The Calendar Files … 2014 … Berlin

Well, just to recap …

Some time ago a dis­cus­sion was going on, what to do with your favor­ite images you made over the year and how to appre­ci­ate them. All agreed, that the final appre­ci­ation can be giv­en by print­ing your images — some­thing most pho­to­graph­ers in the age of post­ing online tril­lions of images a day nev­er did or will ever do.

My way to appre­ci­ate my images of the year is to print a cal­en­dar for the com­ing year. This way I have to choose 12 (13) out of hun­dreds of images and they should rep­res­ent the best I did.

In this mini series I’d like to show my cal­en­dar files of the past years with all 12 (13 incl. cov­er page) images.


One issue I have is, that even if the cal­en­dar sheet is DIN A2, the max­im­um image area is not 2:3 or 4:3, but some­times more 16:9. So when choos­ing the images, you not only have to see if you’ll end up with a por­trait or land­scape ori­ent­a­tion cal­en­dar, but also if an image can be cropped to the dif­fer­ing ratio. Some­times you will lose a small part of the ori­gin­al image — unfor­tu­nately. But that’s the price of get­ting 13 ‘large’ format prints of your own images.

 


Branden­bur­ger Tor, Berlin

 


Bahnhof Friedrich­straße, Berlin

 


Reich­stag, Berlin

 


Bode-Museum, Ber­lin (yes, the one with the 100 kg Gold Coin robbery)

 


Haupt(stadt)bahnhof, Berlin

 


Ber­liner Dom, Ber­lin — where else

 


Oberbaum­brücke and Mur­als, Berlin

 


Ham­burger Bahnhof, Berlin

 


East Side Gal­lery, Berlin

 


Sony Cen­ter, Berlin

 


Ischtar-Tor, Per­ga­mon­mu­seum, Berlin

 


Col­lage of East Side Gal­lery Mur­als, Berlin

 

In case you’d like to com­ment, it’s appre­ci­ated … and maybe, you want to vis­it my web­site or my flickr page too.

So long … and thanks for all the fish.

The Calendar Files … 2013 … Barcelona

Some time ago a dis­cus­sion was going on, what to do with your favor­ite images you made over the year and how to appre­ci­ate them. All agreed, that the final appre­ci­ation can be giv­en by print­ing your images — some­thing most pho­to­graph­ers in the age of post­ing online tril­lions of images a day nev­er did or will ever do.

My way to appre­ci­ate my images of the year is to print a cal­en­dar for the com­ing year. This way I have to choose 12 (13) out of hun­dreds of images and they should rep­res­ent the best I did.

In this mini series I’d like to show my cal­en­dar files of the past years with all 12 (13 incl. cov­er page) images.

 

One issue I have is, that even if the cal­en­dar sheet is DIN A2, the max­im­um image area is not 2:3 or 4:3, but some­times more 16:9. So when choos­ing the images, you not only have to see if you’ll end up with a por­trait or land­scape ori­ent­a­tion cal­en­dar, but also if an image can be cropped to the dif­fer­ing ratio. Some­times you will lose a small part of the ori­gin­al image — unfor­tu­nately. But that’s the price of get­ting 13 ‘large’ format prints of your own images.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In case you’d like to com­ment, it’s appre­ci­ated … and maybe, you want to vis­it my web­site or my flickr page too.

So long … and thanks for all the fish.

The Calendar Files … 2010 … London

Some time ago a dis­cus­sion was going on, what to do with your favor­ite images you made over the year and how to appre­ci­ate them. All agreed, that the final appre­ci­ation can be giv­en by print­ing your images — some­thing most pho­to­graph­ers in the age of post­ing online tril­lions of images a day nev­er did or will ever do.

My way to appre­ci­ate my images of the year is to print a cal­en­dar for the com­ing year. This way I have to choose 12 (13) out of hun­dreds of images and they should rep­res­ent the best I did.

In this mini series I’d like to show my cal­en­dar files of the past years with all 12 (13 incl. cov­er page) images.


Tower Raven, London

One issue I have is, that even if the cal­en­dar sheet is DIN A2, the max­im­um image area is not 2:3 or 4:3, but some­times more 16:9. So when choos­ing the images, you not only have to see if you’ll end up with a por­trait or land­scape ori­ent­a­tion cal­en­dar, but also if an image can be cropped to the dif­fer­ing ratio. Some­times you will lose a small part of the ori­gin­al image — unfor­tu­nately. But that’s the price of get­ting 13 ‘large’ format prints of your own images.

 

Streets of London

 

Par­lia­ment, London

 

St. Paul’s Cathed­ral, London

 

Double-Deck, London

 

Tower Bridge, London

 

Brit­ish Museum, London

 

On The Mall, London

 

The Tube, London

 

Brit­ish Museum, London

 

Indeed, The World’s End, London

 

View from St. Paul’s Cathed­ral over Mil­len­ni­um Bridge to Tate Modern

 

St. Mar­t­in-in-the-Fields, London

In case you’d like to com­ment, it’s appre­ci­ated … and maybe, you want to vis­it my web­site or my flickr page too.

So long … and thanks for all the fish.

A Contax 167MT and a Carl Zeiss Distagon 2.8/28mm in Porto

This time in Porto … some­thing went ter­ribly wrong. Get­ting back my films from the lab, they wrote that some images were under­ex­posed. See­ing the res­ults, around 1/3rd of the frames were near black and I’m still guess­ing what happened.

The Con­tax 167MT with its Carl Zeiss Dis­tagon 2.8/28mm worked quite well with the Kodak Ultramax 400 film and I was really impressed how flaw­less this combo handles, shoot­ing in aper­ture pri­or­ity mode.

On one situ­ation I noticed, that the aper­ture set­ting on the lens and the aper­ture dis­play in the view­find­er did not match. The view­find­er dis­play showed f/4 when f/11 was set on the lens, which res­ults in an under­ex­posed frame, as the cam­era reduces the shut­ter speed to get a prop­er exposure.

I found out that the lens was not locked prop­erly. Seems, as when tak­ing the cam­era out of the bag, I acci­dent­ally hit the lens release but­ton and unlocked the lens. This was a mess, as I did not know how long the lens was unlocked, as I usu­ally do not check the aper­ture in the view­find­er, know­ing what aper­ture I set on the lens.

Well, this might have explained the issue on one film, but I have 1/3 of the frames ruined on both films I made. I’ll shoot anoth­er roll to see if this beha­viour returns when care­fully watch­ing the lens is locked prop­erly. In addi­tion, some of the ‘well exposed’ frames show massive amount of grain, as if the lab has tried to ‘res­cue’ them.

As I made some digit­al frames besides the ana­log ones, the loss is not dis­astrous, but it annoys me that it happened at all, not noti­cing the aper­ture dis­crep­ancy. I was … too care­less this time. Or maybe I was simply too dis­trac­ted by the beauty of that city.

UPDATE:

In the mean­time I shot anoth­er role of film in the Con­tax 167 MT with a Carl Zeiss Dis­tagon 2.8/35mm lens attached.
When it came back from the lab, it was dissapointing.
The 36 frame film came back with 17 frames — all more or less heav­ily underexposed.
The lab has tried to res­cue as much as pos­sible dur­ing scan­ning and so there is massive grain visible.
This let’s me assume that in the ori­gin, it was not my fault with a loose lens, but it seems as if the cam­era has some deep­er issues — as also frames were skipped, which might be a hint that the elec­tro­mag­net­ic shut­ter release is no longer work­ing reliable.
So for the moment, the cam­era goes onto the shelf.

Let’s see what comes up from this story when finally post­ing the images made — both ana­log and digital.

In case you’d like to com­ment, it’s appre­ci­ated … and maybe, you want to vis­it my web­site or my flickr page too.

So long … and thanks for all the fish.

Irelands Southwest and West (Part 5)

Part 5 of our 2017 trip through Irleands South­w­est and West. Com­ing to the final (ana­log) part of our tour which leads us from Con­nemara back to Dublin.

Leav­ing won­der­ful Con­nemara and the County Galway …

… and enter­ing Dub­lin — what a contrast.

Hav­ing some nice food …

… and walk­ing over the Ha’­Penny Bridge.

Next post will cov­er the digit­al part of the journey.
Earli­er parts of this series can be found here.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

In case you’d like to com­ment, it’s appre­ci­ated … and maybe, you want to vis­it my web­site or my flickr page too.

So long … and thanks for all the fish.

 

The Beauty and the Beast V

This time I’ll present two extraordin­ary lenses in my tiny series with a beauty and a beast. Well, guess who’s the beauty and who’s the beast.

On the left side of the ring there is the
Voigtländer Super-Wide-Heli­ar 4.5/15mm in M39 Mount
Optics: 8 ele­ments in 6 groups (incl. 1 aspher­ic­al element)
Aper­ture: f/4.5‑f/22
Min. focus­sing dis­tance: 0.3m
Weight: 105g
Length: 30.7mm

On the right side of the ring there is the
Tak­u­mar SMC 3.5/15mm in M42 Mount
Optics: 13 ele­ments in 12 groups (incl. 1 aspher­ic­al element)
There exist two ver­sions — depend­ing on the mark­ings on the dis­tance scale
7–4‑2 means with aspher­ic­al ele­ment, 7–3‑2 means w/o aspher­ic­al element
Aper­ture: f/3.5‑f/22
Fil­ters: UV, sky­light, yel­low and orange included
Min. focus­sing dis­tance: 0.3m
Weight: 570g
Length: 81,5mm

Just to men­tion, images were taken with a Sony A7R2 and the Carl Zeiss Jena Flekto­gon 2.4/35mm lens.

In case you’d like to com­ment, it’s appre­ci­ated … and maybe, you want to vis­it my web­site or my flickr page too.

So long … and thanks for all the fish.

Irelands Southwest and West (Part 4)

Part 4 of our 2017 trip through Irleands South­w­est and West.

Leav­ing The Bur­ren and Doolin (and the Cliffs of Moher, but that’s anoth­er … more digit­al … story) behind us, we headed north to touch Gal­way, the beau­ti­ful old town lay­ing on our way to Con­nemara County.

Gal­way … with some typ­ic­al Irish pub :)

From Gal­way it was a short, but nev­er­the­less beau­ti­ful ride to Clif­den — our final stay in the west.

Dog’s Bay and Gur­teen Bay — two nice beaches lay­ing vis-á-vis on a spit of land.

The tiny vil­lage of Round­stone, with its ceram­ics and craft shops.

Up to the Skyroad (giv­ing its unique driv­ing exper­i­ence), driv­ing by cloud covered hills and …

… hav­ing a fant­ast­ic look from the Wild Atlantic Viewpoint.

… still more ana­log work to come.

Earli­er parts of this series can be found here.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

In case you’d like to com­ment, it’s appre­ci­ated … and maybe, you want to vis­it my web­site or my flickr page too.

So long … and thanks for all the fish.

 

Irelands Southwest and West (Part 3)

Part 3 of our 2017 trip through Irleands South­w­est and West.

From the Dingle Pen­in­sula we headed north to Doolin where we found loads of beau­ti­ful Cafes and Pubs.

We found some old stuff … around Doolin.

We found some very old stuff in the Bur­ren — a carst region …

… also host­ing some very old neo­lith­ic dolmen.

The Bur­ren — worth hiking.

… more to come.

In case you’d like to com­ment, it’s appre­ci­ated … and maybe, you want to vis­it my web­site or my flickr page too.

So long … and thanks for all the fish.

 

Porst Pocketpak EL

It was dec­ades ago in my life when I bought this cam­era in my con­stant strive for becom­ing a bet­ter pho­to­graph­er — LOL. It was some­where between 1970 and 1975 when I thought, using my then cam­era, an Agfa Optima 200 Sensor, was not good enough for me and I strongly needed an “upgrade” to some­thing more light­weight and so.

Money was an issue and so I ended up with this then hyped cam­era type, a type 110 film cart­ridge pock­et cam­era from Photo Porst — the Porst Pock­et­pak EL.

If you want to know more about this then world’s largest photo equip­ment deal­er Photo Porst AG, you can find loads of inform­a­tion here — it’s a Ger­man web­site, so maybe using Google Trans­lat­or is an option for you.

I have to admit here, that I nev­er got a single really sharp image out of this cam­era. I claimed the cam­era for this, but who knows.

I do not find the ori­gin­al manu­al, so there is no way to name the tech­nic­al specs. Top­ping this, nowhere on the web you can find a single piece of inform­a­tion about it and so I put here on my tiny blog what I know about and what I guess. Maybe some lucky read­ers know a little bit more about this camera.

The type 110 cart­ridge gives a 13 x 17 mm neg­at­ive size, which is roughly a quarter the size of a 35mm film with its 24 x 36 mm. This is com­par­able to today’s Micro Four Thirds sensor size of 13.5 x 18 mm and its ima­ging area of 13 x 17.3 mm.

Let’s make a jour­ney around the body …

From the left, first comes the small win­dow hous­ing the expos­ure meter, then comes the lens behind a pro­tect­ive glass and to the right sits the view­find­er. The lens might be a 4/21mm fix focus or zone focus type — if it’s sim­il­ar to its sib­lings from Photo Porst — with 1.2 to 1.5m min­im­um focus­sing dis­tance. Unfor­tu­nately there is noth­ing writ­ten around the lens, so it’s a guess only. The view­find­er con­tains a red LED, warn­ing on low shut­ter speeds and a green plastic indic­at­or, show­ing a cor­rect exposure.

Three focus steps, dis­tant, mid and close range can be set via a switch on the top of the body. Right to this focus switch there is a flash mount, where a dis­tance hold­er can be inser­ted to avoid the fam­ous red eyes. Stand­ard 4x flash­cubes can be used. Fur­ther to the right you find the shut­ter release but­ton with a screw-in cable release sock­et to it’s left.

From the left you find the view­find­er, the film check/cartridge win­dow and above, the cam­era back release switch.

Again from the left we have the view­find­er, the two cart­ridge hold­er recesses, in between the shut­ter and lens unit and finally the bat­tery compartment.

On the left there is the tri­pod sock­et and on the right is the shut­ter cock and film advance slider.

The bat­tery (yes, I turned it upside down … or … no, wait, I glued it onto the ceil­ing :) is some kind of spe­cial type — which is no longer avail­able and so makes the cam­era a dead piece of plastic. How­ever, when hit­ting the release but­ton, the shut­ter fires, so there seems to be some kind of fixed manu­al shut­ter speed.

The shut­ter is elec­tron­ic­ally con­trolled and might be be cap­able of some­thing between 1/30 to 1/500 of a second — if it’s sim­il­ar to its sib­lings from Photo Porst.

So far for the moment. You know more about this little cam­era or have an old manu­al you wanna share?

In case you’d like to con­trib­ute some inform­a­tion about this little piece of plastic from the 70s, do not hes­it­ate to send a com­ment. It’s highly appreciated.

Maybe, you want to vis­it my web­site or my flickr page too.

So long … and thanks for all the fish.

Irelands Southwest and West (Part 2)

Part 2 of our 2017 trip through Irleands South­w­est and West.

Arriv­ing in Dub­lin, we imme­di­ately got our car and headed south­east. Dub­lin itself was planed as the Great Final of the tour.
Some people (greet­ings to Jim) are recom­mend­ing to hire a car as small as pos­sible, as driv­ing in Ire­land can be chal­len­ging and Irleands roads are some­times quite nar­row. Indeed they are right. Nev­er­the­less it was great fun driv­ing a not-so-small car on one lane coun­try roads ;)

What I can recom­mend is def­in­itely an auto­mat­ic trans­mis­sion mod­el, as driv­ing on the wrong side is some­thing you get used to, but it takes a little bit. Not sure how people here can drive their whole life long on the wrong side of the road.

Our first stop down to the west was … Kilkenny. Yes, they’re fam­ous for their castle and … their beer. At least I thought when in the even­ing order­ing a loc­al Kilkenny at the pub. The friendly wait­ress told me, that since many years the Kilkenny was brewed at Guin­ness in Dub­lin. Again what learned.

As it was a one night stop in Kilkenny, we had to hurry to see all the things worth vis­it­ing here. Old Smith­wicks Brew­ery, Domin­ic­an Black Abbey, the Cathed­ral Church of St Canice or Matt The Millers Bar & Res­taur­ant, just to men­tion some.

On the road

On our way fur­ther down, we went over Jer­point Abbey and the Rock of Cashel to Kil­lar­ney, finally reach­ing our B&B in Beaufort on the Kerry Peninsula.

Kerry

The next days we stayed here, explor­ing the south­w­est. Hik­ing in the Kil­lar­ney Nation­al Park vis­it­ing the Muck­ross House on Loch Leane, the Gap of Dun­loe (cool driv­ing exper­i­ence), Lady’s View, the Ring of Kerry and Valen­tia Island, from where since 1866 the first per­man­ent com­mu­nic­a­tion link between Europe and the North Amer­ica was operated.

From Beaufort, we headed over to Inch Beach (cool Irish beach), from where we explored the Dingle Pen­in­sula and we met Fungie — the fam­ous dolphin.

… more to come.

In case you’d like to com­ment, it’s appre­ci­ated … and maybe, you want to vis­it my web­site or my flickr page too.

So long … and thanks for all the fish.