Germany 2011 Trip: Fourteen Galleries...

Germany 2011 - Day 01 - Flight & Burg Hohenzollern

After over two years, I have finally completed sorting through all the photos I took during my 2011 trip to Germany and have created fourteen image galleries from those shots. I am making a concerted effort to go through the tremendous backlog of photos I have, going all the way back to 2010, and decided that the 2011 Germany trip deserved my attention first. I have friends and relatives over there that I visited, who all know that I took many photos on my trip and were probably wondering if they would ever get to see what I shot!

Each of the fourteen galleries has an associated image and a link, as the one above, and either can be clicked to have the gallery open in a new window. That way, once you're done looking at that gallery, you can close the window and scroll this page down for the next one. Click READ MORE below for links to the remaining thirteen galleries and enjoy...

Season's Greetings!

As a favour, I photographed a warm and cozy apartment that a friend of mine decked out for the Christmas holidays. I used my X100 and my GH2 with either the 7-14mm f/4 zoom for the wide shots, or the Leica 25mm f/1.4 for the tight shots. See the gallery here...

Van Dusen Festival of Lights

A Beau Photo Supplies staff outing to the Van Dusen Festival of Lights. Click on the image for the full gallery with 40 photos...

Gallery: Olympus M.Zuiko 45mm f/1.8 Tests

This gallery contains my first quick tests of the new Olympus M.Zuiko Digital 45mm f/1.8 lens. I wandered around for a few minutes while on my lunch break and snapped these quick test photos...

Gallery: Olympus M.Zuiko 45mm f/1.8 Tests

Gallery: Fall colours at UBC...

On a beautiful (but cool) fall day today, I wandered around UBC for a few hours, taking in the colours of the changing leaves.

Gallery: UBC Fall Colours

Gallery: Maissanne Bellydance

A photo shoot I did for my friend Maissanne, a teacher by day and a bellydancer by night. Click on the above image for a gallery with 40 of my favourite photos I chose after quickly going through all the images from the shoot. She will be choosing photos from this session for a future update to her website.

An evening with the Nikon P7100

I finally had some time to shoot with the CoolPix P7100, other than time-lapse, and took it down to Granville Island in the evening to test its high ISO, its VR and is low-light focus. For a P&S, its high ISO shooting was quite impressive and I am happy to report that virtually all the issues I had with the original P7000 have been addressed. Not that the original P7000 had any issues in the image quality department, but it had a terrible AF mechanism that had a hard time locking on in low light or even in good light sometimes, if the contrast was low.

The P7100 nailed the focus time and time again. Although it slowed down a bit in really low light, it pretty much always seemed to lock focus... at least as well as any other high end P&S I've used.

Almost all of the UI sluggishness and quirkiness is gone and the shot-to-shot time for RAW shooting seems improved too. The new front mounted control wheel works nicely as well. Anyway, this is now a very worthy contender for the top high-end-raw-shooting-P&S title!

Image gallery: Nikon Coolpix P7100 at Granville Island

Germany: Föhr - the last day...

I am bouncing around a bit with these entries from my Germany trip. This evening I was preparing to email some images of her studio to my aunt on Föhr, and I just decided to post a gallery of images from the last day on the island instead. The first image of my 80 year old aunt Ruth was taken with the wickedly sharp Leica (Panasonic) 25mm f/1.4 lens again, at ISO 640 on my GH2... too sharp for a portrait really. I hope she doesn't mind too much! Most of the tighter shots in the gallery, such as the one above, were taken with the 25mm lens as well.

The last day on Föhr was relaxing. We spent a lot of time with my aunt, and I took some photos in her attic studio, which had a lot of her sculptures, many quite unusual, and her watercolour paintings on display. Click the image above to visit the gallery.

Germany: Island of Föhr - Day 1

Click here (or on the above photo) for a gallery of images from the first day on the island of Föhr in the North Sea. Geotagging is active for most images, but unfortunately I forgot to take the GPS tracker out of the car for the ferry ride and so those photos are not tagged. Wonderful and relaxing is how one can describe life on this little island. It really is far less hectic feeling than the other areas of Germany we visited, although Bavaria had a similar feel to it. The wonderful thatch roof houses are great subjects to photograph as well!

We have been lucky with the weather although a big thunder storm just rolled through and I'm not sure if the weather will recover later this evening still. I will incorporate today's images into a future gallery, unless I end up shooting a ton more later, although again, that seems unlikely at the moment.

Germany: Days 4-6 - Zugspitze & Alpspitze

A small stone church partway down from the Zugspitze summit

Here is a link to the gallery with images from our two full days in Bavaria, visiting the highest point in Germany, the Zugspitze (2962 meters) and the neighbouring Alpspitze. Technically we never did reach the Alpspitze (2628 meters), rather we were at about 2100 meters at the viewpoint, so a long way from the actual summit. Click on the image for the gallery too...

Germany: The Abbey at Ottobeuren

Well, this is actually day 7 already, and we just got back from the Alps. On the way back to Reutlingen, we took a slight detour to see the Benedictine Abbey at Ottobeuren. I have a fast, free and reliable Internet connection and decided to post a gallery of images from today, out of sequence but I wanted to get something else up before hitting the sack. Tomorrow afternoon (for me), I will follow up with a gallery of pictures from the Alps, specifically the Zugspitze, the highest point in Germany at 2960 metres, and also the Alpenspitze... plus a few I took at a Bavarian folk fest. For lots of photos inside the extraordinary abbey, you can either click here for the image gallery, or on the above photo.

For a preview of what the next image gallery will contain, here is one shot I took of the main Zugspitze building after climbing to the actual highest point. The weather in the Alps was absolutely perfect for taking photos - I have been very lucky on this trip so far...

Germany: Days 2 & 3

For a quick gallery of images from days 2 & 3 here in Germany (yesterday and the day before for me), click on the above image, or click here. No time for much in the way of explanation or reporting. Suffice to say the beer, coffee and food is great over here! Driving is generally a blast. People over here sure know how to get around quickly and if they are slower, they get out of the way fast! I had no Internet yesterday and I am not sure how the next few days will go, but I will update the blog when I can. That's it for today, now it's off to the German Alps...

Lizard Woman

(click image for full gallery)

Amazing makeup and prosthetic work by Lisa Bradley! A makeup job that was inspired by some lizard photos I had taken in Death Valley a few years back. The lovely model is Emily Backman.

Calling this a "makeup job" though, doesn't even begin to hint at the tremendous amount of work Lisa did, not only in applying the prosthetics and makeup to Emily on the day of the shoot, but also in the months of preparation, creating the prosthetic moulds and casting all the many small ridges, bony protrusions, horns and spikes. Emily started having the makeup applied at 5am, which took many hours to complete. Then she and Lisa spent the day at a makeup trade show and finally in the evening, after 7:30pm, we did a very quick shoot for about an hour and a half and a couple of different locations. Emily still had an amazing amount of energy at the end of the day, even after wearing this outfit for over 12 hours.

The images were all shot with my EOS-7D and any additional lighting was simply supplied by one or two 430 EXII flashes on radio slaves. No light diffusers were used as I wanted dramatic shadows to really bring out the amazing texture on these prosthetics.

Panasonic GH2: Review

Panasonic Lumix GH2 with 7-14mm f/4 Lens

Over the next few days, this blog entry is going to be updated with a review of the GH2 and a variety of different lenses, including the 7-14mm, the 14mm f/2.5 and 20mm f/1.7 "pancake" lenses, the 14-140mm f/4-5.8 Mega O.I.S. (Optical Image Stabilization), the 45-200mm f/4-5.6 Mega O.I.S. and the 100-300mm f/4-5.6 Mega O.I.S.

While I have no intention of generally replacing my Canon EOS-7D system with a Panasonic system, because I was looking for a smaller and lighter kit with some lens versatility (and good image quality) for my upcoming trip to Germany later in the summer, I indeed did go and buy a GH2 and a variety of lenses for myself.

I am also planning to take my Fuji X100 to Germany of course since it is small, light and has superb image quality. It still has better colour, better dynamic range and is much cleaner in low-light/high-ISO/time-exposure situations when compared to the GH2. However, while I feel Fuji made an ideal choice for a fixed focal length camera (35mm equivalent), I definitely wanted an ultra-wide and a longer telephoto for some shooting situations and just couldn't bring myself to cover those focal lengths with one or more P&S cameras, which is what I had originally planned on doing.

Make no mistake, the GH2 has excellent image quality, but it simply is not quite up to the X100 with its substantially larger sensor, or the top end APS-C digital SLRs, like the Canon EOS-7D or Nikon D7000. That said, under normal to moderately low lighting conditions, the GH2 image quality can easily be on par with the likes of the X100 and EOS-7D, just not under really difficult (high) contrast or really dim lighting.

Anyway, my review will cover my impressions of the camera and lenses - please don't expect a super detailed review with menu screenshots and the like. As a teaser, here is a link to a gallery of images I recently shot with the GH2 and a Lensbaby Tilt-Transformer...

http://sublimephoto.com/exhibit/2011/0620_tilt_transformer/

Review Part 1 - Suitability and Lenses continues after the link...

Fujifilm X100 Infrared Gallery

(click on image to view gallery)

I wandered around after work, giving the X100 a real workout with an IR filter (Hoya R72). Note that even at ISO 6400, the X100 is not all that grainy. The vast majority of the graininess you will see has been added by me. Personally I love the look of grainy and "glowy" IR film, however some might prefer less grain. Heck, maybe even I will too at some point, but for now, I am personally liking the look. Admittedly, when downsized the grain looks more like noise and less like "film grain", but at the full image size the grain is a little more clumpy and "realistic" looking.

More info on how the images were shot and processed is at the start of the gallery and also see my previous posting on IR with the X100 here...

Lastly, you'll note some new links on the thumbnails in the image gallery, in the form of little "globe" icons. Clicking there will take you to an overview map of where the photo was shot, then clicking on the GPS coordinates below the overview map will open a new Google Maps page where you can zoom in, poan around etc. The tracklog was recorded with a Qstarz BT-Q1000XT recorder and GPS metadata was added in Adobe Lightroom as per a previous article. The accuracy seems good to a radius of about 10-50 feet I'd say.

Hasselblad H4D-60 Gallery

(click on image to open gallery)

As a followup to my posting from March 27th, after the Hasselblad Event, I have finally had time to edit the 20 or so photos I wanted to put in a gallery. There are 100% crops available so you can see the amazing resolution of the 60 megapixel H4D-60, coupled with Hasselblad's excellent lenses. Please read the notes in the gallery for further shooting info.

Finally... time with a production Fujifilm X100!

(Click on image to visit gallery)

I have finally been able to shoot with a full production level X100 and now I can post images without any restrictions from Fujifilm. This production camera does have noticeably better image quality than the prototype I used before. Amazingly enough, its lens is even sharper (edge-to-edge) and low-light/high-ISO shooting seems substantially improved too. While still visible, I feel that the somewhat unusual (for a pro-level camera anyway) off-axis "bright light source flare", that can occasionally show up in night photos, is definitely reduced on the production camera as well.

Remembering...

Portrait - 2002
Ingrid Katharina Mander 

May 17, 1929 - April 7, 2008

My mother passed away three years ago today, after her seven year long struggle with cancer. In some ways it feels like a lot longer ago, in other ways, it's as though it just happened last week. This blog posting is in remembrance of her. I won't say much other than give you a link to the memorial page on my website and a link to my blog entry where her sister Elisabeth, my father and I scattered her ashes off the coast of Hawaii near Milolii.

If you look at the image gallery on the Hawaii blog page, the images you see near the end are of the white coral memorial we made for her in the lava near Milolii.  Through the wizardry of Google, you can see exactly where that lava memorial is...

Coral on Lava Memorial: Google Maps Link  or  Google Earth Link (KMZ File download)

I will finish with this: one of the things I miss most about my mother, something that still occurs on a regular basis, happens when I come back after a successful day of photography. My mother used to love photography and was especially enthusiastic about my own work in later years. I would come back from a trip, or just from taking some photos around town here, and I would look forward to sending her a link to an image gallery like this, or years earlier, going over for a visit with my slides and a slide projector. She would always look at my work and praise it when she thought it was good, or critique it honestly when she didn't.

Anyway, it still happens to me that I come back from a day of shooting, and suddenly realize I am subconsciously looking forward to showing her the photos I took.

Oh.

Unfortunately, I can't do that anymore...