this year a lot of extraordinary festivities take place in our new home town, aroused by the 600th anniversary of the council of constance. maybe i'll provide some more information here on the blog if i get to know the details behind. anyway you can at least expect photographs of the historic architecture of constance more frequently since there is a lot more for me to discover than the famous constance minster.
parked up
... permanently. in the meantime the colourful vehicle with slovenian licence plates which wasn't fit to drive anymore was removed.
rhine falls
with my tiny little camera i appeared as an usual tourist on his bad weather sunday trip visiting the rhine falls, the largest waterfalls in europe. appearing as a tourist i thought i might well be allowed to take plain tourist-like pictures.
wait! there's a slight chance that i was a tourist that day... whatever the case may be, this was the first day since i shoot with ordinary cameras instead of my smartphone cams that i left my flat without a dedicated camera bag: the rx100m3 was just resting in the inner pocket of my jacket waiting for an idyllic scene like the one above to occur.
rx100m3 lines and patterns
unfortunately there's dull grey light here at lake constance these days, which is why i concentrate on shooting my new gadget indoors. i'm very proud of myself; it was the best decision for months to go for a pocketable, second camera. life is all about making compromises and this option seems to be an almost optimal solution, especially concerning chase jarvis and a lot of other famous photographers:
“the best camera is the one that’s with you”
shadow show
although i don't know if you care about football / soccer, you might have noticed that public viewing events (not to be confused with the 'lying in state' public viewing) pop up on virtually every street corner; commerce wins. i commonly tend to watch the games with some friends in an almost optimal environment: huge flatscreen, cold beverages and not too much disturbing factors. with the german matches i make an exception: it's kind of invirgorating to head out to busy places and share this special excitement with like-minded people. in return one has to accept that the conditions are mainly not as perfect as in your personal living room or on your terrace.
however that may be, yesterday the brand-new rx100 miii was mainly resting in my pocket, while i watched the match between the united states and germany in a really nice beach club down the river rhine. the first point i realised with the new companion: i'll have to learn a lot, and i mean really a lot about instantly choosing a suitable focal length. at the moment i'm just unable to cope with the option to set the angle of view within seconds. therefor the new button setup and the different controls demand a too large part of my attention that i could simultaneously concentrate on the initial composition. for that reason i think it will be a good approach (at least for me) to start with focal ranges i'm used to and extend this range step-by-step. i initially set the camera to step zoom, so that i basically have to cope with 24, 28, 35, 50 and 70 mm. i'm familiar with the two narrow options, since the full-frame equivalent focal lengths of my sel35 and sel50 are in the area of 50 and 70 mm. the rest is completely new to me; finally some new stuff to learn.
what else to say after not even 20 taken pictures? down to the smaller size of the rx100 the shooting experience is completely different than working with f.e. the nex7. nevertheless the results do not necessarily have to differ concerning iq. i can already confirm, that the raw files are again capable of a lot of optimisation potential and it is more than worth to make the effort with post-processing the images. it's almost unbelievable how good the results even in low-light situations are. more to come during the next days, weeks and months...
fun kit
my usual kit for funny events that need a tiny bit more iq (that the diana mini is capable of) consists of the nex7 with the fujian 35 f1.7 toy lens. i wonder how my shooting experience and behaviours will change when my new companion - the rx100 miii - arrives today. it's not only that it is smaller and therewith pocketable, with its down to 24mm full-frame equivalent, wide zeiss lens it will be the first standard wide option (except the fisheye) i'll own and have to handle. i'm very excited!
festival feeling
for party outdoor actions like music festivals my usual digital camera is replaced by the analogue diana mini. actually its operation is more than simple: two aperture settings, just one shutter speed option and only the focus distance to be set. nevertheless one is not immune from mistakes: here these two exposures were partially merged because i didn't properly wind the film in between.
however i love the result as much as the festival summer itself!
in rank and file
military organised lettuce.
flowerpot
although bringing masterpieces like the &tradition flowerpot into action mainly results in pure joy, meanwhile i have enough of hanging up lamps and all the other stuff that comes along with house moving.
all the four samples shown here were taken at f1.8: for indoor photography actually a fast lens might not be essential because you could easily go for a tripod. down to the fact that i don't even own such a thing and i additionally don't want to discuss topics like how to stabilise my cam, i'm very glad having the sel35 f1.8 giving me the chance to take pictures like those.
early ferry
this is the view i'll be able to adore more often from now on. after our move across the lake, from the rural region of linzgau into the sole city here at lake constance, constance itself, my daily route to work will lead me across this wonderful body of water twice a day.
it takes only 15 minutes to reach the opposite bank. and it usually takes me only 15 minutes to unwind.