Autumn has been at work for quite some time, but today the weather was really beautiful, so I took a longer walk around the Aasee and the Schlossgarten and took some photos. A small selection is attached, I just love the colors in the autumn sun. The walk ended with delicious Turkish food at Frauenstraße 24. The photos were taken with the Leica M8.
New55 Film. There seems to be a project in the works that wants to reinvent the Polaroid Type 55 film (the one with the simultaneous positive and negative). Their project - according to their own statements - already has successes to show, including providing a correctly exposed positive and negative (with Polaroid, only one of the two was ever correctly exposed). Hmm, if this really takes off, I'll take a few packs of it!
Pixelmator. Cheaper, smaller and visually much more appealing than Photoshop Elements Editor. And it has the Healing Brush (and an interesting alternative, where you simply paint a selection and then heal this entire selection). And supports Lion features - so versions, full screen etc. I got it, PSE will probably be filed under "paying tuition" in the round file.
The weather wasn't the best, so it was dry and not too cold, but unfortunately the sky was rather averse to photography - only milky mush in the sky. Never mind, still took photos and still had fun. The spice museum is really great, especially because of the smells. The Cap San Diego is interesting, albeit somewhat meager (the engine room is of course great, but with the cabins only a few are visible and the whole thing is rather sparse, they could make more of it). The exhibition "A Suitcase Full of Hope" is interesting, although it consists of 90% of set-up cardboard walls with printing. So much reading is in order. And the evening at the landing bridges is for me always a nice finish.
Adobe Carousel: Mini-Lightroom for iPhone and iPad available. Hmm - from the description, it sounds like what Apple offers with Photostream. Ok, Photostream doesn't have non-destructive changes, and the editing options are significantly larger, but you can also handle this with Snapseed, just like sharing. On the other hand, Carousel has the clear advantage that it is foreseeable when Android and Windows will also be supported - and Android support could be quite interesting if Apple doesn't get the iPhone 4S problems under control (or Deutsche Telekom doesn't get the SIM problems under control - it doesn't matter who is to blame). I would be interested to know if you can bring Lightroom Presets into Carousel and make them available on your devices - that would be quite an interesting thing, because you could use your preferred looks everywhere. And then it would be easy to use it for taking pictures on the go.
Oh, Apple… oh, Aperture… | massenbelichtungswaffen.de. Since I often wonder if I should try Aperture - this article has cured me from spending the 70 euros for a longer time. Because what good is an image manager and image editor that might have problems with my (current or future) cameras ...
Not much to write about, everyone knows it and it's not the first time in the blog here. But the weather was nice and Juliana wanted to go, so why not. It was cold. And colorful. And loud.
Pictures from the concert tonight. It was an absolutely fantastic concert, the place was packed and the atmosphere was great. The musicians put on an impressive show. And as it happened, we had a table right in front of the stage, there was nothing between us and the musicians. Accordingly, the pictures turned out that way.
I've been creating more black and white versions again lately, also on Flickr - and they needed to be collected here again. Here they are - unsorted and uncommented.
It's been a while since I last uploaded my Flickr photos to the blog. Here they are - unsorted and uncommented. So the colorful ones. Ok, and a few toned black and white images (the automatic script does not recognize them as monochrome).
Throwable Panoramic Ball Camera // Jonas Pfeil. That's a really cool concept. A ball with padding and a lot of small cameras built in, arranged in such a way that the ball can take a full 360-degree panorama with one click. You just throw the ball up and get the panorama back. Way Cool. Want one!
A Lesser Photographer - A Manifesto. I'm not big on manifestos, but here someone has simply written down their thoughts on photography and reduced them to 10 essential points. Interesting about this: they drastically reduced their equipment in the process. And in their manifesto, they provide the reasoning behind it. A lot of sensible information compactly summarized—it's definitely worth taking a look. You won't become any less intelligent from it.
Kodak Said to Weigh Bankruptcy Filing to Clear Path for Selling Patents - Bloomberg. Ouch - that would be tough, among other things for Leica. Because their digital Ms get the digital part from Kodak. And that could also become negative for M8 and M9 users, if there is no replacement electronics available there. I have already been bitten by Kodak once, when my DCS 520 died (and that was only the digital part from Kodak - the analog part from Canon was problem-free).
Ricoh GXR A12 Field Report - just when you think you've made your decision, someone comes along and throws everything up in the air again, and you have to sort it all out from the beginning. Sure, the NEX 5n, which I favor, probably has the better overall features - but the lack of an anti-aliasing filter really appeals to me, as does the fact that microprisms are also used here to optimize imaging with M optics. Well, I'll have to ponder a bit longer. But even after the article, it will probably remain with the NEX system - because with the M8 I already have a compromise camera, the GXR doesn't really deliver much more beyond that - and the technical gimmicks (video and panoramas) are just fun with the NEX. Especially since the linked text suggests that the 5n also has a rather weak AA filter.
Fujifilm FinePix X10. I'm a sucker for well-made retro design, and this one hits all the right notes for me. Although I would probably have trouble justifying the 599 Euro price tag for a 2/3" chip with a fixed 28-112mm equivalent lens and a purely optical tunnel viewfinder. But just the fact that Fuji took the trouble to make a pseudo-leather finish is nice.
Henri Cartier-Bresson | Adam Marelli Photo. An interesting article that examines the geometric basis of HCB photos and thereby makes one aspect of HCB's photography more understandable.
Glass cover replacement for Sony NEX LCD screen | Photoclubalpha. Well blogged, this could also be worth it for my NEX 3 - the display now looks rather silly with the rubbed-off anti-glare coating. At least I could remove the no longer particularly well-functioning film - according to reports from other users, the glass underneath alone should also be quite good.
Juliana and I decided to go to Norderney quite spontaneously today - not for long, just a short detour, to dip our feet in the North Sea and eat a shrimp roll, to go on a ship on the sea again, see seals, watch seagulls - all that stuff that only works up there. It was a beautiful day and the weather mostly cooperated. From Münster, it's quite easy to get there by train - and you can book the ship at the same time.
The Olympus 45 1.8 Micro 4/3 Lens Review by Steve Huff. Okay, with Steve you always have to subtract some enthusiasm, but the 45/1.8 really sounds very exciting. The Micro 4/3 system is finally gaining momentum. Some of the latest lenses that have been announced and actually released are very interesting. The same goes for the Olympus 12/2.0 or the Panasonic 14-42 Powered Zoom (yes, yes, powered zoom sounds like a compact camera, but hey, the lens is extremely small and thus ideal for the GF1 for an always-with-you camera with a bit more flexibility than the 20mm). I'm still torn between the Sony E-Mount and the Micro 4/3 system, but in the end, it will come down to the lenses - what good is a system that is better in terms of the sensor if the lens selection is too limited. Sony is definitely releasing new bodies too quickly - and too slowly new lenses.
Photosmith - the iPad mobile companion for Adobe Lightroom | Latest news, challenges, and progress from the developers.. I should check this out, as it allows you to sync images from the iPad to Lightroom and with the upcoming new plugin, even set up a bidirectional sync via a Publish Service in Lightroom, so that you can keep your image collections up to date on both devices. Very interesting for on the go (Camera Connection Kit) and for presentations to the family, where you can e.g. immediately indicate with tags or color markings what prints the family wants. Although it remains to be seen what will become of Adobe Carousel - it is said to offer similar features.
Adobe Lightroom - Customising Camera Defaults. Because I always forget how to do this - you don't often get a new camera and therefore this is done only rarely and then it disappears from memory again. So blogged, so I can find it again later.
Over the weekend, we were in Legten at the Dalienkorso - I had coincidentally noticed that it fell exactly at the end of my mother-in-law's visit, so we naturally took the opportunity. After all, it only happens every 3 years. The decorated floats were truly impressive again. Everyone had fun, even though the weather wasn't entirely cooperative and it rained intermittently (and it poured heavily towards the end).
Nikon Announces J1 and V1 Mirrorless Cameras and New Lens System. Nikon is steadily building the second smallest interchangeable lens camera system. I mean, is it really something to strive for to be the eternal second? Nikon claims to be the smallest, but the Pentax Q is actually a bit smaller. Oh, and Nikon only achieves this small size by using chips below m4/3 - with a 2.7x crop factor, Nikon no longer has to worry about the usually terrible bokeh of Nikon - you can't see much of it anyway there (okay, it's a bit better than the 5.7x "crop factor" of the Pentax Q system - but it's only the second smallest). If this is Nikon's big move, the big answer to the EVIL market, well.
Sony NEX-7 First Impressions. Very interesting article. The NEX-7 really sounds like the camera I've been waiting for - the NEX-3 has meanwhile become something like my favorite, simply because it is so wonderfully uncomplicated and usually works very reliably. The few quirks it has (for example, the anti-reflective coating on the display, which is slowly rubbed off by the fingers) I can easily ignore. And also interesting are the image examples of the Zeiss 24/1.8 - this lens atomizes the Leica 24/1.4. And it is significantly better in price than the Leica - and fully integrated into the AF of the NEX. Now I just have to convince the finance ministry at home ...
Ricoh GR Digital IV Preview: 1. Introduction: Digital Photography Review. Suddenly, my nice little old GRD II looks outdated. Wow. The image stabilization is particularly interesting - sure, at 28mm you don't need it, but in low-light situations it would sometimes be really nice. And the even higher resolution screen is not to be sneezed at. Built-in HDR and the fact that the tilt sensor not only detects horizontal rotation but also front/back tilt (tilt) comes into play as well. What the hybrid AF actually brings remains to be seen - I never really had problems with it. The GRD III was, in my opinion, only a marginal update, but the GRD IV sounds really good.
A small collection of photos from our trip to Bremen. Nothing special - mainly because I had the camera set to 3200 ISO, and only noticed this at home. As a result, the images are more noisy than I would like, and the dynamic range was also a bit limited. But it's impressive how the NEX-3 saved me even with such a mistake.
I have uploaded new pictures to Flickr. Here they are - unsorted and uncommented.
Adobe announces Carousel - cloud-based image service: Digital Photography Review. Doesn't sound uninteresting at all. The engine used should be the one from Lightroom, with everything fully automatically synchronized between devices and editing possible on all devices. It will be interesting to see if it offers integration with Lightroom - that's my main image editor - and whether it also supports automatic offloading or external drives (for all the many gigabytes of images I have).
Instead of including the pictures here, there is only a reference to an album of pictures taken by my mother-in-law - the official photos are still pending (and I didn't take any myself).
FLASH PLAYER NOT SUPPORTED
Panasonic launches Lumix G X Vario PZ 14-42mm F3.5-5.6 OIS pancake: Digital Photography Review. Due to the development of Sony, I am tempted to sell my Panasonic device and focus entirely on the larger chip (and possibly add a NEX 7), but this pancake zoom from Panasonic is really appealing for a compact setup. Even on the GH1, it would then be an impressively compact but flexible package.
Sony-August-2011-New-Products. Oy, take a look at the part about the NEX7. Two configurable dials, 2.3MP ELV and 24 MP APS chip. And only slightly larger than the NEX5. That thing really excites me.
Pictures from the Gimbter Kleinkunstmarkt - some of the more normal versions can be seen on Flickr. I just played around with the presets and some more exotic settings in Lightroom. I need that from time to time.
Sony NEX-7 full specs and images | Photo Rumors. Looks very interesting, even though I wouldn't really need the 24 megapixels. But the built-in electronic viewfinder would be nice. Besides, it looks quite nice and doesn't seem to be quite as absurdly small, so you can throw it in your backpack, but also hold it well. Of course, you have to see it in real life first - Sony is very big on leaking and then announcing but then never delivering (see the various optics that were on the roadmap and still don't exist). And the price of $1000 mentioned in rumors is not exactly thrilling. Let's see.
It was the night flea market again and we took a look. Haul: a flower vase for 1.50 Euro. And a nice evening walk.
I took my M8 for a walk last Saturday - and that's the result. Instead of the mushrooms, there was the wild goulash pot that I posted a few days ago. It was also delicious. But somehow, when I look at the photos ...
Ricoh GXR Mount A12 Preview: 1. Introduction: Digital Photography Review. Looks very interesting - especially the operation of the GRX is similar to my GRD, and that is really great. The GRX just looks like a camera and not like a deformed child's toy. In any case, Ricoh has done it right, at least on paper: no anti-aliasing filter and focus peaking. The missing anti-aliasing filter always excites me in the pictures from the M8 and the focus peaking is the feature from the new Sony firmware that has excited me the most. I'm curious to see what it will cost, the module (announcement is 650 dollars, but street prices always deviate) - the body is now under 300 euros really cheap to get. And around 200 euros for the additional viewfinder. If the module is cheaper than the two currently available A12 modules, then the GXR could be a pretty brilliant alternative for Leica-M lenses.
This is the strange name of a beautiful art event in Münster, which is taking place for the eleventh time this year. Artists exhibit their works in allotment gardens, public places, and other locations right in the city. In Münster, this usually takes place in Kinderhaus. Juliana and I visited two of the allotment gardens in Kinderhaus (Heidegrund and Bergbusch) today and looked at the artworks and gardens there. I particularly liked Heidegrund, very many flowers and overall wonderfully colorful.
On Safari. Interesting article by someone who once did a safari differently than usual - instead of the bulky 35mm DSLR, he took a Panasonic GH2 (for the large zoom range) and a Leica S2. Very interesting observations in the article and also a few nice photos.
No, this is not the worship of evil, but simply my thoughts on camera technology, which has undergone the greatest changes in recent times and from which the most new systems have emerged - EVIL cameras, i.e. cameras with Electronic Viewfinder and Interchangeable Lenses. Whether it's the Micro-4/3 system from Panasonic or Olympus, or the NEX system from Sony, or one of the other new systems in the category. I am always amazed how much this has changed photography for me - simply through the availability of really compact cameras that I actually have with me.
Until a few years ago, I still had a Canon EOS 10D - a really great device with good image quality and the performance of the usual digital SLRs. Ok, towards the end it was no longer up to date, there were already several new generations (when I sold it, the 50D had just come out), but that didn't matter to me - the image quality left nothing to be desired.
But the size! The camera itself was not exactly small (though not as big a monster as the usual professional devices), but the lenses were really heavy. I only had a few lenses - mainly the 35/1.4L and the 100/2.8 Macro (my autocorrect just wanted to correct that to Macho - considering the weight, perhaps not entirely wrong). Take the camera with both lenses? Uh, no thanks, rather not. And when I had them with me, it was just a camera with quite classic functions. Video, just because you see something funny that you want to capture as a little film? No.
Ok, today many DSLRs also have live view and filming, but they have not become smaller - they are still quite large devices due to the principle. The small EVIL systems, on the other hand, save a lot of space just by the missing mirror box. And this applies not only to the housing - optics can often be built more compact with the same image circle if the distance to the chip plane is smaller. And then the possibility of adaptation! I can adapt almost everything on my NEX-3 that I still have lying around at home in terms of old optics. Very pleasant, because even the optics of my old Contax RTS III were significantly more compact than current DSLR lenses, and if I want to be really compact, I can put the Leica lenses on it.
What has changed for me as a result: I have the reflex "throw the camera in the backpack" much more often than before - the NEX-3 was not expensive, so you don't think much about the transport, in the backpack and good. It doesn't produce much weight with the standard zoom and you have almost everything you need. The image quality itself always surprises me - and in a positive way. I hardly believe that my 10D was really better (on the contrary, the sufficient quality up to 3200 ISO on the NEX makes shots possible that I would not have even thought about before). And the focus-peek on the NEX is better with manual lenses than the focusing aids of old manual SLRs (at least with my eye values).
All in all, the investment in an EVIL system (ok, in my case actually in two systems, since I also have the Panasonic equipment) was a real gain. Even if most of my photo friends would probably wrinkle their noses at the family photos and pure snapshots that I take - hey, I'm getting married soon, I have to get used to family pictures, the time of wild art experiments (which were not really better) is over.
In the end, only one thing is important to me: that photography is fun for me. And that is the case again with the new compact cameras. And what more do you want.
The whole show was really a blast of colors and sounds. Quite crazy and loud. The whole show started at Servatii Square and then went through the city center to the cathedral - at the beginning the cars were still white, then they were pulled through the city with a tractor and painted while doing so, then hung on the clothesline to dry. At the end there was still a blessing from one of the artists in a bishop's costume (fits with the cathedral in the background, and in Germany the car is sacred). In any case, it was something quite unusual for Münster - and had an impressive turnout, the whole action was accompanied by large numbers of visitors. If you want a little acoustic impression, I have put together a small film from a few clips I made.
Elements+. Fun - apparently, Photoshop Elements is not really a cut-down version of Photoshop, but in reality only a cut-down GUI for the Photoshop kernel - many functions are still available internally. And with the patch, you should be able to make these functions accessible again.
Elemental - Integrating Photoshop Elements with Lightroom. I should check this out, as the integration of PSE as a simple external editor is quite limited and cumbersome.
Forgot all about taking the photos and that they were still in the camera. Well, nothing special, but I find the old clockwork fascinating (I find any old machinery fascinating).
This time it was a quiche with bell peppers and leeks. I'll skip the explanation of how to make a quiche, as I've already done that here. So the dough and the egg mixture were the same as before. The vegetable filling was simply bacon, leeks, and later bell peppers in the pan. The egg mixture also contained fresh cilantro, and there was plenty of cumin in the vegetables. Since Juliana sautéed the bacon and vegetables this time, nothing was fried. And the dough was - thanks to a bit less milk - also much firmer and more stable. And somehow, we both ate way too much.
Since my sister sings in the gospel choir Millima Mabonde in Nordwalde (and Altenberge), Juliana and I attended the summer concert. The guest choir was Rainbow Glory from Nottuln. Juliana was enthusiastic, even though she naturally couldn't understand the lyrics (she never learned English).
Digital cameras: Ricoh buys Pentax - Golem.de. Hmm, this could really become interesting, as both Pentax and Ricoh have a lot of interesting ideas. And Pentax also brings the necessary photographic know-how (which is also present at Ricoh, but rather at an "amateur" level). The question then, of course, is what will happen to things like the Pentax Q and Ricoh GRX - they are at least overlapping in their offerings.
We were there in the evening - on Fridays there's always fireworks, this time we remembered to go in time. And I was pleasantly surprised how well the NEX-3 performed while photographing the fireworks (manual exposure and focus set, the screen is really helpful for roughly assessing the correct exposure time). I also made a small film to try that out.
The Online Photographer: The Pentax Q System. Pentax jumps into the pool of small system cameras, but adds a twist: just as they once responded to the half-frame format with an 110 cassette system camera, they now deliver a compact system camera. Mini chip with interchangeable optics - and according to the lineup of lenses that will be available at launch, it's a bit more geared towards a fun camera. However, the 110 Pentax was also, on the one hand, a fun camera, but on the other hand, quite serious for some purposes - because at Pentax, even the fun is well crafted. Therefore, the Q-System could well be interesting for one or the other.
Firmware 04 für Sony NEX Kameras - if you have one of these cameras, go ahead, download and install. The art filters are at best funny (funny in the Hipstamatik sense), but what really rocks is the focus peak. The edges with the strongest contrast are then optically marked in the image, which enables really trouble-free manual focusing. This might not be important for AF lenses - but for those who, like me, want to use manual lenses via adapter, it's simply brilliant. After installation, I already played around with the Zeiss 50mm 1.4, which works really well. It gets really exciting when I then put the NEX-3 behind my Contax macro equipment.
Dirty lens article. Afraid of scratching the front lens of your camera or worried about a bit of dust or fingerprints? Read the article, check out the example pictures. Or also this article here ("scratches"? I'd rather call that "destroyed"). And next time, just keep taking photos, because often it turns out better than you fear.