1375 - Our Favourite Shop

Sigma 50/1.4 No Responses »
Jul 222010

Tuesday. For months now I have watched the new Sigmas, especially the new 17-50/2.8 OS HSM, and Tuesday afternoon it suddenly became available. Just as I had done with the Sigma 8-16, I stopped working, went to the bank, fetched the 666€ (no joke, the number of the Beast!), and then … started thinking.

I didn’t buy it. Not yet. I may, when it turns out that the Tamron, currently sent in for repair, turns unreliable again. But now? Sure, from the review at Photozone.de (for the Canon version) it looks as if it were even better than the Tamron, but then, when the Tammy works at all, it is absolutely excellent. So what?

Btw, I am unfair. The Tamron has been used in 189 posts since November, a second to only the Nikon 18-200 VR with 220 in almost four years. Thus, not only has the Tamron brought me through a long and dark winter like no lens before, it also has been by far my most used lens since I bought it.

Of the 12791 exposures that I made between November 6, when I bought it, and July 12, when I last used it, I’d estimate at least 8000 were made with the Tamron 17-50/2.8. I have lenses that are in perfect shape but have been use by far less. Who knows?

These images were made with the Sigma 50/1.4, a lens that I have not used in a long time and that is just a pleasure to use. Not only does the focal length feel so natural, but it’s the magic of its creamy bokeh that I like so much. Look at the bicycle or the “balls of steel”: absolutely sharp where necessary, dreamy creaminess in the background. As I said, I may come back to the Sigma 17-50/2.8, but at the moment it is probably time to use some of the lenses that I already have :)

The Song of the Day is “Our Favourite Shop” from the 1985 album Style Council album of the same name. Hear it on YouTube.

Posted by andreas at 7:26 am Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,

1354 - Give Me The Simple Life

Nikon 70-300 VR 3 Responses »
Jul 022010

On Monday I had business near our old home, in the country (not that it’s far from where we live now), and of course I had the camera with me and took some images.

There would probably be at least two more that I were inclined to use under normal circumstances, but excuse me please, I’m in a hurry to catch up :)

The Song of The Day is “Give Me The Simple Life“. I have it on “Twelve Nights In Hollywood”, the recently published collection of four CDs with previously unpublished material, those “Twelve Nights In Hollywood”, that were the first music, that I bought as digital downloads only.

YouTube has a later version from Montreux 1969, but it is very similar in phrasing, it won’t make that much of a difference.

Posted by andreas at 7:13 pm Tagged with: , , , , , , ,

1277 - I Keep Mine Hidden

Sigma 28/1.8 3 Responses »
Apr 132010

In the morning when I took this image, it was cold, overcast and I was in a hurry. I had planned to make some “real” images later, on my way home, but alas it began to rain around noon and it’s still raining now, at almost 1 am.

Anyway. This may not be a good image, but it is a good example of a nice effect that you can produce with Topaz Detail. They have an effect called “Soft Looking”, that actually takes detail away. Basically it keeps fine detail, suppresses medium detail a little and large detail strongly.

This image is really a worst case for bokeh, and although I normally like what I get from the Sigma 28/1.8, here it fails miserably.

What I’ve done is this: I have duplicated the background a few times. The lowest layer I’ve left as it was. The second was treated with this “Soft Looking” effect, and then I have painted in a mask to take the effect away where the leaves were sharpest. The next layer was also put through Topaz detail, but now to strongly increase detail, with the same but inverted mask. Then I’ve added my “Neutral Blur” (explained in “542 – The Show Is Over, Say Good-Bye“), sharpening and on top another “Soft Looking” of the copy/merged layer stack.

The result is a strong differentiation between sharpness and blur. It does not look entirely natural, i.e. like the creamy blur of an ideal lens, but it really makes a difference. Btw, of all the Topaz Photoshop plugins, Topaz Detail is probably the most useful and produces the most natural results. Highly recommended.

The Song of the Day is “I Keep Mine Hidden” by The Smiths. I have it on a compilation of four songs, two singles and their backsides, that is no longer available, but “Sweet and Tender Hooligan” has it as well. The Smiths catalog is a real mess. Worst of all bands I know :)

YouTube has the song.

Posted by andreas at 1:21 am Tagged with: , , , , ,

1270 - This Is How It Goes

Nikon 18-200 VR No Responses »
Apr 062010

As I said in the morning, it was mostl ycloudy today, it only got better in mid-afternoon, when even some sun came out.

It didn’t bother me at all, because I had to work on the tutorial for the Programming blog anyway.

In fact, most of the time I was held up with CSS. The matter is, when you do kind of a technical documentation, you very often refer to places in the user interface of the tool (like I might say “From the context menu use New Class“), you explain important terms, and you refer to things a user has to type in or the system prints out. You also want to structure your post into sections, subsections and maybe sus-subsections. It does not happen that often on this blog, but I had to find a solution for the tutorial on the other blog.

This is the kind of text that I will write very often, and I really want to use structural markup for that. Thus instead of using italics and bold fonts or such things (that’s visual markup), I instead use a span with a class “term” for terms, a class “gui” for user interface objects, etc. This way I can use a CSS stylesheet attached to the whole blog, and when I ever change my design, all occurrences of terms and references to user interface elements get changed together.

That tutorial is something that I write at work as well, and at work I use our Wiki. That’s the same software that runs Wikipedia, and I only realized today, how much easier it is to write documentation, when you’re not forced to plain HTML.

I could set up a Wiki of course, and maybe it would be even a better resource than a blog, but blogging is what I want, thus I maybe have no choice but using that verbose HTML/CSS crud.

Today’s three images were taken on a short afternoon outing, all within 100 meters of each other.

The Song of the Day is “This Is How It Goes” from Aimee Mann’s 2002 album “Lost in Space”. Hear it on YouTube.

Posted by andreas at 4:17 am Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,

1124 - Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me

Tamron 17-50/2.8 VC 8 Responses »
Nov 112009

After the rather lengthy third part of the review of my new Tamron SP AF 17-50mm 2.8 XR Di II VC LD Asp IF lens, let me finish the day with a much shorter post.

I made this image in the morning on my way to work. It was mostly dry, with only a tiny hint of the slightest drizzle. The image shows a little more noise than I’d like to see, because I had forgotten to reset the -0.7EV that I had dialed in yesterday evening. It’s not too bad though, even though I have raised noise in the dark fence by applying a little Topaz Detail to it in Screen mode. I am glad anyway, that I have made the image, because in the afternoon the slight drizzle has changed to solid rain.

By the way, concerning this lens, I am pretty through with those aspects that interested me most. If there is anything more that you want to know, simply leave me a comment, I’ll try to look into your questions.

The Song of the Day is “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me” from the 1962 Quincy Jones production “Nana Mouskouri in New York”. This is a stellar album and it came as an absolute surprise to me. Hear her on YouTube.

Posted by andreas at 5:08 am Tagged with: , , , , , , ,

1070 - Under A Stormy Sky

Nikon 70-300 VR, Sigma 28/1.8 2 Responses »
Sep 182009



Sorry for the irregular posting intervals. At the moment I am pondering a major overhaul of this blog, and most of my time goes into reading web reviews of web hosting services, comparing hosting plans, etc.

Anyway. Yesterday was supposed to be a mostly rainy day and it actually turned out to be not. There were high clouds towering on all horizons, but most of the day it was warm and sunny in central Carinthia. I was even swimming.

The Song of the Day is “Under A Stormy Sky” from Daniel Lanois’ first album, the 1989 release “Acadie”.

To my great surprise YouTube has multiple videos, for instance a live performance, another that’s part of a documentary, where Daniel explains what this song is about, and finally another documentary about the Canadian “Mariposa” festival, where he performs the song in a manner very similar to the album version. Pretty nice coverage :)

Posted by andreas at 9:36 pm Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,

1068 - Simple Things

Nikon 70-300 VR 1 Response »
Sep 152009



Sometimes very simple things are enough to produce an image that pleases me. In this case it is a storehouse of a local hardware shop, seen through a bunch of yellow flowers.

I took the image on my way to the lake. Most of today was sunny and I decided to go swimming. At this time of the year you never know. Every time could be the last time. Due to the excessive rain before we left to Poland and in the last two days, the level of the lake has risen by at least 30 cm (one foot) in less than two weeks. The lake is now full and begins to spill over. The forecast announced more rain until Sunday, thus we’ll probably see floods.

The Song of the Day is “Simple Things” from The Crash’s 2001 album “Wildlife”. Hear it on YouTube.

Btw: I said I would catch up and I just did. For the first time in a week this is again an image posted the day it was made :)

Posted by andreas at 10:03 pm Tagged with: , , , , , , ,

1052 - Old Love

Sigma 150/2.8 Macro 2 Responses »
Aug 302009



Does it happen to you as well? Does it happen to you, that you come to a place that has long been your home, and that your inspiration is simply there, no effort needed?

Today I needed an image and I also wanted to go swimming. I had enough time, and so I decided to make a detour through the region where I have lived for 20 years.

It’s so much easier there. I don’t need to search for places, I know them. I know where the flowers are, where the water is and I know what to expect under what conditions. It’s home.

And although I know the places, there are still some puzzles left: I have made many images of this fence, and I have not liked a single one. These I do, because they show the essence of this fence, the roughness of old wood, the repetition of the always different, the straight and the crooked.

I don’t mean to imply that one should not go on travels, I’ll do next week, and I don’t mean to say that all people are equal, but at least for me, these home places are much more important for my work than all travels. Sometimes it takes you years to find out how you want or need to photograph a place. How can you expect to go abroad and get it right the first time?

The Song of the Day is “Old Love” from Eric Clapton’s 1991 live album “24 Nights”. See him perform on YouTube, here is part one, and there is part two.

Posted by andreas at 8:37 pm Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,

1024 - Sitting On A Fence II

Sigma 28/1.8 5 Responses »
Aug 022009



Sunday again. I’m on the train, and this time the image is already up on SmugMug, with only the writing left to do.

Today I set out for swimming, but leaving at 4:30pm was too late. I drove around a little for an image, and this is what I ended up with. It’s the Sigma 28/1.8 again, with rather straight processing.

The Song of the Day is once more “Sitting On A Fence” from the 1986 Housmartins album “London 0 Hull 4″. See a video on MySpace.

Posted by andreas at 6:21 pm Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,

989 - One More Time

Tokina 11-16/2.8 2 Responses »
Jun 282009



I could have gone out today, really, but instead I preferred sleeping on the balcony. Nice Sunday activity, I tell you :)

Well, you and I have not missed anything. Weather was a mixture of dense, dark clouds, dense dark clouds with rain and not so dark but still dense clouds without rain. Only in the evening I have considered going swimming one more time. I did not, because time is short and I am off to Vienna in the evening. Instead I’m writing this entry.

This is another image from yesterday. Seeing what the weather was, I have already processed it in the morning. It’s a composite of two vertical exposures that both were a bit off of my intended composition. The place is again old grounds, and the processing uses the same tools as yesterday, Topaz Adjust and Snap Art, along with various masks and opacity settings.

The Song of the Day is “One More Time, Chick Corea” by the 1970s German A-Capella band Singers Unlimited. I have a 7 CD boxed set called “Magic Voices”, and you can also get the song on a cheaper 2 CD collection called “Complete A Capella Sessions”, mind though, that these sessions are far from complete :)

Go to Deezer to hear them. You won’t regret it.

Posted by andreas at 4:18 pm Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,
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