In Cologne was Photokina time this week. From Wednesday to Saturday many companies around photographing were showing their new products: cameras, lenses, printers, imaging trends and so on. In the past, this fair opened the doors every second year at the end of September.
Starting with next year, they are changing their schedule to an annual event in May.
This upcoming change might already had an effect on this years event. It was the smallest Photokina I’ve ever visited and the shortest time I ever spent on a fair. Also, the opening duration was shortened. It was open from Wednesday to Saturday instead of Monday to Sunday in the past.
Less exhibitions, smaller booths (expect Sony, Nikon, Canon and Panasonic). No major announcement (expect the new DSLMs by Nikon and Canon or the new lens mount alignment of Leica, Panasonic and Sigma called L-Mount). Many well known brands were missing on the fair. Even some major brands didn’t come to Photokina this year. Over all, I was very disappointed about this years Photokina.
Some of the exhibitions were even pushed to the borders, kind of hidden. Although, there were many interesting images shown. In my opinion the best exhibition is located right in front of the railway station Köln Messe/Deutz set up by the Singst Foto Fest and open 24 hour a day for the public: amazing images of the sea.
Despite I could remove the lights from the plane from this image, I left them in. I like it because it crosses nearly the whole image and even the polar star Polaris in the middle of the circle.
During summer, this steam train rolls along an old track.
Once, this track was used to connect coal mines and steel plants with the industrial inland harbor from where the steel plants got the ore and the coal mined sent the coal. For several decades the track was closed, when a railroad museum got the idea to send one on their steam trains on the track again.
During summer you can meet the train on track at the first Sunday of the month. Additional driving days are in winter around St. Nick (Dec. 6th)
You know, I was in Switzerland in August, where I did several hikes. When on a hike in beautiful landscape you can’t always stop and wait for the prefect light conditions. So, you have to cope with the light you have. In my case, we had a wonderful sunny day with only few tiny white clouds ahead of us. But, we were below a huge gray cloud.
While we walked uphill along this creek, I liked the perspective very much. But, because of the light conditions, the image would come out very ugly: either I’d get a dark foreground (my main subject) with a beautiful background a sky or I would get a perfect exposed foreground with a white sky and an overexposed mountain range in the back.
The solution is taking at least 3 images of the same frame: 1 over-exposed (at least + 1EV), 1 under-exposed (at least -1 EV) and 1 for the middle. Without a tripod (who takes a tripod along on a hike through the mountains?) it’s a challenge to get these three images without any movement.
Back at home you can take these three images and combine them on your computer. You can do it by hand using i.e. The Gimp. Or you can use a specialist for this job. One of these specialists is Aurora HDR by Skylum. In the past I already written about this software and I like it. Although I don’t take HDR images very often, I use it for this kind of job every now and then, because it’s so easy to get good images from bad lighting situations. Fortunately, Aurora HDR is able to eliminate slight movements when the images were taken without a tripod. It is also able to eliminate ghost fragments, when a part in the image moved (i.e. animals, people or cars). And it is able to read the raw images of my camera, so that I don’t have to develop them first.
Recently I got a review version of the upcoming version of Aurora HDR 2019 and checked it out with some recent images like the one above. First of all, the user interface looks familiar when comparing it to the previous versions. The auto-aligning, anti-aliasing and the ghost-detection works very well, just like before. After combining the source images, the user interface changes and offers a couple of presets in different categories, similar to the previous versions. The presets give you a good starting point to finalize the image.
Despite, I don’t like these ugly, over-saturated, typical HDR images, I like the natural results I get with Aurora HDR. If you want, you can get these typical HDR images as well, as very natural images. The results with Aurora HDR are much better, as only increasing the deeps and decreasing the highlights in the raw editor.
For the next days you can preorder your copy of Aurora HDR with a discount. Owners of a previous version of Aurora HDR get the new version for a reduced price.
Take care!
(This post contains advertise for Aurora HDR 2109 by Skylum)
import window with previews of the source imagesthe combined image with the presets at the bottom and the filter controls on the right
This is a quite common kind of food selling booth. Despite it looks like a pop-up shop, it’s more permanent. In Germany, you can find these food selling booths nearly everywhere. They are selling ice-cream, fish rolls, French fries, bratwurst, döner, waffles and so on: food to eat while walking or simply standing beside the booths. Some of these kinds of food you could find everywhere, others are more regional like this crab selling booth or booths selling fish rolls.
The writing on top of the booth says: “fresh crabs daily” and “unpreserved”. While the writing in the lower right corner says: “not today” 🤣
In Cologne was Photokina time this week. From Wednesday to Saturday many companies around photographing were showing their new products: cameras, lenses, printers, imaging trends and so on. In the past, this fair opened the doors every second year at the end of September.
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