Dickens.

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Saturday December the 18th my daughter and i visited ”Dickens Festijn” in Deventer. This is a yearly returning event and a lot of spectators from the Netherlands but also surrounding countries like Belgium and Germany visit. Crowded, well yes. 150.000 people over the days you can visit. This meant we had to wait for an hour and a half before we could enter and photography was difficult, everybody wants the prime spot to watch!

Above a series converted to black and white. I used Adobe Camera raw for the processing of the two series. Two days before this event i acquired a Olympus M.Zuiko ED 60mm 2.8 Macro. I read in reviews this lens was also useful as a portrait lens so i only used this one. I immediately fell in love with this lens, wide open rendering and sharpness is on high level, a very good purchase to accompany my E-M10 MK2. Below a series processed in color.

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You can view high resolution versions at my Flickr account:

Hope it was fun reading and watching!

PZ

Lost Trains at Gare Hombourg.

During my summer holiday i was in ”De Voerstreek” Located in Belgium’s province ‘Limbourg’. Very nice place to be, great hills and nature. I was on holiday with my daughter. Lucky for me she likes visiting places a lot and also like to pick up mu old Olympus E-Pl1 . So we went on some photography visits. Among thesevisits we saw these abandoned trains.

It has been a long time since i really made a settings error on my A7R. By accident i edited the AWB settings to add full yellows red and oranges as it could on the automatic chosen white balance. It is too bad that getting this fixed is very uneasy, but we always can choose for Black and White. This fits the subject just fine so here we go.

All shot with the Sony A7R using my 28mm F2.0, my 55mm F1.8 and the 16-35mm F4. All images processed with CaptureOne Pro 9.2.1 to my likings.

PZ

MBI Beton, 2014 (warning large serie)

August 2014 we visited MBI Beton, a legit visit and one of our first urbex trips. This serie has been on my hard drive for a long time now. I decided to share the full serie on my blog. Flickr or Facebook don’t seem appropriate for this size serie.

This series is completely shot with my Nikon D90 + 35mm 1.8 DX. One of the last times i shot such a big serie with it. I also owned my Olympus E-M10 those days but shot with both camera’s and did an in camera black and white serie with the D90 35mm combo. All that is edited is some straightening on the ooc jpeg files and the border.

Why publish it? Well i have personally always liked this serie a lot, not really an explanation for it but today i needed to share it.

The D90 and 35mm are history, both sold to invest in new gear.. Also Urbex has become my main shooting style now. This blog was neglected for a long time so now time to use it again.

The serie is shown randomly.

Teufelsberg and Hohenschönhausen on Kodak TMax 400.

As promised in my last post, here is the second roll of film. Started at Teufelsberg and finished at Hohenschönhausen. Teufelsberg is an old NATO station used by the americans to listen to the east. Hohenschönhausen is the reason why perhaps? An old Stasi prison which is now a memorial place. The only portrait in the serie is our guide who has been imprisoned there.

Techstuff; Nikon F100, Nikkor 50mm 1.4 g AF-S, Kodak Tmax 400 asa Expired 5-2013, Coolscan LS-40, Photoshop.

PZ

Nikomat, love it!

Nikomat FT2 + Nikkor 50mm 1:2. This gear is a gift, a great gift. What a fun machine to work with. Also i am pleasantly surprised with the lens. If you have read my previous post about the F3, for the pictures and the feeling about these counts as the same. This is what i see around me and for me it’s fun to do, maybe it’s not that interesting for you as a reader, but as some info and performance of gear and film it might be usefull.

Techstuff: Nikomat FT2, Nikkor 50mm 1:2, Fuji Superia Xtra 400 asa expired 2-2012, Coolscan LS-40, Nikon San 4.03 12 bit default ice fine, Photoshop CC for color correction and some little tweaks like sharpening. Bordermaker was used for the white border and sig.

PZ

More F3

Yes, shooting with the F3 is fun. The pictures in this post will not qualify as great pictures but the fun i had making them is what is important to me. All are shot with an ai-s lens i have owned for a longer time, a Kiron made Vivitar 28mm 1:2.5. Ah well it’s not super sharp wide open and for some good corners i need to go to f8 i guess but what the hell, it’s solid as a rock and looks great on the F3. Focusses so easy and gives me fun. Do still need a 50mm that will work with the normal metering function, i have a 50mm f2 pre ai wich can only do ‘stop down metering’.  The used film was expired, no clue how long. The Hema is strange, some negatives are badly damaged with scratches and some are almost not, makes me wonder what the hell they do in their lab. In practical terms this means some negatives are in PS for 1 minute and some for 10 to 15 before dust and scratches are gone. Maybe, i should or maybe i would be a wiser man if i developed the black and white film myself.

All the pictures are taken on my walks with the dog in a circle roughly 2km around my home. For me the shots , well some at least, make sense. Normally i view it walking by. Now the environment has become a still. For me great to look at and makes my world look different.

For the technical part, Nikon F3 – Vivitar 28mm 1:2.8 ai-s(serial 22…) – Kodak TMax 100 asa expired(date unknown) shot at iso 100 – Nikon Scan 4.03 at default negative/mono setting – Tiff to Photoshop CC for dust and scratch removal and some tweaks in levels and a little sharpening.

PZ

In Amsterdam

The weekend of the 7th and 8th december i was in Amsterdam for 2 concerts at the Ziggodome. We stayed in town in Hotel van Onna during these days. I brought the Olympus E-P1 with 14mm Lumix attached hoping to be able to do some streetshots. In this post you can see some results. Hope you enjoy. It’s what i saw walking the streets, we walked around a lot and i fell in love with Amsterdam again.

Some shots were edited to correct perspective in PTLens, used the out of camera jpeg in Photoshop CC for this.  The rest are out of camera jpeg’s with a border added.

PZ

ESA at A Human Adventure

Short time ago i posted a blog entry about ‘A Human Adventure’ That was about the world wide part of this exhibition: NASA.

But we dutchies had an extra part to this expo, about ‘ESA’ I guess other countries have some addition to, but with Andre Kuipers we have a big NASA celebrity. So here are the shots from that part of the expo. For my daughter this was better because there were interactive parts here wich she really likes, always at expo’s or musea. So a big bunch of shots here, hope it’s fun to watch if you ae interested in Space and spacetravel! For the dutch, go visit while you can!

All shot shere with the Olympus E-P1 + 14mm 1:2.5 Lumix ASPH. Shot with b&w preset at iso 1600.

PZ

NASA: A Human Adventure.

On saturday the 23th of november my daughter and i visited the expo NASA: A Human Adventure. The Jaarbeurs in Utrecht was hosting this expo. We made a day out of it going by train and have dinner in Hoog Catherijne afterwards. It was a great expo wich i can recommend to anyone with a interest for space or just basic human history. I brought the E-P1 along with the lumix 14mm. Well the camera was struggling to catch enough light, all is at 1600 iso with max aperture f4 to get steady shots with an compromise on dof. All is in black and white, the higher iso noise is better camouflaged in b&w. Again not my best, but as a serie it should provide an interesting look into this expo.

This blogpost consists of the NASA part of the expo wich is shown around the world. For the dutch there was an extra expo about ESA. I will show some pictures of this in a next blogpost.

PZ

Hotel Dullemond, Laag Soeren.

I have been at this ‘urbex/rural’ location before, Always wanted to go back. This evening it was darker as i hoped around the Hotel so had to do with iso 1600. The decision to make an B&W with toning came up in 3 seconds. So home again i loaded the files on my pc and started editing. Made a preset in Silver efex 2 wich i liked. I have shown a few of the serie on my Flickr account shortly after the visit, now decided to share all on my blog for you to see.

Lot’s of stories about ghost’s can be found on the internet, funny it is that we both felt like being watched shooting this series of photo’s, even the dog seemd spooked. You tell me how does that happen, because one reads about ghost’s and your mind plays with you, or………Anyways i do like my photo’s. Did manipulate some of them because the graffiti contained pure racistic and fascistic signs or remarks wich i really don’t agree with.

Used my Nikon D90 with 35mm 1.8dx.

PZ