A broad sandy beach at sunset during low tide near the french border.
FX, 16mm, f/9, ISO 400
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Another bad Sunday morning
6,5 years ago I got rang out on an early sunday morning for a death cat.
While friends of us took the middle 2 kittens, the oldest (a black female) and the youngest (a tubby male) stayed with us. Both of them are outdoors every night. 6 weeks ago both went out as usual, but the next morning the black one didn’t come back.
We have search for her for some days and hoped for the best. She was very shy and fearful, even at home. Maybe she was locked in a garage for a weekend or short holiday of the owner. Nothing happened 😦 So, we assumed she’d have passed away because of an accident and someone already had removed the corpse.
Saturday afternoon my daughter saw a post in a local Facebook group about a found black cat. When she got the address, my sons went to that house to look if it could be our cat. She hid under the basement stairs out of their reach. A tiny, shy, injured, black cat. Offering her some food, water and a blanked they left here alone hoping she’d come out. This Sunday morning we got the notice of her having passed away during that night. Probably because of her injuries.
Now, we were able to see that this one was our cat. The size and the white spots forming kind of a bra made us sure she was it.
So, both cats in the above image aren’t with us anymore.
Rest in peace!
End of a trip
Photokina 2016 – a review
Photokina 2016 is over now. Yesterday was the last day of Photokina in Cologne. Although it’s the biggest fair related to photography, there were less exhibition halls occupied this year. And fewer visitors, too. At least this was it my feeling while being there. You were able to touch and test some gear, talk to sales representatives or some technical staff. Not only camera and lens produces exhibit their produces. You can also find the companies producing the big studio lights, filters, albums, photo-books, canvas prints and lots more. Unfortunately, the booths were distributed over the exhibition halls very badly. Instead of organising the halls by grouping the companies according their kind of business, as they were over the last years, they were distributed following the chaos principle this year. Very annoying. You really have to visit each hall to find all the booths you’re interested in – and have a very good chance to miss some booths you’d be interested in. I.e. I missed visiting Thinktank 😦 This year it was essential, to plan your visit in advance and work strictly with the fair plan or the smartphone app. But, even with these tools it was hard work to visit all booths of interest. 😦 very sad!
I guess, photokina has a problem, as the whole photography business has. Common people don’t use cameras anymore, but their cell or mobile phones instead. So, we produce more images than ever a year. But the market shrinks. The attackers are from the movie making gear such as copters from VR and certainly from the cell phone segments.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s still need for good cameras and lenses, but there is not much ‘new’ gear. Even the big players did not have new ideas to present. The only new products they have are enhancements of already available products.
I won’t complain. I don’t need crowded exhibition halls with long queues at the booths before me and hindering me testing something. So, for me it was OK.
The most interesting product were, in my opinion, the lenses by Laowa. I tested the f2.8 12mm lens. It’s a complete manual lens for full frame cameras and has a fantastic outcome.
I also was at the Samyang boot for testing their f2.8 14mm full-frame manual lens. It didn’t convinced me. It was extremely hard, to find a sharp spot, although my camera supports me to focus, even when using manual focus.
I also tested the lenses from Lensbaby: Lensbaby Composer PRO II with Edge 50 and Edge 80 as well as Lensbaby Composer PRO II inkl. Sweet 35. The composter is similar to a filter holder, where you can plug in the optic. They are very interesting from a creative point of view. I guess, I won’t need one.
Another interesting lens, I tested, was the Tamron SP 150-600mm F/5-6.3 Di VC USD G2. In my opinion, the AF is a bit too slow to be used for photographing birds. At least inside the exhibition halls and the available light inside of them. The stabiliser works fine. But, when looking at the EXIF data, you can see, how dark exhibition halls are, even our own eye does not feel the darkness. Here you can see, how much better the dynamic range of our eyes compared to camera sensors is. A free-standing hand-held test image taken at ISO 1600, f6.3 (open aperture) with 600mm (full-frame) resulted in a quite good image.
I also tested the Tamron SP 70-200mm F/2.8 Di VC USD. I was impressed by the results. Most remarkable was the ability to zoom inside the lens. So, the length of the lens does not change. Neither while zooming nor while focussing.
I also collected some paper samples for printing images at home. I tried an on-camera GPS devices, that might replace my Garmin devices next year.
Beside impressions from different booths and a few of my test shots with the tested lenses.
On each photokina, there are also several photo exhibitions. I included some images taken at the different exhibitions, to give you an impression.
Have fun.
Wordless Wednesday: leafless
Take care!
2016
Since a few weeks, my calendars for the next year, 2016, are available in the different shops. Calendars full of fantastic images from Cuba, La Habana, the famous Cuban vintage cars and Iceland want to decorate your home or become a gift for you friends or business partners. Twelve wonderful photos in each of them. Give them a try and order i.e. via Amazon or a book store in your region. Here are the ISBN numbers you need for your order:
A tip: the UK editions are also available in the US at least via amazon.com :-). I also checked them at amazon.fr and amazon.es successfully.
Cuba Cars wall calendar
UK edition DIN A4: 978-1-325-06023-8
UK edition DIN A3: 978-1-325-06022-1
CH edition DIN A4: 978-3-664-24656-4
CH edition DIN A3: 978-3-664-24659-5
CH edition DIN A2: 978-3-664-24657-1
CH edition DIN A5: 978-3-664-24658-8 (tabletop)
DE edition DIN A4: 978-3-664-23967-2
DE edition DIN A3: 978-3-664-23964-1
DE edition DIN A2: 978-3-664-23965-8
DE edition DIN A5: 978-3-664-23966-5 (tabletop)
La Habana / Havanna wall calendar
DE edition DIN A4: 978-3-664-26185-7
DE edition DIN A3: 978-3-664-26187-1
DE edition DIN A2: 978-3-664-26186-4
DE edition DIN A5: 978-3-664-26188-8 (tabletop)
UK edition DIN A4: 978-1-325-06070-2
UK edition DIN A3: 978-1-325-06071-9
Havanna Portrait wall calendar
DE edition DIN A4: 978-3-664-26337-0
DE edition DIN A3: 978-3-664-26336-3
DE edition DIN A2: 978-3-664-26338-7
DE edition DIN A5: 978-3-664-26339-4 (tabletop)
Traveling the South of Iceland wall calendar
UK edition DIN A4: 978-1-325-08000-7
UK edition DIN A3: 978-1-325-07999-5
Unterwegs im Süden Islands wall calendar
DE edition DIN A4: 978-3-664-49855-0
DE edition DIN A3: 978-3-664-49856-7
DE edition DIN A2: 978-3-664-49857-4
DE edition DIN A5: 978-3-664-49854-3 (tabletop)
Impressionen aus Islands Süden Wand-Kalender
CH edition DIN A4: 978-3-664-49885-7
CH edition DIN A3: 978-3-664-49884-0
CH edition DIN A2: 978-3-664-49886-4
CH edition DIN A5: 978-3-664-49887-1 (tabletop)
Entdecken Sie den Süden Islands wall calendar
AT edition DIN A4: 978-3-664-49877-2
AT edition DIN A3: 978-3-664-49878-9
AT edition DIN A2: 978-3-664-49876-5
AT edition DIN A5: 978-3-664-49879-6 (tabletop)
Take care!
Happy Anniversary to me and you!
When I started my WordPress reader this morning, I noticed an orange icon in the upper right corner of my browser. When clicking on it, it said:Happy Anniversary with WordPress.com!You registered on WordPress.com 5 years ago!Thanks for flying with us. Keep up the good blogging!
Without this notification, I’d have missed this anniversary. 5 years of stories and photos packed in 652 posts. A big thanks to me for writing all this and a huge thank you to all of you out there, for reading, liking, reblogging, pingbacking, following and commenting. You keep this blog running!
