So The Bike Photographer strikes again 
I guess this was the last image with the Nikon AI-S 50/1.2 for a few days. I actually did it, I bought a Nikon AI 24/2.8 for €160. This is quite a good price, especially considering that it came with a hood. Unfortunately the weather here is unpleasantly wet and cold, completely untypical for this season, and this takes a bit of the joy out of photography.
The Song of the Day is “I’d Be Waiting” by Xavier Naidoo. See the video on YouTube.
OK, this is the last post for tonight, promised
This is an image taken today, again with the 50/1.2. The butterfly was friendly anough to give me time to focus.
Btw, speaking of butterflies, don’t you feel that this is a funny name for an insect? But what is more funny, is that the names for butterflies in different languages are completely unrelated. Normally you see the same stem used in the romanic languages, sometimes English agrees with German, sometimes with French, but here it is all totally different: butterfly, mariposa, farfalla, papillon, Schmetterling. It’s rare that you see something like that. It is almost as if butterflies had suddenly appeared maybe a thousand years ago, when the peoples in Europe had already settled
The Song of the Day is “Butterfly” from Jason Mraz’s 2008 album “We Sing. We Dance. We Steal Things.”. Great album, great singer, and YouTube has the song.
Instead of a proper Saturday image, here’s one more from my walk through Villach on Friday. Saturday we had rain most of the day and I spare you that.
I’ve already given you a view of this church the day I came back from Liguria, and here is another one, with the spire peeking out between Villach’s Congress Center and the new Holiday Inn hotel.
And while we are contemplating this clash of modern and old architecture, let me ask you a question. Do you own an e-book reader? And if so, is it a Kindle or something else?
I ask, because I felt the strong impulse today to buy a new Amazon Kindle. At the moment I read Vikram Chandra’s monumental Mumbai epos “Sacred Games”, an outstanding novel that is full of Indian slang and that assumes quite some understanding of Indo-Pakistani history on the side of the reader. As someone who has largely ignored India and its history in the past (don’t know why, it’s just how it is), I found it incredibly helpful to look things up in Wikipedia, but of course I don’t sit in front of a computer all the time, and certainly not when I read books.
Well, Amazon’s new Kindle 3G could be the solution to that. It has WiFi and 3G connectivity, some kind of easy link to Wikipedia (select a word and press a button, or something like that), and it even has a full-fledged browser. Sure, it’s not as good for browsing the colorful, glossy web as an Apple iPad, but its screen is much better suited to reading everywhere, even in sunlight, and its battery life is much, much longer.
On one side there is my disgust for Digital Restriction Management, but on the other side I really like the idea of the Kindle. It may have the potential to be much more than just a device for reading books. Reading a book like “Sacred Games” on this device may open up a new level of understanding, just because cross-referencing and looking up of background information is so much more convenient than with a physical book and separate computers, I am sure I would do it much more often, at least if it worked well enough. So, then: does it? Is it really convenient to look something up? Do you use that feature? What’s your overall impression?
So far I have not ordered and my initial enthusiasm has cooled off a little, because a quick lookup of the last about 30 books I’ve read showed most of them not available in Kindle format so far. I have read William Gibson’s “Neuromancer” trilogy, and of the three books only the first two are available. A bit anti-climactic is you ask me
I’ve read all books in Orson Scott Card’s “Ender” universe and his “Homecoming Saga”. None of these 17 or 18 books are available. Steinbeck of course seems available and complete, but there is no Tom Sharpe and no David Lodge. OK, they’re british
There are some books by A. S. Byatt, but “Possession” is missing. They have Salman Rushdie’s “Midnight Children” (that I’m going to read soon), but not the “Satanic Verses”. Heinlein’s “The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress”? Nope. Almost nothing by Ursula K. LeGuin. Nobel laureate J. M. Coetzee? Almost nothing.
Overall it seems to me, that we’re not yet there. As much as I’d like the comfort of using such a crossover device, at the moment it would not be of much use to me. But then, maybe what I want is simply an iPad or something like that, some small computer that can be dragged around along with a physical book. Actually I have no idea, do you???
The Song of the Day is “Tempos Modernos” from Marisa Monte’s album “Barulhinho Bom”. I have the album under the title “A Great Noise”, and the cover of my version is slightly censored
Hear the song on YouTube.
Friday was a hot day in Villach, although the sky was overcast when I strolled through town. It didn’t feel like Summer though, and the signs of Summer’s end are everywhere.
I still use the Nikon 50/1.2 and I have found some perverse liking for the slow process of focusing that beast. Actually I enjoy it so much, that I’m going to buy an AI/S 24/2.8 Nikkor as soon as I am back to Vienna on Monday. It’s a bit crazy, given that I have an AF 24/2.8 Nikkor and that lens can of course be focused manually as well, but I am after that feeling that only these old Nikkors have. Oh well!
The Song of the Day is “Autumn Lullaby” from Natalie Merchant’s spectacular new album of childhood poetry set to music, “Leave Your Sleep”. I have not found it on YouTube, but on Natalie’s site you can listen to long excerpts of the songs, and once you’ve done that, you’re likely to buy the album anyway 
I continue to stay very busy, trying to take photographs whenever I can, but today it’s from the archives again. This is a very old image, almost three years, and since then it has waited on my TODO list.
The Song of the Day is one more time “The Long Way Home“. I’ve used this song a long time ago, way back in “295 – The Long Way“. Then I had used it for an awful rendition of a very mediocre image, but this time the image is better and for a change it is not Tom Waits’ original from his “Orphans” album, no, today it is Norah Jones on her 2004 record “Feels Like Home”. And it’s not bad either. Very different, but not at all bad. YouTube has it.
Nightfall in a town, a ball of chrome, some lights. This is one more image with the 50/1.2. There may be something sharp in this image, but at the nearest focus distance and at f1.2 it can’t be that much
The Song of the Day is an unusual version of “The Way You Look Tonight“. Kevin Rowland and Dexy’s Midnight Runners on their third and last album “Don’t Stand Me Down”. You may like it or not, I love everything they did. This is a bonus track on a re-issue of the album, thus you have to look carefully. The one that I link to has it, and so has YouTube.
Being without my 17-50/2.8 is extremely inconvenient at times. I have really begun to rely on this ability to adapt to different crops of the scene. Of course it was similar with the 18-200, but as a lens that was much more of a compromise.
The Tamron 17-50/2.8 is not, at least not that much. At f2.8 it is already reasonably sharp, and that is not so much slower than most primes. Consequently I miss it a lot.
In everyday situations I rely most on the Sigma 28/1.8 these days. At effective 42 mm it is slightly wider than normal, it is sharp, fast if I need it, and walking a few steps forward or back does not hurt. Still, at the moment I feel constricted.
Feeling so yesterday, I thought, hey, why not go a little further that road, use something exotic, and so I did. It made this image in yesterday’s early evening, using my Nikon 50/1.2. Fixed focal length, manual focus.
Wow, I really should do that more often. It somehow frees you. You set an aperture, for instance f4, and off you go. Not much worry, you just let go with the flow. I probably wouldn’t want to travel like that, but whenever I shoot that style, I enjoy it wildly. I only forget too easily about it
The Song of the Day is “Flow” from the 2000 Sade album “Lovers Rock”. Hear it on YouTube.
Though I made some images today, there was nothing that I’d prefer over this second image of yesterday’s trip. It’s exactly the same place, a slightly different point of view.
The Song of the Day is “One More Time” from the 1977 Lynyrd Skynyrd album “Street Survivors”. Cover and title of the album have a slightly morbid taste, taking into account that three days after the album’s release three people on that cover had died in a plane crash, and most of the others were severely injured. YouTube has the song.
Carinthia is a small country, at 9,535.97 km2 (3,681.9 sq mi) its size is between that of Delaware and Connecticut. And still, I will never be able to see all of it.
Yesterday we explored a valley up in the mountains towards Salzburg, drove through it on a small road, and in some random places where it was possible to stop the car, I took some images. We had started out late, but even if I had had plenty of time, it would have been impossible to climb down every slope, to explore every small waterfall, to try every perspective.
And even if: there are different weather conditions, different seasons, there is winter’s barrenness, spring’s fresh foliage, summer’s lush opulence and fall’s decline. It’s an infinite variety, impossible to be experienced in its entirety. And that without even mentioning macro photography
There are many places I haven’t seen and most of them I will never see. The “Big Picture” blog of the Boston Globe just had a series of 34 images called “Russia in color, a century ago“. Those images, taken by Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944), are from places as diverse as the Caucasus, the Ural, Siberia or Samarkand in Uzbekistan. If you haven’t seen them, go for them. They were made in a special color process at a time when color film photography was not even invented.
These are images from a time, that we “remember” in black and white, and the color gives them an unexpected presence. Again, look at them, you’ll enjoy it.
But then, this is not the point of today’s post. I mentioned it only, because the very thought of Russia made me despair. I could have all the time of my life (which I have not) and all the money in the world (which I have neither), and I would not be able to wholly experience my small home country. Even thinking about the size of Russia makes me dizzy
No, it does not depress me. It’s just the way it is, life is. It’s all about choices, and we have to live with it, that most of them are made for us. It’s a random life in a random world, and we only believe we are in control. We are not, but we always have the option to accept and enjoy it, going among the wonders of this world with eyes wide open.
The Song of the Day is “Infinite And Unforseen” from k.d. lang’s 1995 album “All You Can Eat”. I did not find a video, and after I uploaded one to YouTube, I knew why: “This video contains content from WMG, who has blocked it on copyright grounds.“. Yeah, sure, I’d also hate some free advertising 
There is much brand snobism on the Net. Go to a Nikon forum and ask for people’s opinions about a certain Sigma lens for the Nikon D300. You are guaranteed to get some answers along the lines of “never put third-party glass on a Nikon camera”. Sigma is a company that many people seem to loath particularly, claiming enormous quality problems.
Well, I have eight Sigma lenses and only one of them has a problem. It’s my old and battered 10-20. The first thing is, that it never autofocused well on the D300. The other thing is, that it is not as sharp as it was and it is even a little decentered, which it definitely was not, when I bought the lens. Thus the Sigma 10-20 is in need of an overhaul and most likely a firmware update.
Other than that, I don’t have any problem with any of my Sigmas. My personal experience is absolutely contrary to much of the published opinion.
On the other hand, I understand how people develop such extreme views. Sometimes you make a very bad experience, and the experience costs you so much time and nerves, that it simply sticks, and from that moment on you have a hard time looking objectively at that particular brand.
I’ve just made such an experience with my Tamron 17-50/2.8 VC. Remember that I sent it in, because it frequently failed to close the aperture upon shutter release? Remember that the Tamron service company asked for the camera body to be sent in as well? Remember that I did that ten days ago, and that I use my old D200 since then?
Well, today I got camera and lens back, they haven’t found anything, they claim that everything’s OK, and when I tried for myself, I found that the autofocus does not work anymore. Not with the Tamron 17-50/2.8, not with any other lens.
Cool, huh? I sent them a lens to be fixed, they asked for the body as well, and instead of fixing the lens, they broke the body!!!
I’m so fed up, I can’t tell you, really. OK, lens and body went back, I’m in for at least another week of waiting.
Hmm … I had a bad, bad feeling about sending in the camera. I already thought of giving up and buying the Sigma 17-50/2.8 OS instead, and I should have just followed my instincts. But then, when the damage is done, you always know better.
As regards the Tammy, well, as long as it works, it is a fabulous lens, but after that experience, I won’t ever buy Tamron again. They have completely broken my trust.
The Song of the Day is “I’ve Had Enough” from the soundtrack of “Quadrophenia”. Hear it on YouTube.
