Where am I?

Once again I find myself waiting for a transit vehicle in a different city and country. Getting around away from home requires more time to figure out where you are and where you need to go. It quickly becomes obvious how good the signage and maps are and/or how good you are at interpreting them. If you arrived in this city by air and caught the train into town, you might also have stood on this very platform.

Yellow Departure | Sony RX1 | 35mm F2.8 1/40s ISO400

Yellow Bag Crossing

Normally I can't ignore anything yellow, so everything is as it should be here. Normally, I also put space in front of the subject. Here I deviated from my norm, swinging the camera to the left. At the time it was an intuitive reaction but upon further reflection I think it adds a certain tension to the scene. She's at the threshold of the sidewalk's relative safety and we can't see what's speeding up the road from the right.

Green Between Yellow and Blue

These were used to brighten up a back alley in downtown Toronto. I don't know why they depict bicycles which aren't anywhere near as ubiquitous as around here.

Yellow Green Divide │ Sony RX1 │ 35mm F4.0 1/3200s ISO100

Green Blue Divide │ Sony RX1 │ 35mm F4.0 1/2500s ISO100

On the Road

22-Wheeler | Sony RX1 | 35mm F5.6 1/1000s ISO100

Same Sensor, Different Body

Well, we don't know for sure that it's the exact same sensor, but they're at least both 24 megapixels and full frame. In any case, it's the lens that makes the difference here. They couldn't be anymore different; one a ponderous and slow telephoto zoom, the other a compact, razor sharp prime. But I knew what I was getting into when I chose the telephoto lens to try a friend's D600 with: this way there was no chance of being able to conduct any relevant image quality comparisons. I just wanted to get a feel for how the big Nikon handles.

After a brief moment where I wondered why the preview in the viewfinder didn't update when I dialed in some exposure compensation, I got along beautifully with the camera. The D600 is extremely responsive and the main exposure controls are exactly where you'd expect them to be. It'd be a crime if they weren't as there's certainly enough real estate on the camera body for Nikon to get it right. In short, the D600 is superb but much too heavy and bulky for what I'm looking for in a camera. In fact, shooting the D600 side by side with my RX1 makes the RX1's diminutive size seem even more amazing.

D600 and Yellow | Sony RX1 | 35mm F4.0 1/125s ISO100

Interaction | Sony RX1 | 35mm F2.2 1/125s ISO100

Observation | Nikon D600 + Nikkor 80-400mm F4.5-5.6D | 195mm F8.0 1/320s ISO720

The Yellow Boat under the Metro Bridge

It's getting so that I can't walk or cycle by any patch of yellow I see. I have to stop and take a few photos, so it's a good thing I always have my RX1 with me. Yellow is a little harder to find in these parts compared to a place like India. I think that's a pity.

Back in Amsterdam

There's no better way to prove that I'm back in Amsterdam than showing a photo with bicycles in it. The girl stopped to do some texting is causing a little obstruction. It's still much better than the alternative of texting while cycling one handed, which is more common.

Now that I'm back home, I have a lot of photos from London to sort through. I'll be posting more images from my collection over the coming days.

Yellow Blocks

Under the highway was the only place where I could find a little color on this dark and gray January day. Black tar and some sort of green slime where oozing down the yellow from above. While not a pretty sight, this is nonetheless more uplifting than the monotonous gray elsewhere.

Diminishing Yellow │ Sony RX1 │ 35mm F4.0 1/80s ISO640

The View from my Bell

This is in front of the bakery. I was just shoving my fresh bread into my panniers (never much room in there) when I noticed the reflection in the bell. Of course I had a camera with me. That's why it has to be compact: so I have it with me even when I'm running errands. Since I don't have a car, I can't just lock all my gear up when I pop into the bakery. Instead, I have to carry everything from place to place. But then I don't have to find one of those elusive and expensive downtown parking spots either. Bicycles can be parked immediately outside the door, propped against a construction sign or whatever else is handy.

iPad Test: Preparing for Photokina

It doesn't make a whole lot of sense to invest in light and portable camera gear while at the same time lugging around a heavy laptop. Still, I've been reluctant to use our iPad for blogging while on the road. The main reason being that it's cumbersome to use the iPad to back up RAW photos. I'd need some sort of external drive anyway since the iPad's 64 GB are nowhere near sufficient on longer trips. But for a short jaunt to Photokina it might just suffice. I thought it wise to test the process at home first though.

This photo was taken with my GF2, then uploaded to the iPad via the camera connection kit and edited in Snapseed (I went a little crazy). The iPad APP I use to post to this blog is quite basic and doesn't have any of the formatting tools I have at my disposal on a normal PC. So this is all you get, a title followed by some text and one or more photos. I can't even change the order. Not too much to think about, I guess. But it does work; this post is the proof.

Boating Season

It's still raining and Amsterdam's pleasure boats are tied up more or less permanently. If the weather ever improved, I think I'd take the yellow boat and not just because of the color.

I was once again shooting in the rain and it was impossible to keep the NEX-7 dry. So far I haven't had any problems with water infiltrating the camera, but I wish the NEX-7 was at least rated “splash resistant” so I didn't have to worry as much - or cut shooting sessions short as the amount of water on the camera increases.

Yellow Wave

Now how could I resist this mountain (the western part of the Netherlands is very flat, so any slight rise in elevation takes on monumental proportions) of yellow?

Below is the last photo I will ever take with the Zeiss Biogon 35mm F2.0 that I bought in November 2011. It's now for sale on eBay. Although the results were stunning on the Sony NEX-5N, the Biogon doesn't perform as well on my current NEX-7: the images suffer from corner smearing and a color cast, especially at larger apertures. While it's possible that the Zeiss Biogon 35/2.0 may perform better on future sensors, I prefer faster prime lenses anyway.

The main reason though for getting rid of this lens is that the Biogon's 53mm* focal length is too close to the 36mm* and 75mm* prime lenses I use most often on the NEX-7. If I was using three primes instead of two, I would want a larger spread between them, like 28mm*, 50mm* and 90mm*; then a lens with approximately 50mm* makes more sense. In the end, given the heavy use I subject my 2 Sonnars to (E24/1.8 and 50/1.5 ZM), the Biogon 35/2.0 didn't see much use - and there's no point to having expensive equipment doing nothing more than taking up shelf space.
* Full Frame equivalent

Yellow Mountain │ NEX-7 + Carl Zeiss Biogon T* 35mm F2.0 ZM │ 35mm F2.0 1/3200s ISO100

Two Men and a Big Boat

Here are two photos that have little or nothing to do  with the impressive walled city of Dubrovnik which we wandered around in today. These are quayside workers struggling with heavy ropes during our mooring process this morning in the heavy rain. Don't worry, the weather improved as the day progressed.

Pull! │ NEX-7 + Carl Zeiss C Sonnar T* 50mm F1.5 ZM │ 50mm F5.6 1/80s ISO100

High Visibility

The color of this ship speaks volumes about weather conditions in the North Sea off the coast of Aberdeen where even a large vessel like this might be hard to spot. Here I'm making use of the extra reach of my Canon FD 85mm lens: a security fence kept me from getting any closer to the ship.