VIC GOR postponed so we did something else cruise

Hey All,

Plenty of great photos goin round, here are a few from my collection for your viewing pleasure

In regards to the cruise, was bad luck what happened with the GOR but thankfully it turned out to be a good day regardless with the help of a few good people, namely Tek, BigCol and Krausey...thanks guys for an awesome cruise :thumbup:

Some of these photos are from the day before, sorry if theres a lot of Renee's Z...it was her first photoshoot since having the car finished and I couldn't help myself







Sponge blown away in the gusty rain...




















Some action shots...
























Some in transit shots...








Thought this shot was cool...










Tek laying out the cruise route to the Z people...












Z's take over the Emerald Library car park...


Lunch at the Emerald Cafe...


Some more en-route shots to the Puffing Billy shoot...






Even though it was blurry as hell, thought this shot had some artist value to it














...someone let me know if the trains coming, yeah?


Some of the Z group...






















Damn wind blowing steam and smoke over the Z's for a hazy shot...ah well
















...and we'll finish off with a group shot.


Cheers!

Craig

 

nice shots craig....

 

Thought the same myself. I only ever see one light silver zed in the area so took the gamble, I would have done a U turn and caught up , but I had already sheltered under Altonagate shopping centre car park from the rain and wasn't going to risk another hit with the pressure washer. (no roof or windscreen is great fun, but rain feels like what I would imagine a direct hit from a pressure washer at 100km/hr).

 

Some more pics....

getting there early at Todd rd meant I got to see the Evade in person before Dave went home to avoid the rain...









Waiting around at Southland...








Mikeys new engine....


Renzeds beauty...






We then invaded casa di Tektrader...




Graham addressing the troops for our "cruise on short notice"....




Hanging out in Emerald..... Homeland of our Blipman (do you still visit here Ben??)






Jenny's zed killer....... which Graham likes driving..


Andrew with his weapon of Mass Destruction


Having some good ol lunch...






At the photoshoot point..... Good ol puffin billly to be ariving soon....





The remaining photo's are HDR photos.... just me playing with my camera, multiple exposure settings, and then merging them into one pic (thanks for the tips Andrew..)...
















The rain held off for most of the day..... and then bucketed down when I was driving home.... but by then, I didnt care as I had had my fun for the day..

Cheers

 

Mark, you have huge loss of highlight detail in the HDR images, what are you using to put them together? How many shots are you using for each image?

 

Indeed, get yourself "Photomatix". Works fine for me most of the time, and then a bit of extra fiddling in photoshop to perfection.

 

And a couple more ....

After a few phone calls, PM's and texts we finally had a crew together at Todd Road, and zipped off to Krausy's place to add himself, MikeZ32, Renee and Craig to the list. Jedi had to pick up a new metal frisbee (aka flywheel) from Tekkie, so we found our way to his place, ummm, that should be palace! Chad also added himself to the list - but Chad, next time fill up with petrol before the cruise, not 10 minutes down the road! In the meantime, Tekky put a short cruise together that would take us through a few twisties and end up having lunch just around the corner from Blipman's parents place. Pity he's still in Japan, coming back for a short stay in April I believe. Given that he emailed me expressing concern that he was going to miss out on the GOR cruise, I believe he was resonsible for the mess-up on the GOR after asking the Shinto gods to do something on his behalf ...

Anyway, we had lunch and then headed off to find the trestle bridge that Puffing Billy runs over so we could take some happy snaps. The rain held off for most of the day after sending Dave home with the Evade, but didn't bother us again until the end of the photoshoot.

Thanks to those that answered or started the PM/SMS/phone call chain; to Tekkie for his input on the routes, to Jack for being PSA for the day, and to BADZX and BigCol for making me keep this day free in the first place. Not sure I'll be able to make the real GOR with everything else yet to come . That said, it felt really good to be able to cruise in the Z again. This is the first event I've been able to do in my Z since the 2007 GOR; I've felt a bit like a hanger on since then. Now established members like Kr4usy and Peter Black don't remember having seen RedZedOne on the road!!! A major factor in me wanting to ensure this cruise didn't go uncruised!

I'll only post up a few pics as most of mine would only be duplicating the excellent pics put up by others before me.

Dave deciding it was time to be off!





Guess what colour this car is!!! And red is not the right answer ....



All the reds together :zlove:





And last but not least, RedZedTwo, out and about :zlove:.



Cheers, Mikey.

 

I am an established member now?

Also, sorry to miss your first cruise as a Zed driver since I joined the forum, it has been a long time indeed, hopefully we can make up for it at the nationals.

 

what i'm doing....

Hi pete, yeah i'm just playing at the moment and possibly not doing things correctly..... Essentially, my camera does exposure bracketing so it takes a picture and then takes another pic with a higher exposure and then another pic with a lower exposure. So you end up with 3 pics. Then in photoshop, I use the "Merge HDR" function under the automate menu to merge them all. Should I be doing something else?

 

In theory, no, that sounds right to me. I do it manually rather than the automated HDR function but what you are doing should work.

In practice you are not getting much highlight detail there, so something is not working properly somewhere. I think it might be that the highlights on the bonnets of the car were so bright that even in the dark exposure there was no detail. If you can manually set your exposure or set the amount it over and under exposes in the bracket that is all good, if not, you are kind of stuck, situations like that where you have a direct reflection of a light source (specular highlight) are pretty tricky to manage.

If you want to email me one of the sets of bracketed images to my work account (peter@omegaadvertising.com.au) I will have a look at them for you tomorrow.

 

....black? the reflection from renzed's car? black does reflect the best

 

Erik wins!

 

Posted up on the US and UK forums

http://www.300zxclub.com/showthread.php?t=150156

http://www.300zx.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=123385

Looks like they love renee's car and like RZM's engine setup. But dont like Alex's bodykit, oh well cant please everyone.

 

I didn't read anything on 300zxclub about my car, more about Jedi's zed? I signed up AGES ago there..but yeah I don't plan to stick around there, looks to busy and confusing..

 

No one likes Alex's body kit !!!

 

lol

 

that's a good thing .. at lease it does not look like everyone else's..

and what are you laughing at ,, wannabe 99 spec.. it all look stock to me ...lol

 

I backed you up in the thread alex

now give me a lollipop lol

 

ahahhahahah yeah i seen that ,,, thank you sir ...

lollipop . is on its way .

 

hahahahaha ,be nice,he has 99 spec window switches cabinboy