Photography

Czech Republic – Final conclusion

July 30, 2010 in My Photos, Travels

What has started as a 10 day road-trip from eastern Germany trough the Czech Republic, Austria and maybe Switzerland back to western Germany ended after just two days in Prague. On the first day we visited Karlovy Vary and drove to Prague on day two. But in Prague some ************* have smashed a windows and broke into our car and stole every single piece of clothing I own, my girlfriend’s laptop, my tripod, the car radio, ball pens, old shoes, some coverings, the drink holder…
We called the Czech police. They didn’t care, they didn’t come. They didn’t let us file a charge. 2500€ lost. No insurance will cover it. The car was that damaged, we had to abort the trip. Not that I wanted to continue, without any clothing.

I didn’t like the Czech people in the first place. They were rude, they all didn’t give a crap about anything. Several times my tripod has almost been knocked over. Every time we had a question the officials pretended they didn’t speak English or German or whatever.

I write this post just to put it all behind. Karlovy Vary and Prague are nice cities, I’ve been there the second time now (this time just to take photos), but they won’t see me again. Ever.

Things went wrong in Hamburg

July 17, 2010 in My Photos, Photography, Travels

Last weekend my girlfriend and I spontaneously decided to visit Hamburg. We only did a quick research and then knew what we wanted to see: the Port of Hamburg, the old Elbe tunnel, the Warehouse District, the Fish auction hall, the old Town hall, the Jungfernstieg at the Binnenalster and the famous churches. Not to forget Reeperbahn! That’s the theorie…

I find cities look best when it’s lights are already turned on, so we wanted to see the most of the sights at night.

On the first evening we wanted to see the harbor. Our hotel was close to the Central Station so we decided to simply walk. Sadly Internet on my iPhone 3G was that slow in Hamburg, that I couldn’t see my map with the photo locations, so we had to walk on our own and find some sweet spots. At the beginning we walked totally wrong and ended up in the fruit district of the harbor. We then walked along the harbor trying to get to the right points. On our way we walked right in between HafenCity and Warehouse District so that we didn’t see both. We walked up to Landungsbrücken when it was already 12am, but I wanted to see at least the old Elbe Tunnel! So we walked trough and tried to find a nice spot at the other side of the harbor, but didn’t find anything. So we walked back, decided to take a drink and then took the train back to central station and our Hotel.

The next day our schedule was pretty tight, because we didn’t get the harbor shots… we started at 10am, went to central station to get a Hamburg CARD. With the Hamburg CARD you can use all public transportation (more on that later), and you get a discount on most tourism stuff.

Our first stop was the old Town Hall which is a nice walk along Hamburg’s shopping street. But I didn’t find the old Town Hall very special, at least not in bright daylight! We then headed over to the Binnenalster and Jungfernstieg, which also looked, well… let’s say nice during daytime.

The weekend was hot, very hot! After just 3 hours we already needed a break! So we wanted to take a train down to Landungsbrücken and make a harbor tour. But there were some heavy constructions going on, so we had to take several trains, which isn’t that easy if you don’t know the city… Finally at Landungsbrücken, we got a 2€ discount off thanks to our Hamburg CARD! Awesome…… The harbor tour was very nice and we got a good overview. But still not a single good shot!

And believe it or not due to the heat on the boat, the glue which sticks the rubber grip on my Nikon D90 melted!

Since we still had a lot of sights to see we hurried up a bit and walked to St. Michaelis church, spent a lot of time looking for a supermarket to buy some water, walked back trough Warehouse District (to really see it for the first time!) and then walked back to our Hotel to take a nap

We still wanted to see the harbor, the Warehouse District, the Fish auction hall and the Reeperbahn. We started again at 8pm to take some night shots. Mobile Internet still was horribly slow, so I still couldn’t load my map! We took the train to Landungsbrücken again, then walked up to the Fish auction hall, then headed further to Dockland. When we arrived at Dockland the light was just crappy so we waited some time and discovered one thing I find totally awesome about Hamburg: The Habor ferries! They have ferries all across the harbor, with stations that look exactly like Bus stops, just on the water. And it’s even included in the Hamburg CARD! We took one, drove to it’s last stop and then drove back. Totally awesome! Back at Dockland the light was better, although I now found it to be already too dark as the nice blue sky was almost gone. I took some shots until we wanted to go to Warehouse District. It was already 12pm and the Reeperbahn was much closer so we decided to visit that first. Which again wasn’t a very good idea. It was horribly crowded, but fun to watch. When we finally came to the Warehouse District the damn lights were already turned off and the entire scene just looked boring

We walked back to our Hotel and fell to bed at 3am…

The next morning we didn’t want to walk trough Hamburg again, so we decided to drive back and visited some friend we met last year on our Trip to Egypt… By the way: we walked about 35km that weekend!
If we had a better plan, I think our Hamburg experience would have been awesome! But even with our crappy plan the trip was great.

Color meets Black & White

July 5, 2010 in My Photos, Photography

I really love Black & White, so I try a Black & White version of most of my recent pictures.

In the last week I’ve been to Sanssoussi in Potsdam, Germany near Berlin and to the Saxon Switzerland near Dresden with my Girlfriend. The weather in Potsdam was great, but that attracted so many tourists, that it was almost impossible to get a good shot of the castle. In the Saxon Switzerland the weather was also great, but although we went there in the late afternoon the sky still was like f/64 whereas the canyon was like f/1.4.

Here are my favorite shots of this week, I couldn’t decided weather I like the color or the Black & White version.

What do you think?

BlogTimes Photo Contest (my first one)

June 17, 2010 in My Photos, Photography

The German blog ‘BlogTimes‘ has recently started a photo contest for city and landscape photography. So far I have never participated in any photo contest, but this time I thought I’d do so with my favorite three pictures:

Wish me luck. The contest ends on August 15, 2010.

What a polarizing filter is for

June 12, 2010 in Equipment, Photography

I’m sitting here at a German train, digging trough my unread mails and found one stating that I misunderstood what a polarizing filter is for. Well, I don’t think so And instead of just telling him so, I thought I’d share it here.

I think he was referring to my post about too much polarization. In that post I said, that I always adjusted the angle of the polfilter to get the strongest effect in the skies. By saying that I of course didn’t mean that you can only use a polfilter to darken the sky in landscape shots. To understand what you can use a polarizing filter for, you need to know that all a polarizing filter does is cutting reflections. The earth’s atmosphere is full of small particles which do all reflect the light of the sun. By cutting these reflections the sky gets darker because there are less reflections which would make the sky look brighter… But I’m still stuck to that polfilter = nicer sky thing.

I for example often use a polfilter when shooting trough windows, because things do reflect in windows and by using the polfilter I can cut these reflections.

Another example is shooting water. If you shoot water without a polfilter chances are good that all you see is the sky or whatever is above that water. But with a polfilter set to the right angle, you might be able to see down to the ground. Depending on the depth of the water of course.

But the reason I usually just keep the polfilter on all the time when shooting landscapes (even if there is not a single piece of sky in the shot) is because IT DOES CUT REFLECTIONS! It cuts reflections from the grass, making it more vibrant. It cuts reflections from leaves, making them more vibrant…

Just two other things you should keep in mind: A polfilter sucks light! Your shutter speed will be about one to two stops slower. Make sure you can hand hold that speed! And the other thing is don’t overdo it or you might get an over-saturated candy look… or as in my case an almost dark sky.

P.S. sorry for the lack of example pictures, but as I said I’m on a train

Lightroom 3: Second Thoughts

June 10, 2010 in Equipment, Photography

Since everybody is talking about how great he thinks Lightroom 3 is, I thought I’d talk about what I miss in Lightroom 3 First off… I’ve been using Lightroom 3 Beta exclusively since the beginning of this year and I also think it’s new features are great, BUT:

Tethering! I don’t really need Live View, but I at least want to be able to change basic settings like aperture, iso and shutter speed from Lightroom! I only use this feature when my camera is on a tripod, so I don’t want to run back and forth!
Remote Tethering or whatever you call it… I want to be able to tether my Camera from my iPhone, just as with the OnOne solution, but from within Lightroom. Oh… don’t tell me it’s useless. Again… handy when on a tripod. Think about shooting still lives in the studio… no more running from the object to the laptop or even to the camera! Or Startrails in the cold, or, or, or…
Publishing Service … O.K. Lightroom 3 now has Social Media, especially Flickr integration. Awesome! But why does this only work for images I upload trough this new feature? I want to be able to link my existing images back into Lightroom! Or did I miss something about that feature?
Video, though not a killer feature for me some basic editing features would be nice. (Just as Aperture does)

Benro A-169 Review

June 6, 2010 in Equipment, Photography

I am a big fan of the Joby Gorillapod SLR-Zoom and the world often really is my tripod, but I also love long-exposures and night photography, which isn’t really feasible without a real tripod. That’s why I wanted a tripod for my travels for a long time now, but never found one that is light, small, still sturdy but also affordable. Then I came across Induro…

Benro TravelAngel A-169

Uh? You said Induro, what’s Benro, you ask?

I did a lot of research on the Internet about several Induro tripods and it turned our that Induro tripods are just re-labeled Benro tripods and are then sold for a higher price, mostly to the US. In fact I haven’t even found any reseller for Induro here in Germany. Look at the Carbon series of Induro and Benro for example: Induro & Benro (click Select Products). The specs and the look are the same, just the names changed. And the price of course

Benro also has the Travel Angel series, which I found just awesome, because they are very small, but still sturdy. And with that I already start my review of the Benro A-169…

First of all the Benro is an aluminum tripod that comes in a nice bag:

And as I already said, the A-169 is very small when collapsed (just 38cm):

The lowest possible height is also just 38cm, but it won’t hold your heavy camera well at this position. Nevertheless all the connections and locks feel very sturdy (click to enlarge):

Then I went out to field test it (see result at the top)…

My heaviest Camera/Lens combination currently is the Nikon D90 with Nikon MB-D80 Battery Grip and my heaviest lens, the Nikon 70-300 VR attached, totaling at 1850g. The Tripod legs themselves can hold that load easily. You might need to attach your bag to the tripod in windy situations to get the sharpest result. The legs sometimes twist a little bit, but still it’s a stable tripod for it’s weight and size! Benro says it’s capable of up to 8kg of load. I was also evaluating the A-268, because it only has 4 leg sections (A-169 has 5), but the additional weight wasn’t worth it in my eyes. Also I am usually using Exposure delay mode and the self-timer to give the tripod time to stabilize. And don’t forget to turn VR off

I could only order mine in a set with one of the Benro ballheads. And from what I’ve heard in the forums, they aren’t the best ones, which is why I went with the cheap BH-0 head and the intention of upgrading to a better head later… And yes, the BH-0 head isn’t great. It’s almost impossible to do small adjustments, because you directly loose all directions! But it does at least have a bubble level and an attachment ring (for my BlackRapid RS-4).

It’s not Gitzo, but it’s worth it’s money! I think I’ll get some very sharp images from it as long as I remember that it can’t do wonders and keep some techniques in mind (exposure delay mode, self-timer, use bag for stabilization…)

Take care & enjoy the great weather.

Too Much Polarization

June 6, 2010 in Photography, Technique

On my recent trips I mostly shot with my Hoya HD Polarizer on. I always adjusted the angle of the filter to get the strongest effect and it always looked good in the viewfinder! Just awesome blue skies. Sadly I couldn’t check the result on the display, because it was too bright outside. Back home I imported my shots to the computer just to see that many of the shots are unusable, because the sky is horribly dark. It looked different through the viewfinder, which is related to the much lower dynamic range of the digital sensor compared to the eyes. (+ The Photo is underxposed)

It’s simply a handling error on my side. The effect of a polarization filter depends on the atmosphere and the angle to the reflecting surface. In the above image the sky was very clear and it seems like I shot in about an 90° angle to the sun. A simple rotation to lessen the strength of the polfilter, and the sky would look much more natural.

So, always check your results! I think I’ll get a Hoodman Hoodloupe for my camera…

Blackrapid RS-4 Quick Review

May 23, 2010 in Equipment, Photography

Today I unboxed the newest gadget I got from enjoyyourcamera.com. It’s a BlackRapid RS-4 camera strap. It also came with the FastenR-2. You simply screw the FastenR-2 in your tripod mount. You can tighten it much further than you might think. And you should do so! I am still kinda feared that it might come off. :/

The belt itself feels very sturdy, although I found it hard to adjust to my size. The RS-4 comes without any manual, but once I adjusted it to fit my body it feels OK so far. I’ll try it out during the next few weeks and will post my final thoughts here on the blog.

Grad ND – Why you DON’T need one!

May 21, 2010 in Equipment, Photography, Technique

Earlier this year I was about to buy a graduated neutral density filter. These filters are mostly being used to darken the sky in landscape shots. I did a lot of research and in the end wanted at least two filters in the expensive glass 100x100mm version which I would then simply hold and move in front of my lens to have some flexibility.

In the end I didn’t buy anything for three simple reasons: (1) About 100€ for two good filters is just too much for those rare scenes I would really use them (at least in my eyes), (2) It’s pretty inconvenient to carry around when traveling light and (3) I would need an additional (and expensive) filter holder for long exposures.

My solution (to at least some degree) is to use the Graduated Filter tool in Lightroom. I used this technique a lot on my recent B&W Photos. The good thing is, that you have full control about the intensity, the height, the strength and the position of the effect.

I don’t know if that’s common practice, but at least I wasn’t aware of it and didn’t do it before. Matt Kloskowski at lightroomkillertips.com did a great video about it: link.

The downside is that this doesn’t help in extreme situations. Most people say you have about 1 f-stop backup if you’re shooting RAW. You can go lower, but you will loose quality. So in very extreme situations you will still need a dedicated Grad ND, or you can do HDR or exposure fusing. But for me this technique works well enough.

Below I attached a before and after (-2 Stops) screenshot of the Graduated Filter effect in Lightroom.