family – Page 16 – Wolfgang Lonien

November 23, 2015November 23, 2015

Some photos of Zuleikha, one more of Tuna

I uploaded some photos of Zuleikha and one of Tuna today. These are like I took them with different cameras, like the Olympus E-520, E-PL1, and E-PL5 (didn’t have my E-M10 yet). Dates range from early 2010 until October of last year:

Again, I changed nothing here, there’s neither any “retouching” nor any cropping, not even exposures are changed. All I did was adding some Exif and IPTC titles and tags. Life is too short for the rest – and I’m a photographer, not a painter.

Thanks for viewing.

P.S.: Of course I asked Zuleikha, and she allowed me to upload these. That might change as she grows older, who knows… but maybe she’ll appreciate some memories as she does even now (she loves her baby pics, but these were mostly taken by Mitchie, not by me).

P.P.S.: Tuna was bribed with some cat food. Not while taking her photo with Mitchie’s camera and manually focused OM macro lens, but for allowing me to upload it 😉

November 23, 2015

Congrats…

Herzlichen Glückwunsch Schätzchen!

September 12, 2015September 12, 2015

A very interesting afternoon

As I wrote lately, Zuleikha developed some interest in stars, and in astronomy. So I bought her a little Newton telescope, and some books and a star map. And today there was one of the open door days at our local public peoples’ observatory, or in German, in our Volkssternwarte in Darmstadt. So that is where we went.

And it was interesting indeed. I talked to some people, and learned a lot, while Mitchie and Zuleikha listened to some talk, went into their library, and even had some cake. Later Zuleikha bought a photo of IC 1318, or the butterfly nebula from Mirko Boucsein, one of the members of the society. Mirko took that photo with a modified Canon 500D DSLR camera (minus the infrared filter layer on its sensor), and with a GSO 150/600mm f/4 telescope on a Skywatcher HEQ5 equatorial mount which was guided by a second camera.

I even forgot to take photos inside, and because the sky wasn’t clear, we couldn’t even look at the sun through some of their telescopes. But I was invited to come back on a Friday evening when there’s a clearer sky, and to observe some stars and/or deep sky objects together with them.

Before we left, we had to take a look over Darmstadt from the place which is called Luisenhöhe. We’ve been here, and I’ll definitely come back.

Thanks for reading.

August 29, 2015

An excursion to our Müllberg

When I told Zuleikha that today at 20:35 we’d have a full moon rising, she wanted to see it with her Nikon 8×25 binoculars. So we drove to a nearby site to which officials gave the nice name “Oberwaldberg” (I suppose because you can see over the forrests, as you will see in one of the photos I took). But it’s in fact our garbage hill, so for me it is (and stays) our “Müllberg”.

It was quite nice. Zuleikha couldn’t believe how big the moon was when coming around a corner there, and I shot it with my 25mm (50mm-equivalent) lens like all other photos of today:

When I reached the top, both Mitchie and Zuleikha were laying on their backs already, gazing at the stars. I told them that if we come back in about two weeks and the weather would be as nice as today, they’d see lots more, so this is what she wants to do. She was quite amazed that she could actually see the stars moving without any tools, just laying there and looking up (of course we are moving on our rotating earth, but that’s another story, and Zuleikha knows that already).

I also looked around a bit, and took a photo in the direction of Frankfurt:

And after going downhill again and talking about red torchlights (which wouldn’t affect our night view that much as white ones), we sat down on some rocks under some trees. I saw the big dipper, so I knew that to its right there was Polaris (and a bit further, Cassiopeia). So I pointed up 50 degrees to my right and said: “Polaris”.

Zuleikha asked how I could know this, so I explained, and I wanted to show her that this one wouldn’t move across our skies like the others do. So with the “Live Composite Mode” of my camera, and 15 exposures of 60 seconds each, I showed her:

She asked if they would have astronomy lessons in school, and I said yes, probably in physics. And now she cannot wait for that as well.

While walking back to our car, the moon was pretty bright already, so Mitchie and Zuleikha began to sing “Moon Shadow”.

So, a nice evening (and she loved to have been up until after 10pm).

Thanks for reading.

August 26, 2015August 27, 2015

Recent activities

We went for a short walk again last Sunday, tho the area we decided upon wasn’t that good for walking – not enough shadow, too many bicyclists, things like that. Anyway, here’s a photo from our walk:

And while the cat was gone for almost 24 hours, she also returned short after that.

Then it started to rain again, and the plants and trees really needed it. Mitchie had brought the latest c’t special about photography, which is quite good and interesting this time. So I read a lot and tried darktable, which can do a lot more than both my Olympus Viewer 3 (on Windows) and RawTherapee (on Linux) combined. It has a bit of a learning curve tho, so it’s too early for judgements. Here’s a first result of just playing around with it for a few minutes:

What’s also really interesting in that c’t special magazine is an article about using telescopes, so I read a lot about that as well. Even Stephen Hawking has one now, years after he wrote his brief history of time. A report about his telescope, by the proud Chinese makers, is here if you’re interested.

And in case you’re interested is star photography, you can come up to speed and learn most of what you’d have to know if you look at three episodes from Forrest Tanaka, on youtube:

Part 1 (about which scope you’d like to have),
Part 2 (about the mount, which is even more important), and
Part 3 (about how to help your telescope with tracking those stars)

This is all explained so that you can even understand it, so it’s really recommended stuff for star gazers (and probably for people who are waiting for Patrick Stewart to turn up, and to talk about having the first contact soon). 😉 Oh, and by the way: Forrest Tanaka has a nice Flickr stream as well. He seems to be good in everything he does, not only when lecturing about how to choose and use telescopes.

He’s at least certainly better than me. I just took a photo of Arcturus, using my 40-150mm lens at the longest setting. The photo and the explanation in Stellarium look like this:

Anyway, Arcturus is a red giant, about 36 light years away, and roughly 25 times the diameter of our sun (and much brighter than it as well). And it’s even older than our complete solar system. Interesting to read, at least for trekkies like me.

Update, from 3:23am: another, darker picture of a star:

And its description in Stellarium:

Thanks for reading.

August 12, 2015August 12, 2015

One photo from today

Zuleikha

Thanks for viewing.

P.S.: Here’s another one, also from today:

Tuna the cat – grumpy? Or suspicious?

Our cat isn’t in much during these days. She’s obviously enjoying the summer and the warm (or hot) weather we have at the moment. Doesn’t eat much as well, but still comes in for a round of undisturbed and safe and sound sleep. Short after I took this photo, Mitchie & Zuleikha came back with Möwenpick Panna Cotta / Raspberry ice cream, and even Tuna liked to lick some of that…

August 10, 2015August 11, 2015

A small tour

Today Mitchie wanted to draw some money from the bank, and I wanted to get a little checkup on our car. Afterwards we had to shop for food. So I suggested a small tour via my workplace (opposite of which we could draw money), and then to the car dealer which is also near to my employers’ place. And while the car was being checked upon and had some minor repair, we looked at all the new models which usually stand around at car dealers. Always fun, especially if you do it with the whole family. Here’s Zuleikha, checking the co-driver’s seat in a Toyota Verso:

Zuleikha, testing new cars

We went to a nearby big shopping center afterwards, where I also got this for myself:

Sennheiser CX 300-II Precision black – Image © Sennheiser

We paid some 28€ for these very nice in-ears, which are much more comfortable on hot days like these than my big headphones. And of course, we’ve got some things for Zuleikha & Mitchie as well.

After that it was shopping for food, and back home. By now Zuleikha, Mitchie and Tuna the cat are sleeping. A nice day.

Thanks for reading.

P.S.: No, we weren’t shopping for a new car. But having said that, our choices would have been:

Avensis (Zuleikha, and she’s right – that one is really comfortable)
Yaris Hybrid (as a small car which would be more than enough for my daily commute), and in the end, we agreed on:
Auris Hybrid (as the family car which would make most sense for us all together)

So while ours still runs like a charm, we know what to save some money for.

July 7, 2015

One photo of me, two of the cat

Yesterday, Zuleikha took my picture, using my camera, lens, and studio strobe with a beauty dish attached:

And today, I took some of Tuna. Here’s one with a bounced studio strobe, and another one from outside:

All taken with the Olympus Micro Zuiko 45mm/1.8 lens, at apertures from f/2 to f/7.1. At the moment, and for living and breathing subjects, it’s by far my most used lens.

Thanks for viewing.

March 21, 2015

Two close-ups

Today I mounted my ZD 50mm/2 macro lens from the Four Thirds system onto my OM-D E-M10 camera, using Mitchie’s MMF-2 adapter. Here are two photos which I took using that combination at f/3.5 or f/4 together with one of my studio strobes and a gridded beauty dish:

Carrera S

Zuleikha, March 2015

Thanks for viewing.

March 15, 2015

Two together

“What is she doing there?”

Cat and girl

Thanks for viewing.