nanjing shopping street

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i came to china open eyed - ok only partly after that long trip - and open minded, and up to now my astonishment is a positive one, in all respect except the fog. i do hope it's just natural fog and not heavy air pollution, because if so, it must have killer qualities. the people i met were friendly, the food is just gorgeous and the visual treatments abundant. i need more time to process my images, so this is just a treat for the images to come. stay tuned - internet is slow here, so commenting will be difficult, but at least i can upload and blog.

and before i forget: high iso with the a700 is just great and indispensable here, as fog means low light already at 04:00 pm. the picture above is just a normal bibble pro/noise ninja registered conversion. If you want to se where it is, just follow this link to google maps. the coordinates were taken with a small i-blue bt747 gps logger.

this photo on flickr

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public transport crossing

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commuting once a week to the office by public transport offers photographic opportunities (it is a burden, too - 2 hours in early morning buses/trains, well, some of you will know). carrying the camera with me every week did not really pay out, in spite of all efforts. this week i got this picture when waiting at a crossing, getting the bus driver lightened by the reflection of the headlights in the white train surface, with the dashboard lights adding some surreal glow.

technically it is more than astonishing: 5000 ISO is a sensibility we could only dream of in film days, but also beeing able to use a shutter speed of 0.4 sec (on a 16mme wideangle) without tripod, thanks to in-body-stabilisation is a great achievement. so i have to make even better use of these possibilities.

diverting from my usual techniques i used bibble to convert the raw file. the current 4.1 version lacks the wonderful region tools of lightzone, but has a much better noise reduction on noise ninja basis. and, it is available for linux.

this photo on flickr

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handicraft hand

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giving the pictures on the todo-list more attention - for lack of new convincing shots, that is - i found this one again and after in-depth inspection i am astonished again about the fine rendering of colors and details at iso 1600. This is really a great achievement and well worth last years investment in a new camera body. and in this context the new nikon d700 with its suspected low noise at high iso is really attractive. poor me who has invested quite some money in sony mount lenses... sony unfortunately seems to go the 'more megapixel' way which will definitely not make me buy a new camera body, and if it's only for the reason that all my postprocessing can just handle the present 12 million pixels per picture and will slow down to unusability with the 24 million pixels the new sony will offer.

acknowledging the fact that 99% of the views on my images come through the internet at resolutions of ~ 1 million pixels, and for the rare prints and exhibitions the resolution of my camera's sensor is sufficient, just more megapixels is simply not attractive at all. 'nuff said.

this photo on flickr.

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colorful catch

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saturday mornings visit to schönram bog was a success in terms of recreation, but not so much in terms of pictures. the frog concerto was good to hear but impossible to visualize and overall i was too late for the early morning mist that gives that bog such an impressive ghostly atmosphere - sunrise is at 5:15 at the moment and the 30 minutes of driving were enough for the sun to develop sufficient strength to quickly dissolve the remainders of the fog. it seems that i have to encourage my 'go' a little more - see paul lesters blog on the joy of waiting.

anyway, from my last mission to sri lanka there are some pictures left that i regard as worthy to be shown. like this one. it was taken with a 20 year old minolta zoom at iso 1600, and i am all over astonished again when i search for traces of image degradation that could be attested to this high sensivity.

this photo on flickr.

Some rights reserved.