One Month, One Lens #2.1 50mm Conclusion
12/03/17 19:01
It was kind of a short month and enough bad weather to keep me from shooting an awful lot. Anyhow I raised the camera to my eye as often as possible, to train to see in 50mm. What should I say: I got better in it but it is still not my way of seeing.Read more...
One Month, One Lens #2 50mm
12/02/17 14:18
In advance: I have shot lots of very nice images with 50mm lenses. I also hate the 50mm focal length.
Read more...Do it like Fuji!
18/12/16 19:46
I shoot Nikon and love my D750. A good friend of mine shoots the original X100 and tells me every time we meet, how impressed he still is and how Fuji keeps killing it caveats with every Firmware update a little more. I was in the market for a Lightroom alternative for some weeks now and have finally decided on Luminar by MacPhun. Why did I choose Luminar, because Macphun does it like Fuji. They have released Luminar and told everyone what they plan for the near future. Not even a month into the release, MacPhun gave birth to the first update and already fulfilled a lot of the promises made on release.
Both Fuji and now MacPhun communicate their plans for the consumer relatively open and they stay true to their promises. Also I don't have the feeling of getting something 90% percent nice and than having to pay for the company to try and get it 100% right.
With Adobe Lightroom, more and more releases are nice to get when you have the subscription anyway but didn't persuade me to upgrade my Lightroom on a full prize basis.
I think, that this strategy has a big part in Fujis mirrorless success. Talking to the users and getting them to love their products even more, the longer they use them. The same goes for MacPhun. I hope they keep that pace true!
I'm working on more and longer articles but wanted to get this out! Have a nice Christmas everyone!
Both Fuji and now MacPhun communicate their plans for the consumer relatively open and they stay true to their promises. Also I don't have the feeling of getting something 90% percent nice and than having to pay for the company to try and get it 100% right.
With Adobe Lightroom, more and more releases are nice to get when you have the subscription anyway but didn't persuade me to upgrade my Lightroom on a full prize basis.
I think, that this strategy has a big part in Fujis mirrorless success. Talking to the users and getting them to love their products even more, the longer they use them. The same goes for MacPhun. I hope they keep that pace true!
I'm working on more and longer articles but wanted to get this out! Have a nice Christmas everyone!
Wrapping up the year - state of my nation
25/12/15 18:01
2015 has been very nice to me. I was able to enjoy most of the year in the company of my first son all day. Additionally the last quarter of 2015 brought a new, bigger flat and a new, more exciting, more challenging job to the table. It was a really really good year aside from my photography.
Concerning photography it has been an interesting year. I left Samsung and sold all my NX equipment to get back to DSLR. It was the right move for me for many reasons, not only for the fact that Samsung might ditch their NX camera business on the whole but also as I rediscovered the joy of seeing the world through a Pentaprism instead of a "crappy little television", to quote camerastoretv host Nick Devlin.
I also slimmed down my gear to only having four lenses (28mm, 50mm, 85mm and 135mm) ,the two wider ones being autofocus. It would have saved me some money and a lot of time if I had gotten to this point right after selling my mirrorless gear but this is not the way how life goes.
Concerning creativity I learned a lot from my One Month, One Lens project and will try to bring this experiment to 2016 as well. Aside from this, I mostly photographed my kid and tremendously enjoyed the faster AF perfomance of my SLR compared to my mirrorless before.
I learned to appreciate the "real" focal lengths of full frame and became a little addicted to my fast 28mm.
I also learnd the downs of bigger sensors, such as the corner performance of lenses, which has never been something I was very worried about with my APS-C, let alone 4/3rds, cameras. Also, the Fullframe sensor hasn't brought as much to the table of image quality as I have though beforehand.
I don't know what 2016 will bring but 2015 ends very nicely for me and I'm looking forward anxiously.
A merry christmas and happy new year to all of you!
Concerning photography it has been an interesting year. I left Samsung and sold all my NX equipment to get back to DSLR. It was the right move for me for many reasons, not only for the fact that Samsung might ditch their NX camera business on the whole but also as I rediscovered the joy of seeing the world through a Pentaprism instead of a "crappy little television", to quote camerastoretv host Nick Devlin.
I also slimmed down my gear to only having four lenses (28mm, 50mm, 85mm and 135mm) ,the two wider ones being autofocus. It would have saved me some money and a lot of time if I had gotten to this point right after selling my mirrorless gear but this is not the way how life goes.
Concerning creativity I learned a lot from my One Month, One Lens project and will try to bring this experiment to 2016 as well. Aside from this, I mostly photographed my kid and tremendously enjoyed the faster AF perfomance of my SLR compared to my mirrorless before.
I learned to appreciate the "real" focal lengths of full frame and became a little addicted to my fast 28mm.
I also learnd the downs of bigger sensors, such as the corner performance of lenses, which has never been something I was very worried about with my APS-C, let alone 4/3rds, cameras. Also, the Fullframe sensor hasn't brought as much to the table of image quality as I have though beforehand.
I don't know what 2016 will bring but 2015 ends very nicely for me and I'm looking forward anxiously.
A merry christmas and happy new year to all of you!
One Month, One Lens #1.2 Conclusion on the 28mm
15/10/15 16:20
It's already been a month, I thinkto myself today, 11.10.2015 as I write this article. I wouldn't have though that time went by so fast and maybe it wouldn't, if there hadn't been a toddler around in my life.Read more...
Copying one person is called stealing, copying multiple is called research - Youtube discoveries
04/10/15 18:59
Recently, I've become bored with the notoriously "must be funny" videos of DigitalRev. Also thecamerastoretv didn't put out a lot of content either. I have noticed this more and more now, as I'm at home, caring for my son since nearly ten months. I always watched a lot of youtube videos, starting of with the enthusiastic Gordon Liang of cameralabs.com back in the days.
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One Month One Lens #1.1 28mm
24/09/15 20:40
It has been another week with the 28mm f1.8 glued to my 5D. Recently I've figured out more and more what the field of view of that 28mm is like. I played around a lot with trying to look in 28mm as well. It is as if the field of view of the lens ends just shortly outside the borders of my sharp sight.
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Read more...One Month One Lens #1 28mm
15/09/15 20:56
Some days ago, adoramatv posted a video on youtube rediscovering an article, Steve Huff wrote back in June 2011 about how shooting with a single focal length over a period of half a year can benefit your creativity…
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Optically again
17/08/15 09:15
About a month ago, I wrote a short blog post accompanying my newest gallery about the City-Nord business complex. As noted in that article, I'm no longer using Samsung mirrorless cameras.
I will not go over what's so bad about Samsung that it drove me back to DSLR, because Samsung does a great job in mirrorless and the decision was completely based on gut feeling. The biggest point for me was my desire to go back to a viewfinder and actually none of the electronic viewfinders could convince me in the end.
After trying out many different DSLRs like the Nikon D700, Pentax K-3, Olympus E-3 and Canon EOS 5D, I settled on the old, tried and true EOS 5D Mark 1/Classic/Queen Mum, however you wanna call it. I chose it because it felt right in my hands from the first touch and didn't wear off, like the D700 after some days. The Pentax K-3 didn't convince me with its image quality. It produced just technically very good images but somehow I didn't like them at all (a first for me...). The Olympus has a nice body, is tremendously well built, on a level with the K-3 and a step above Nikon and Canon. Also it handles beautifully. In the end, I decided against the E-3 and its beautiful colors, as I didn't want to spend money on a system that was dead already, no matter how good the lenses are.
I'm shooting with the EOS 5D for about a month now and am really enjoying it. The camera produces nearly perfect skin tones right out of the box and the image quality doesn't need to fear the comparison with modern cameras if shot in RAW.
Together with the camera, I got three Sigma lenses, the 15-30mm Ultrawide, the 50mm f1.4 DG (not the Art) and the 105mm Macro with OS. All three are really satisfying so far. I also got a Canon 580EX Flash and even though I like manual flash very much, it works a treat in E-TTL mode.
I will write more about the lenses and maybe the camera as times goes by but for the moment, let this be a status update on my gear.
As a side note, I don't want anyone to go away from Samsung just because I did, as it was a totally personal decision, that doesn't need to be the right route for anyone else! Samsung makes great cameras and lenses and I still believe in the observations I made on their gear!
I will not go over what's so bad about Samsung that it drove me back to DSLR, because Samsung does a great job in mirrorless and the decision was completely based on gut feeling. The biggest point for me was my desire to go back to a viewfinder and actually none of the electronic viewfinders could convince me in the end.
After trying out many different DSLRs like the Nikon D700, Pentax K-3, Olympus E-3 and Canon EOS 5D, I settled on the old, tried and true EOS 5D Mark 1/Classic/Queen Mum, however you wanna call it. I chose it because it felt right in my hands from the first touch and didn't wear off, like the D700 after some days. The Pentax K-3 didn't convince me with its image quality. It produced just technically very good images but somehow I didn't like them at all (a first for me...). The Olympus has a nice body, is tremendously well built, on a level with the K-3 and a step above Nikon and Canon. Also it handles beautifully. In the end, I decided against the E-3 and its beautiful colors, as I didn't want to spend money on a system that was dead already, no matter how good the lenses are.
I'm shooting with the EOS 5D for about a month now and am really enjoying it. The camera produces nearly perfect skin tones right out of the box and the image quality doesn't need to fear the comparison with modern cameras if shot in RAW.
Together with the camera, I got three Sigma lenses, the 15-30mm Ultrawide, the 50mm f1.4 DG (not the Art) and the 105mm Macro with OS. All three are really satisfying so far. I also got a Canon 580EX Flash and even though I like manual flash very much, it works a treat in E-TTL mode.
I will write more about the lenses and maybe the camera as times goes by but for the moment, let this be a status update on my gear.
As a side note, I don't want anyone to go away from Samsung just because I did, as it was a totally personal decision, that doesn't need to be the right route for anyone else! Samsung makes great cameras and lenses and I still believe in the observations I made on their gear!
Hamburg City Nord - Blue Hour
11/07/15 12:17
Yesterday Evening, I took the opportunity of a brilliantly clear sky and pleasant temperatures to take stroll during the blue hour.
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