First day out of the cage, and the day showed no mercy. Yes, it was sunny in between, that was while I sat at work in front of the computer

Anyway. This image is of one short moment in the morning, when I saw the reflection of a milky sun in a window. I tried my best, even shot a bracketed sequence, combined the exposures in Photomatix Pro, but really, I would have despaired without Photoshop. Two hours and many layers later I am not pleased with the image, but not disgusted either. I guess it’s OK, but then …

I’d probably have liked a dog in the foreground to the right, on a major diagonal, opposed to the light patch of the reflection, although, even if I had had a dog in the frame, it would have probably been the wrong pose and certainly a problem with the bracketed exposures. Well, this is an image where I woudl even copy a dog in, but alas, my dog library is rather scarcely populated

The Song of the Day is “Shine On” from James Blunt’s 2007 album “All The Lost Souls”. See a live version on YouTube.

Sorry, it took me ages again, but here it is, the image for Wednesday. I found this on the outside wall of a not-so-posh Indian restaurant in Vienna.

As to the Song of the Day, I can offer you “In India” from Carla Bley’s 1974 second collaboration with Paul Haines, “Tropic Appetites”. Seemingly I am fortunate to own the CD, because at the Amazon marketplace it is sold at $183 new and from $126 used. Amazon has it as MP3 downloads as well though, for just the usual price. Economy never stops to amaze me

Hear it on YouTube.

Today I was tired. I had had some technical problems and had hunted for explanations all day, and although I had nothing original, I had little hope for inspiration on my way home. One should never give up though. In a way it is routine. Do it as long as I do, and you do it almost automatically. It does not need much consciousness.

I fooled around, switched ISO automatic off, held the camera firmly to a wall or a shop window, this way exposed for about a second, looked what I got, adjusted, repeated. I must have stood there for minutes, concentrated, experimenting, and suddenly all the day’s troubles were past. I was whole again.

The Song of the Day is “Night Life” from the 2008 album “Two Men With The Blues” by Willie Nelson and Wynton Marsalis. Fine album, we had it a few times, but not this song so far. Hear it on YouTube.

It’s more or less the same park, it’s the same kind of lantern, it’s only near now.

Why I took the image? Hmm … in a way I like the lace of the tree in the background. Other than that, it’s the usual old game: take some simple forms and arrange them in the frame. Here I think the angle and the asymmetry work together and build up the tension that makes the image. At least for me that is

If you’ve got some time to burn, why not read an article by Ken Rockwell? The interesting part is that bit about punchlines and double punchlines. Not new, but always good to remember.

The Song of the Day is “Yesterday Is Here” from Tom Waits’ 1987 landmark album “Frank’s Wild Years”. Hear it on YouTube, and while you’re there, you should probably hear Cat Power’s cover version as well

It is 6pm, and it has been deep night since more than an hour ago. Light is a precious thing these days. For longer than a month it will get worse before it gets better again.

Usable images were a little sparse today. This one is from my way to the train, just before I entered the Underground. I caught some last, intense light on the top of Vienna’s Justitzpalast, the Palace of Justice.

The Song of the Day is “Precious Things” from Tori Amos’ 1992 album “Little Earthquakes”. See her perform live on YouTube.

OK, that’s better now. Yesterday I did two things: I took my time and I changed lenses.

Taking one’s time is pretty much a precondition for any kind of photography. I mean, sure, on some busy days I have made some images that were jolly good, and what may have looked like hard work had been no more than a minute of luck or two. But that’s just that, luck, and you can’t rely on luck. Detaching oneself and spending some substantial time in disconnectedness with one’s work and troubles is still the best recipe for creativity.

The other thing is the lens. I have changed to the Sigma 70/2.8 Macro, this fantastically versatile lens of highest quality, for sure one of Sigma’s best designs. I set it to f2.8 and for the rest of the day kept it at that. If this lens does not give me fresh views and ideas, then I’m probably dead. Thankfully I wasn’t

Speaking of lenses, there is a purchase that I’ve been contemplating for a long time now, I suppose at least half a year. I’m speaking of a mid-range zoom. I felt the strong urge for something like that when we were in Udine last Saturday. I carried the Tokina 11-16/2.8, the Nikon 10.5/2.8 fish, the Sigma 28/1.8, the Nikon 50/1.8 and the Nikon 70-300 VR, and after much changing around, I finally ended up using only the 28/1.8. It worked pretty well, but in many cases I had wished for something in the range of below 20 to at least 50, maybe more.

Of course I have the Nikon 18-200 VR, and normally I carry it with me when I’m on trips, I just don’t use it. Recently, while I was sick and at home, I had a look at old images made with the 18-200, and I found that it was never really sharp. I mean sharp like the Sigma 70/2.8 or sharp like the Sigma 28/1.8. I guess I’m just spoiled, but I don’t really like the 18-200 any more.

Basically I see two candidates, the Tamron 17-50/2.8 VC, a stabilized low-light champion, nice for winter nights, and the highly regarded Nikon AF-S VR DX 16-85mm 3.5-5.6G ED. Both are stabilized, the Tamron is faster, the Nikon has a better range. Both cost about the same. See my problem? I can’t really decide what I need. In Udine, in that wonderful, bright light, the Nikon would have been the clearly superior choice, in winter nights in Vienna the Tamron might allow me to stay in low ISOs. So what’s that? A winter lens and a travel lens? Do I need both? None?

The Tamron may be better for the coming season, but don’t my primes suffice on Vienna’s streets? Is a stabilized 50/2.8 any better than a non-stabilized 50/1.4 or even a 50/1.2? Hardly, huh? And is a zoom really what I use in Vienna?

You may find me mulling about that much longer, or I may make a quick decision, I have no idea. Let’s wait and see.

The Song of the Day is “Cold Blue Steel And Sweet Fire” from Joni Mitchell’s 1972 album “For the Roses”. Hear it on YouTube.

Postmen in Austria use such yellow trolleys. You’ve already seen one of them in “655 – On A Lonely Avenue“. It’s one of the images that I put on Fine Art Photoblog.

Ahh, Fine Art Photoblog! I probably don’t advertise it often enough (in fact I almost never do), but in its almost two years it has developed into a nice reservoir of interesting photography. It’s become more quite lately, we all have our own blogs, jobs, lives, but I promise I’ll again contribute more often. In fact I did just yesterday. Why not head over and browse a little? You can even buy prints there

Uhh … yes, sorry for that What else? Nikon Rumors told it for weeks, in only some hours it will be official: the Nikon D3s is coming. What that is? Well, just a D3 with sensor cleaning, video (only 720p) and ISO 12800.

Wait a minute, didn’t the D3 already have ISO 25600??? Uhhh … yes, it did, but it’s highest nominal ISO was 6400. 25600 was Hi3, the highest “boost” value. Now with the D3s, ISO 12800 is nominal and the highest “boost” ISO value is … 102,400!!! Holy smoke

On the other hand, it’s not that much more. It’s just four stops better than my D300. On the other hand, four stops, wow! That’s pretty much! Imagine the difference between photographing at 1/4s and 1/30s! That’s normally the difference between to hold and not to hold. Or take 1/30s and 1/500s: that’s the difference between motion blur and freezing the action. Quite impressive.

Of course I won’t buy one. Can’t afford it. You would have to buy a damn lot of images over at Fine Art Photoblog to make that possible

I’ll tell you a secret: I’ll have a camera with that sensitivity, and I’ll tell you more: you will as well. We only won’t have it right now. We’ll have to wait maybe two years, maybe three, then we will have it in affordable cameras. It’s only that we will not value it, because at that time we will drool about a D4’s or D5’s ISO 409,600

The Song of the Day is “The Letter” from Joe Cocker’s unforgettable 1970 live album “Mad Dogs & Englishmen”. See a video on YouTube.

Some very interesting cameras have appeared recently, and due to all that web site fuzz I have not yet commented on that.

It’s interesting, digital photography seems to get to a point where it’s more than good enough. When i bought my Nikon D200, I knew that, short of the high-end pro models, I had probably the best camera one could buy, with only one exception: the sensor was a little bit too noisy at high ISOs. It was still at least as good as film, but the Canons were better.

With the D300 that all changed. Suddenly Nikon had a first league sensor, and the camera itself had become ergonomically and feature-wise more or less perfect.

Sure, the D700 brought even less noise and full-frame, but in the end I decided to save the money. Full-frame would have sky-rocketed my lens costs, I would have lost the 100% viewfinder that I loved so much from the first moment, and the D300’s high ISO image quality is just good enough.

Additionally I would have lost the long reach without gaining anything on the short end. The point is this: the wide-angle problem for APS-C sensors is solved, there are plenty fine ultra-wide lenses. They may be not as good as the Nikon 14-24/2.8, but they take filters, cost half of it and ultimately they are again good enough. On the long end though, switching to full-frame would have had enormous impact. On the D300, my Nikon 70-300 VR has enormous reach. It’s equivalent to a 450mm lens. Ok, Nikon’s 400 and 500mm lenses are faster and of higher quality, but apart from the fact that they cost between 10 and 20 times as much, you can’t even carry them. Oh, and need I say that for my application, mostly street photography, the 70-300 is good enough?

With the new D300s (that’s a suffix, not a plural, thanks Nikon), the decision was even easier. I don’t need or even desire video, and apart from that, the D300s has nothing relevant to offer.

How about other brands? Not that I have any desire to change, but we have seen some interesting cameras in the last month. With the 7D, Canon finally have their answer to the Nikon D300. It has a much improved autofocus module (in this respect toppling the more expensive 5DMkII), has higher resolution, at least on paper it seems to offer excellent high-ISO noise, it has 18 megapixels, thus a whole lot more than the D300, they have even given it the 100% viewfinder. There are no reviews yet, but when they have not fumbled badly, this camera is bound to sell and give Nikon a headache. If I would begin today, I’d strongly consider the Canon 7D. As things are, it is just another excellent camera that’s more than good enough.

What else? Of course, the new Leica M9. This beast is totally and utterly out of reach, but I suppose if I had enough money to burn, I would buy one. Finally and after a long odyssey, Leica has arrived in the digital age. I am impressed.

And then? What about the Leicas for the poor man? What about those big sensor / non DSLR cameras that have appeared recently? It’s strange, they all have their strengths, but none of them is really interesting yet. The Sigma DP2 has improved upon the DP1, nevertheless it’s still much too slow. The Olympus Pen E-P1 is a nice camera, good looking, charming even, but its autofocus is much inferior to any DSLR and even to Panasonic’s Micro Four Thirds offerings. On the other hand, Panasonic has brought a too big, too DSLR-ish first offering with the G1, followed by a much nicer GF1, a camera of about the same type as the Olympus, but why on earth have they decided to set on stabilized lenses instead of a stabilized sensor?? That’s stupid! About the only argument in favor of lens stabilization is, that it stabilizes the image in an optical viewfinder. Apart from that it is only more expensive and adds complex elements that can fail. On a camera that does not even have an optical viewfinder, lens stabilization is pure folly.

Leaves the new Leica X1. Oh well, no need to salivate about this. Leica’s appeal are the M lenses. A fixed-lens Leica X1 is just another overprized camera soon to be obsolete.

All in all it seems that the category is not yet there. The cameras are either not good enough, or if they are, they are irrelevantly expensive.

Let’s look into the other direction, let’s look at medium format and the new Leica S2 system. This is even more out of reach than the M9, but again, if I had the money to burn, I would probably lust for a Leica S2. It’s not bigger than a pro DSLR (which most people would already consider too big to carry around at all times), but it should give us much better image quality. Indeed, the 100% crop shown on The Luminous Landscape hints at probably the best image quality ever seen in a digital camera. Impressive again.

In a way even the big medium format backs from Phase One and Hasselblad impress me, although those cameras are completely unusable for my type of photography. And then there is it again: my 12 megapixels are just good enough for me. They suffice even in those cases where I don’t invent half of my pixels with tools like Alien Skin Snap Art. And there is more to it: with 12 megapixels and the corresponding file sizes, my storage problem is solved. Hard drive space increases faster than I can make images, even though I save all my multi-layer Photoshop files, with some of the bigger of them being around half a gigabyte. I can still keep all my images so far on one single inexpensive drive, and I will be able to do so forever. Going medium format would set me back not only financially. Find a laptop that can edit a 60 megapixel image with ease. Well, you may find some extremely expensive MacBook Pro to come near, but then show me one of them that weighs 1.5 kg. No chance.

So do I care? Heaven, no! Times have changed. This is not the early digital age. Cameras keep their value now. Mind it, I don’t mean monetary value, that one goes down as it used to, but they keep their inherent usage value. I have no idea when I will change cameras. Should the D300 fail or get destroyed, I would of course buy a newer camera, but other than that I see no reason to change one good enough camera with all features that I could ever need, against another good enough camera with the same or similar features. Fact is, the D300 is already more than I need.

These images are from yesterday morning, thus the title. The Song of the Day is “Morningshow” from fellow Austrian Fuzzman’s self-titled first album. See a video on YouTube.

There are some image titles that I use once a year. “Summertime” is one of them (I kinda missed it this year) and another one is of course “Summer’s Almost Gone”.

I took this images yesterday on my way to the lake. The water level is unusually high for this season, but it is still warm enough to enjoy ten minutes of swimming. This is late sun falling between the trees of a rural orchard.

The Song of the Day is again “Summer’s Almost Gone” from the 1968 Doors album “Waiting for the Sun”. We had it last year and the year before. Actually it was interesting for me to compare the pictures, but in a way they all seem to carry the concept over.

Hear the song on YouTube.

A big, fat rain cloud squats over Italy, Slovenia and Austria. All of Austria? No, today there was a spot in Austria’s utter east, Burgenland, where the sun still shone, and that’s where we sought shelter from the storm. It’s a bit crazy and completely irresponsible from an ecological point of view, but it sure felt good to sit in the car and drive 2.5 hours for a little sunshine.

We went to Güssing in the south of Burgenland. It’s a small town best known for its mineral water, featuring a castle atop of a hill and a Franciscan monastery. This image has been taken in the Franciscan church.

The Song of the Day is “Shelter From The Storm“, originally from the 1974 Bob Dylan classic “Blood on the Tracks”, unequivocally acclaimed as one of his best albums, and a live version is also available on the 1976 release “Hard Rain”.

YouTube has the album version and a 1976 live video. Well, I’m a fan, I love both, but when you press me hard, I’ll take the live version.