Two from yesterday:
And one from today:
Thanks for viewing.
First (low light) cat portrait of this year
It’s still a bit too warm outside for this time of the year, but we are getting some rain from the West and – elsewhere – some colder air and snow from the East. Anyway, it’s cloudy and not too bright, and Tuna (our cat) is seeking the warmth wherever she can get it. Like on Mitchie’s lap, who was sitting in front of her notebook. So, lit by pretty much only that laptop, here’s a first picture of Tuna for this year:
Tuna the cat, January 2016
Thanks for viewing.
First portrait of this year
From today:
Sue
Thanks for viewing.
Impressions from bowling
Today (Tuesday) Zuleikha invited some of her friends to her birthday party. She wanted to go bowling again, so this is what the kids did. I took some photos, most of which I cannot show without getting allowance for that first, so here are only two:
Impressionen vom Bowling
Impressionen vom Bowling
As you can probably see, the hosts dimmed the lights and switched on disco lights, and the kids were absolutely delighted about that, but for photography that was of course a challenge. I used the brightest lens I had (Panasonic Leica DG Summilux 25mm/1.4) wide open and the camera at ISO 1600, and still I’ve got a lot of movement blur. But that often adds to the vibe, because the kids were moving simultaneously and most of their time, so in lots of photos I have exactly one detail (face, hand, ball etc.) sharp.
Just uploaded a few of them into my dropbox for the other parents, and of course for the kids as well.
We all think we’ve had a great time, and hopefully all of Zuleikha’s guests enjoyed it also. Should anyone of you read this, then thanks again for coming; it was a pleasure to have you around.
Thanks for reading.
End of December, short before midnight
I was reading Kirk Tuck’s “most fun camera purchase” article about his Olympus OM-D E-M5 Mk2, and decided to go out for a short walk with my E-M10 (first version, not Mk2). And since I also read his article about a Nikkor 28mm lens lately, I decided to bring only my Pansonic Lumix 14mm, which gives a similar angle of view on a Micro Four Thirds camera. And with that combination and out short before midnight, I took this one:
End of December, short before midnight
Just a shot from a store across the street, and across its empty parking lot. And for me, it’s the E-M10 which fills the role of “fun”, and it’s also all the camera I probably need – I’m no pro like Kirk, so that one and my 14, 25, and 45mm lenses are what I currently consider as “my camera”.
Technical info: ISO 100, f/5, 50 seconds from tripod. You can always click on the image to get to Flickr and check Exif data or to see or download it in full resolution if you like.
Thanks for reading.
The force awakens
We’re back from Cologne on Zuleikha’s birthday. I took some photos which are only interesting to our relatives plus one portrait of someone who still has to approve it for public display, otherwise I can’t show that as well.
But I still got a portrait of a robot called “BB-8“:
BB-8
Cute little thing which can be controlled by a smartphone app, or which can explore the area autonomously. I’ve heard it can do some other things, but haven’t really dug deeper into it until now, since for a toy it’s pretty expensive.
Thanks for viewing.
Season’s greetings, and happy holidays!
It’s one day before Christmas eve, and Zuleikha wanted to show us something she saw when visiting the Christmas market with her class and schoolmates. So we went to Frankfurt after shopping, only to find that the market is being disassembled already, and not a single booth was left open. But the weather was nice (at 12 degrees plus, it’s really too warm for the start of winter which was yesterday), and so we walked the city a bit, down to the river and back. And I took some unusual Christmas photo of some birds in flight:
Seagulls and swans at the river Main in Frankfurt
We’ll be off for a few days, visiting relatives we don’t see that often, and Tuna the cat will guard the house:
Tuna the cat, December 2015
Some friends will care for and feed the cat while we’ll be gone.
So whatever you will celebrate (or not), have a good time.
And as always, thanks for reading.
P.S., with technical info:
I’m back to my 25mm lens on the E-M10 camera, and it felt a bit like coming home – maybe I really got used to this 50mm-equivalent focal length. So the photos above from today were both taken with that combination, the one of Tuna with f/1.4 (lens fully open), hand-held at 1/8s at ISO1600 (thanks for the in-body image stabilisation!), and the bird photo with f/4 and 1/1000s at ISO200.
P.P.S.:
Here’s another one, taken today (Dec. 24th) in our living room. Same lens, this time with an aperture of f/2:
Zuleikha, December 2015
Again, season’s greetings and happy holidays from us.
Thanks for reading.
Fifty shades of black
Someone recently asked about an article which I’ve written earlier, but which cannot be restored – we don’t have a database backup from that time. It was about the blacks in my photos. And today I’ve got a somehow similar question by email from a friend. And looking in front of myself, on my desk I saw lots of black (or at least very dark) stuff, so I decided to take a photo of it:
About the technique I use:
– first, I make sure that I have the correct exposure. While for many outdoor scenes I can trust the center-weighted setting of my cameras, indoors I always use a light meter, especially when using a studio strobe like I did here.
– second, and maybe of equal importance: I use the widest possible colour space I can get from my cameras, which is AdobeRGB (instead of sRGB). Some modern printing systems can go even wider, but there aren’t many non-pro cameras on the market which can be set to take Profoto images.
– I expose “correctly”, which means I take everything I can get into the 12 bit dynamics of my cameras. If you have 14 or even 16 bit, all the better for you.
– then I convert from the raw .orf files to 16 bit .tif using the Olympus Viewer 3 raw converter, checking for any over- or underexposure again, and also for a correct white balance (which was set in camera already, but sometimes it can still be enhanced). OV3 doesn’t exist for my Linux machine, so I dual-boot into Win10 or fire up s small Win7 virtual machine to do this. I’m on SSD nowadays, so both ways are fast.
– back in Linux, I use RawTherapee for final checks, conversions to black & white, cropping, and to give images some more Exif data, like a title and some tags.
That’s mostly it. I think the most important steps are to set your camera to AdobeRGB (or to whatever the biggest colour space it offers), and to expose correctly. Having a current sensor with a wide dynamic range (check DxO for this) also helps.
The rest – and any post processing – is up to personal bias and taste. Look at Ming Thein who does a very good job concerning the blacks in his images. Another example would be the Leica photographer Thorsten Overgaard.
Hoping that this is useful,
thanks for reading.
During and after a short Sunday walk
We were out for a short walk today, and I took this one of Zuleikha:
Then later we split – Zuleikha and Mitchie wanted to deliver some invitations for Zuleikha’s upcoming birthday party, and I turned back home. On the way I saw one of the two Maine Coon cats of a neighbour family. It wasn’t easy to take her picture, because most of the time she was smooching around my legs, and much too close:
Back at home, I had cleaned up part of our bookshelf lately, and emptied it of lots of old and outdated computer magazines. Tuna liked to scratch those magazines, and to sharpen her claws on them, but now she made use of the empty space:
All photos taken with the Olympus OM-D E-M10 (my personal “camera of the year”), and with the Olympus M.Zuiko 45mm/1.8 at f/2.5.
Thanks for viewing.
The moon over Mörfelden-Walldorf
The moon over Mörfelden-Walldorf (listen to: The Moon over Mtatsminda)
Enjoy the music, and thanks for viewing.