Didn’t I tell you there’s a pawnbroker in Josefstädter Straße, just for all those photographers in need? Well, yesterday I looked there again, and as always I found something. Lush and oriental. It’s not Easter yet, but the eggs are on the table

While I yesterday wondered if I should link to CDs or to digital downloads, today it is terrifyingly simple: I must take what I can get. In 1999 XTC, one of the best English bands of all times, returned with the album “Apple Venus Volume 1″, to be followed a year later by “Wasp Star (Apple Venus Volume 2)”, two extraordinarily good albums. When you look at Amazon today, you can get both via the marketplace, but both albums have been discontinued by the manufacturer, none can be had as digital downloads.

Believe me, I’m not at all communist, I am not against private property, I am not even completely against intellectual property, but what we desperately need, what the world, what our culture needs, what society, what our species needs to further advance, is a return to the premises: Intellectual property is not property at all. You can’t own songs once they’ve been sung.

You can have a right to get paid for the publication or even the performance of these songs, that’s all well, but we need a system where you waive your rights by refusing to publish. I remember all those years when it was not possible to buy David Lynch’s “Twin Peaks”. Someone kept it in his safe and waited for a time when he would make the most money by publishing it. That’s simply not acceptable. We can’t tolerate paintings by Van Gogh and movies by David Lynch to be locked away in safes.

Not publishing music was excusable in the age of vinyl, in the age of plastic, but now, with digital downloads, there is no excuse. Publish or give it up. You stifle our culture.

“Easter Theatre” is the song, YouTube has it.

Nothing ages faster than science fiction, and when I saw this image, when I tried variants and ended up with this toned B&W, it immediately reminded me of 1950s science fiction movies.

Speaking of sci-fi, I’m still reading Orson Scott Card, and while “Ender’s Game” did not overly impress me, “Speaker For The Dead” brought up some real clever questions, and now I am in the middle of “Xenocide”. Seems like I will read the next one as well.

The Song of the Day is “A Better Future” from David Bowie’s 2002 album “Heathen”. Hear it on YouTube.

Photozone.de has finally published a lab review of the Tamron 17-50/2.8 VC. It’s for the Canon version, but that should not make much of a difference. The review sparked off a thread in the Nikon forum of Photo.net, where the review was regarded as almost devastating. The original poster concluded with “If you value your photography, stay away from this lens!”

Well, regarding distortions at 17mm, yes, it distorts badly, and apart from the brick wall, this original shot, provided for you in all glory of its full size, is as bad as it may get. For the Image of the Day I have applied PTLens, but that could only remove part of the barrel distortion. I’ve removed some more with Photoshop’s Lens Distortion filter, cropped, and you see that what I’ve got is pretty perfectly rectangular. Just frame a little less accurate, leave room for correction. That’s for distortions.

The other thing is, that down in the Photo.net thread Eric Arnold tried to compromise:

essentially,it comes down to this: if you need corner sharpness but constant aperture isnt important, i.e. for landscapes, get the 16-85 VR.

if you need a fast constant aperture and want stabilization at the expense of losing some corner sharpness, get the 17-50 VC.

I think my answer is relevant, and I don’t want it to be buried in an off-site thread, so please allow me to quote it as well:

I think this is wrong. The reason to get the 16-85 VR can only be the extended range.

Yes, it is sharper in the corners at f3.5 than the Tamron at f2.8, so what? Would you take landscape images at f2.8 or f3.5? Most of the time I wouldn’t. And even if:

I’ve just tried the Tamron at f3.5, tried it with book shelfs (detail!), tried it with flash (it’s still night here), and I can see a subtle sharpness falloff, only in the extreme corners, and I can only see it because I look for it. Even at f3.5, you would have a hard time seeing it, and for the 16-85 VR this is still wide open.

No, I suppose with the 16-85 you would shoot normally at at least f5.6, and by that the Tamron is stellar across the range. We’re speaking of 50/1.8 sharpness here. And that’s only at 17mm. Think of 24mm: the 16-85 just begins at f4, from 35mm at f4.5, and by 50mm it is at f5. At none of these focal lengths and at starting aperture it is a match for the Tamron.

Now take it the other way: Imagine a situation where you do want to take a scenic image at f2.8, for instance because it is night. Let it be architecture, for instance in a city, or let it be within a cathedral. It’s quite a typical situation, and it’s quite typical for situations where you either have no tripod or may not be allowed to use it.

In such situations the shot is frequently repeatable, thus I may go down from my normal 1/15s (auto ISO lower speed limit) to 1/8s or even 1/4s. With VR I have a sharp image, it may take me two or three attempts though, especially standing without support and shooting portrait format. Even in low light I may get away with ISO 200.

With the 17-55/2.8 at twice the price I may be lucky to get the shot at 1/15s, but I suppose 1/30s will be more likely, especially in portrait format. We’re talking two to three stops, i.e. ISO 800-1600 here. Do you believe that the added corner sharpness of the 17-55/2.8 will still be there at these ISOs? And if were not talking extreme corners but center or off-center, for instance a typical “rule of thirds” composition? The Tamron will be much better than in the extreme corners. The Nikon may or may not still have a slight edge on the charts, but you would have a hard time seeing it, and, remember, that would be at the same ISO. But what with our fictual but not so unrealistic situation in the church or at night in the city? With an advantage of ISO 200 vs ISO 800-1600 across the frame and the main subject where main subjects typically are, don’t you believe that any theoretical sharpness advantage of the Nikon, even if it were there at that point in the frame, would be hopelessly buried in noise?

Now say you accept some added noise because you need depth of field. You go to f5.6. That’s two stops, we are at ISO 800 with the Tamron. We may need two or three attempts to hold the shot at 1/4s, but we would need the same with the Nikon at 1/15s or even 1/30s. Both lenses operate at maximum sharpness now. Under ideal light and in the lab, you may still be able to measure a slight sharpness advantage in the extreme corners for the Nikon. Our subject is not in the extreme corners though, and the light is low as it is. Where is the Nikon now? ISO 3200-6400, right? Forget about any theoretical advantage it may have. At that light it is severely hampered by sensor noise. ISO 800 vs ISO 3200-6400? This is an almost too easy win for the Tamron.

I may sound like being biased, I may even sound like being affiliated with Tamron, but that’s not the case. I just own this lens and have used it for three months in the darkest time of the year. Really, I wouldn’t so easily dismiss this lens

Here we are. The Image of the Day was taken at 1/15s and f2.8. The extreme corners of the original shot are about 10cm in front of the focal plane. They are mushy because they are clearly out of focus. If they were in focus, they might be still mushy but less mushy. That’s how bad it can get. Could be worse, huh?

And, given the example in the quote, had I taken my time, I could have gone down to 1/4s and ISO 200. With non-stabilized lenses you’d still hover at ISO 800 or maybe at ISO 1600, look at the noise and console yourself with the fact that it’s not the lens, it’s only the light that’s so bad

Oh yes, “Rahmen” means “frame” or “frames” in German. Thus the Song of the Day is “Framed” from The Sensational Alex Harvey Band’s 1972 album “Framed”. See them in a fine live performance on YouTube.

Thursday. We had snow, for a change. This image was taken in Josefstädter Straße, I was in a rush and seemingly everything else as well

I expect to put up one more post today, in the afternoon, when I’m on the train.

It’s interesting, by the way. This is post #84 made with the Tamron 17-50/2.8 VC. Quite some proof that this lens works for me

The Song of the Day is “Winter Was Hard”, an Aulis Sallinen composition from the Kronos Quartet’s 1990 album of the same name. Take it as an acoustic counterpoint to the sense of speed in the image and hear it on YouTube.

1200? Nice number, huh? Sorry for the delay, I would have written this post in the morning, but instead I have upgraded a WordPress plugin, and that caused my portfolio pages to fail. No big problem though, after a comment on the author’s site, he provided another upgrade that fixed the problem. In fact it took him less than five hours to find the problem, fix it and roll out a new version. This is quite remarkable, try to get that from Microsoft, Oracle or any other big company. I love Free Software. No useless management, instead competent people who care

This image is one more proof for the concept of never being without a camera. The kiosk is at a tramway stop, at a crossing just opposite from where I work. There are people all the time. In this place it would even be uncommon to see a bicycle on the sidewalk, and I sure have never seen a scooter there. It’s one of those shots taken almost unconsciously

The other image, the Image of the Day, well, in a way it connects to Ted Byrne’s comment to “1198 – Under The Bridge” and to my answer. Ted wrote that

Monochrome has an inherent melancholy bias. Yes it can be overcome, but it’s as if the artist starts up a hill with a bag filled with lead.

Yes, but there can be quite some melancholy in color as well, and in some cases, color may even express it stronger. I guess this is such a case. It needs the colors and it needs them faded, in order to express such yearning for a summer past.

The Song of the Day is “Summer Kisses, Winter Tears” by The Blackeyed Susans, a group from Australia. It’s on their 2001 album of cover versions, “Dedicated to the Ones We Love”.

I have found no video of the song in their version, thus I must direct you to the original by Elvis Presley.

I’m falling behind for no reason but being tired. It’s Thursday morning and this is the image for Tuesday. I made it while my friend Christian and I returned from dinner, and before we heard music until 2am. After that I was not exactly in the mood for image processing. Yesterday I came home late, processed it, chose a title, and then decided to lay down for only a short nap. And here we are: two days behind

Esther Emma and Flo asked me how I did the post-processing in “1158 – Sophisticated Lady“. Well, here we go:

It’s two versions from RAW, a dark one for the background, a lighter one for the foreground, and then in Photoshop I used some plugins: Noise Ninja, Topaz Detail and Topaz Clean. I used Noise Ninja on both versions, and by painting on the mask I used the light version for the face. With Topaz Detail I added some local contrast to the face, giving it more definition, but of course that raised noise again. I countered that with a skin beautifier effect in Topaz Clean, added some neutral blur (described towards the end of “571 – Them There Eyes II“). Somewhere in the mix there is also a push in saturation, done with my usual combo of Hue/Saturation layers in different blending modes, described in “683 – Welcome To The Republic“. Throw in a light vignetting layer and you’re done.

You see, there is not so much variation in my processing technique these days, and the reasoning is simple: When I change light in part of the image, I must change local contrast as well, otherwise it would look unnatural. When I do these things, I have to counter noise. Using the skin beautifier from Topaz Clean is a bit radical, but for a mannequin it is OK. On real people you have to be very careful with it, at least when you want to keep them recognizable. Topaz Clean tends to make them years younger, and that’s not always what you want, or better, that’s what you don’t want most of the time. But again, on this mannequin it was a very effective way to eliminate noise, the blur mostly adding glamor. As Flo recognized, the lights of the shop’s decoration in the background look like a pearl necklace, and that adds to the glamor as well.

That’s it. As for this post’s image, well, that’s a face stenciled upon a shop window, and behind the window is an add for a clearing out service. You see parts of the words “Entrümpelung”, “Dachböden” and some more, plus some phone numbers. I saw it while Christian and I walked to my place. I had some other images, but this natural overlay of graffiti and text struck me as an interesting detail. I love it how you can focus near with the Tamron 17-50/2.8.

The Song of the Day is “I Can’t See Your Face In My Mind” from the 1967 Doors album “Strange Days”. We didn’t have The Doors in quite some time. That’s bad, but it can be remedied

YouTube has the song.

Vienna. An image taken at 5:08pm. And there is hope: It’s less than a week, and then the days will begin to get longer again. Slowly at least

So far it is just getting colder. I took this image of a mannequin outside a shop in Vienna’s 7^th district. I have completely re-lit the image, and actually I am pretty pleased with the result. Click on the thumbnail and compare the JPEG from the camera with my version.

This was just one possible way to go. It’s always like that and this is the nice thing with digital post-production: you have a chance to completely change the image after the capture. I could have achieved a very similar result with flash, but that would have meant off-camera flash, probably a remote trigger, things that I have (flashes, not triggers), but that I found tedious to haul around.

It’s not that much easier this way, maybe much to the contrary. I suppose it is easier to learn lighting such a scene with flashes, than it is to learn how to achieve it in Photoshop (and you still need a decent exposure to begin with), but I like pondering about images, studying them, and when I’ve made up my mind, creating the image according to my vision. And all this happens in the comfort of my warm apartment. Probably that’s the real progress

The Song of the Day is “Sophisticated Lady” (this time really a Duke Ellington composition ), sung by Ella Fitzgerald in her 1958 “Birthday Concert” in Rome, Italy. That’s a great record. I mean, I like her, even in her most commercial studio albums, but Ella live on stage, that was a very different thing. Just hear for yourself on YouTube.

Gloomy, rainy days in Vienna, what would I do without this pawnshop in Josefstädter Straße?

It’s a place I pass by late on my way to work, and when I am not sure that I have another good candidate, I always have a look into this shop’s window.

This is a composite of two exposures, one at f2.8 and one at f5. Additionally I have accentuated the sharp foreground with a healthy dose of Topaz Detail. Speaking of which, they have recently released Version 1.1 of this plugin. It it is advertised as substantially faster, well, maybe, but it’s still slow. Other than that, they have added a new high-contrast, high-detail, near-monochrome preset. If you own a license, you should have been notified by mail. The upgrade is free.

The Song of the Day is “Bird’s Nest” by Charlie Parker. I have it on my 168 CD collection called “The Ultimate Jazz Archive”. Hear it on YouTube.

Follow your instincts, huh? This post is named “Twilight”, because the image of the light on the chair in front of a shop in Vienna was destined to be Image of the Day, but when I looked at this uncertain, wavering path between all obstacles, I felt again why I had taken the image in the first place, and I just couldn’t reduce it to a thumbnail.

This is probably more about me or about life than everything else. This is the Image of the Day.

The second image is another one that I took this morning while walking through Villach’s outskirts, on my way to the train. I suppose these old houses will be gone by next year, replaced by a modern apartment block like those behind.

I took more images like this. It’s hard for me to tell what the point is. It is simply that I walk and look and see, and suddenly an inner voice tells me to “photograph this”. It reminds me of Paul Butzi’s recent post “Fuzzy“.

Read it if you haven’t yet. It’s about rationalizing the photographic process after the fact. It strikes a chord for me. Seeing is not analytic. It’s Go, not Chess.

When I changed the Image of the Day, the Song of the Day, “Twilight” from Vanessa Carlton’s 2002 album “Be Not Nobody” should probably have been changed as well, along with the title, but then, I like it, and thus we go on with the incongruity

Hear it on YouTube.

Well, some days it’s less, some days it’s more. Today it’s more

Actually these are images of yesterday, all taken in the morning while I went to work. These are not even all images, I could have gone on, but I just had to stop. This is supposed to be a daily blog after all, and I am already a day behind.

The lone balcony is here not for its qualities as an image, no, it’s here, because it fascinates me. It’s kind of a functionless architecture, an architecture that was normal a hundred years ago: you know, these balconies that were pretty useless, much too narrow, more decoration than anything else. In the meantime we have learned to appreciate balconies as an extension to our apartments.

Normal balconies are big enough for at least a table and two chairs, and then there must still be enough space to walk by. Not so here. A lone yellow chair, that’s it. And then it’s a north side too. I’m pretty sure though, the landlord charges a premium for it anyway.

The first two bicycle pictures are really the same bike, one time lit by the headlights of a car, thus the different colors …

… time passes …

… Oh dear! I must have been tired. It’s morning now and I have not even looked at yesterday’s images. Not much time to chatter now, but that may be a good thing anyway

The mannequin of the Image of the Day is in the window of some shop, I believe a hairdresser. I had to remove the lens hood and press the lens flat to the window, without any chance to compose. There was no other way to get rid of the reflections, especially as the insode was much darker than the outside. It is a relatively tight crop, but I still like it.

And that leaves the last image. “The Hunter Just Returned“.

The Song of the Day is “Too Much Of Anything” from the 1971 album “Who’s Next” by The Who. Hear it on YouTube.