and its southern peak) we made it back to camp as the sun was setting. It was quite a cold night camping at 1130m and only one brave soul (not me) got up to take pictures at dawn. At least the previous days efforts meant that we could take it easy on the return.

[nickthetasmaniac]

Great shots! I'd love to get up that way some time...

Hope you're enjoying the K-5, I'm thinking of getting one too soon

[MJD]

Thanks. The K5 is very nice, of course I'll need another lens or two.

I see that Lightroom has introduced some artifacts into the blue sky in some of the pictures when it has resized them. Looking at the last picture: it is fine if I export it at 1.3MB rather than the approx 0.7MB that I did originally and even more interestingly it comes up ok when the little microsoft utility resizes this larger file down to 368kB!!

[nickthetasmaniac]

Hmm odd. I use Aperture 3 and its *usually* ok when I resize to 800px wide, although sometimes there's a significant loss of sharpness... Generally no artifacts though, especially not as pronounced as the first examples you posted.

[GeoffR]

I see that Lightroom has introduced some artifacts into the blue sky in some of the pictures when it has resized them.

There is an interesting discussion in regard to this here:
http://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/pent ... color.html
So a K5 without sensor issues? Mine had a number of 'spots' that I thought was the dreaded sensor stain so it went back to the distributor. Turns out it was a dirty sensor (as shipped) and now appears to be fine. Great camera BTW!

[stepbystep]

Nice pics MJD, Slatters looks quite impressive from that side with those cliffs....

[MJD]

And, as with some of your pictures, a little bit of snow always helps.

[MJD]

GeoffR - funny how many of us bob up on the other forums. I posted these examples over on the pentax forums as well.