Esden's Blog - photography

Back from Scotland

2006-09-11T00:00:00+00:00

You probably know it already but I am back from Schotland. I spent 10 days on the Ile of Arran with some friends. We Made a 100km tour around it. I shot about 460 images and hope that there will be something useful among them. But you will have to judge for yourself.

We arrived back in germany last friday and I was fighting with my emails and rss feeds. Now I am catching up with other things. I hope that I will have enough time to work through the Scotland images in the next days and put them online in my gallery.

My photoblog seems to be working pretty well. It was running on auto pilot the last two weeks and I think that it is a pretty nice thing. I will now put more images online and they will get visible over time. That makes the blog regular and I do not need to spend so much time on it. But I will now start answering your comments in the photoblog. If you provide your email address then you will also get an email. (the email address will not get posted so do not fear).

New Lens

2006-02-05T00:00:00+00:00

Yesterday I decided to buy myself a new lens. It is the Nikon AF Nikkor 70-210 1:4-5.6. It was a used lens so it did not cost much. I hope at least that I did not pay too much for it. As far as I know such lenses do cost around 300Eur so 170Eur should be a fine price.

If you have other information or tips, tell me. I still have two weeks to give it back, if I am not happy with it.

I made some images with it. The last image in the photoblog is made with the new lens. I still have to learn how to use it. What setting it needs and so on.

You can see the lens here.

Shadowrun Citywars

2006-01-07T00:00:00+00:00

We played Shadowrun Citywars on our last RPG session. I took some images during our session and I because the pictures I took the time before were lost due to a drive crash I thought to post the new ones in the gallery.

I think they are not very interesting for most people but for the ones that were there it may be of interest.

You can see the images here though.

New Year's eve

2006-01-06T00:00:00+00:00

I wish you all happy new year.

It may be that you come here to see the images from the New Year's eve. They are here.

There are more photos to come from XMas and the days after that I spent in Warsaw (Poland) visiting my family. But it takes some time to sort them and process so that I can bare to upload them to the gallery.

I think that the requirements I have to the images I share with others has risen somehow, or I get paranoid. Because it takes more and more time for me to prepare the images so that I feel that I can share them with others...

Anyways, I wish you all happy new year and fulfilled wishes.

Nikon D50

2005-11-28T00:00:00+00:00

As you probably saw in my Photoblog the EXIF information on the right under the Picture shows in the last few images that they were taken with a D50. Yes I really got my Nikon D50! Weee! ;)

I hope now that at least the quality of the shots got better now. But I also think that the images themselves are better now. I have a lot more freedom compared to my old camera. And taking an image is no more such a hassle.

I still miss some wide angle lens and a tele lens from time to time. But with some time on my hands I hopefully will have some money to change that situation too. Tamron or Sigma or even Nikon themselves will have some nice lenses for me. The problem is that photography is a very expensive hobby.

Someone in the #photogeeks channel posted a nice comparison some time ago: "I had a choice for my hobby. Collecting Faberge eggs or photography." The only difference between the two is that the photo gear is not gaining on value like the eggs do.

I love my new camera and I hope to be able to take some amazing shots with it. For my and your amusement. Photography is now making even more fun.

The only problem is that my expectations to myself and yours probably too will rise now and I will have to work even harder to satisfy them. ;)

Photography Podcasts

2005-10-24T00:00:00+00:00

I would like o share with you two podcasts that I regularly listen to.

The first one is Secrets of Digital Imaging by Dennis Hays. It is a very interesting podcast for everyone new to digital photography or photography at all. I encourage you to listen to the podcasts from the very beginning. They are very educational. You can subscribe via iTMS or through this link.

The second one is MBP-Podcast by Martin Bailey. Martin is discussing his own photography and how he did the photographs. One can learn a lot here too. You can subscribe via iTMS or through this link.

If you know any other podcasts about photography that are worth listening please let me know.

Having a Cold for doing Art

2005-10-23T00:00:00+00:00

Damn ...

Why can't I be a computer. I would have an antivirus ... and could download a quick fix for that flew. That really sucks I tell you. My head explodes and feels like filled with batting.

I pump myself with teas for a cold and Aronia tea, aspirin and Rutinoscorbin.

I hope that I am fine soon. :/

I used my time where my head was not able to think to take photographs is my room. I made up a scene with shells, dice, ipod and glasses. I took about 20 images, with different times and aperture openings. I am really eager to see how this images got. (of course I took the pictures with Praktica that is why I can not show you the Images yet)

On friday I tested out the flash for Praktica on a friend's birthday party. I am also eager to see them.

I will try to make the images if I manage it to get out of bed tomorrow.

Praktica super TL (2)

2005-10-07T00:00:00+00:00

I finally have the first Images developed that I took with Praktica. They are really good, better then I expected. I posted the first sample in my photoblog, there are more to come. Sadly the scans are not as good as they could be so you can not see the real quality of the shots :( but I think you will still get an impression.

I developed the images at PhotoPorst. The guys cut the negatives not correctly so some images have cut off corners. The scanned images are also not the quality I would expect. The next time I will try another photo shop. Hopefully they will do it better. We have 5 photo shops here in Rosenheim so I have something to choose from. ;)

photoblogs.org

2005-10-04T00:00:00+00:00

After another session tweaking around my site I finally added Creative Commons licensing notes to all pages (hopefully). The photoblog site is also pretty finished contentwise. The thing that still remains is matching the themes of the blog, gallery and the photoblog. That means a lot of work.

I also added Twisted view of Esden photoblog to photoblogs.org. If you like photoblogs go there and you will surely find tons of very nice blogs. I also would be very happy when you add me to your favorites there. ;) You can see my list of favorites here.

Photoblog

2005-10-03T00:00:00+00:00

I added a Photoblog to my site. You can find it here. I hope you will like the images I will post there. Currently there is only one image that I already posted here in the blog. Tomorrow when I got some sleep I will add first really fresh image. Uwe outrun me with adding a photoblog just by a day. I started setting it up on friday but had some technical problems. More about them tomorrow.

Praktica super TL

2005-10-03T00:00:00+00:00

Yesterday I was at home in Ingolstadt visiting my parents. My mother was so nice to borrow me her SLR camera. It is a pretty old Praktica super TL. It is a Eastgerman production and even has a fan community. You can find the documentation of that camera here. More info can also be found here.

The camera has a Carl Zeiss Jena, Tessar 2,8/50 lens. It is a very good lens. The design is 100 years old but it was remade many times. Zeiss is producing the lens till today. Even if the lens is pretty dark 2,8f. The positive side of the lens is that it draws very sharp and is very light. It as also called Eagle Eye of your camera. You can read more about it [here](http://www.zeiss.de/C12567A8003B0478/Contents-Frame/87BB92AB3C30AB86C1256BA4 002F79AE).

As you can imagine it is not a digital camera so it takes some time till there will be sample images. I took today 18 images and in the next days I should finish the film. Taking that images the camera got stuck three times and messed up three images. That happens when you use old mechanics that are not used often. But nevertheless it is a lot of fun taking images with it. It is loud like hell and heavy. Just like firing some kind of weapon.

I am really asking myself if there is a photoblog somewhere where someone is shooting photos with such an "ancient" technology.

Glowing Sparcle

2005-09-05T00:00:00+00:00

I installed the wp gallery plugin, to integrate my gallery with the blog, today. I want to post some images I like in my blog entries little bit in the style of photoblogs.

Today and here is the first image I would like to share with you. I hope that it in some way proofs that also with a very cheep digicam one can make pretty nice shots that on one hand could be better but on other hand look very nice the way they are. Bit fuzzy and cloudy ;)

Photos in Warsaw

2005-08-30T00:00:00+00:00

I have added some photos taken in Warsaw. You can find them here.

I added too family meeting documentations (as almost all images they lack caption I hope to find time to add them later on).

The first meeting was at my aunts Magda (sister of my father) and the second was at my uncles Witold (brother of my mother). Have fun watching ;)

Also some images of my nearly brother Boleks car and a party with Boleks friends are there too.

Vacation but no time

2005-08-30T00:00:00+00:00

As you can see I do not write very often at the moment. Imagine why, yes, vacation.

As you know I am in Warsaw currently and because all my family lives here and I have friends here too I do not have much time.

Sure my granny or my parents would say directly the contrary, they would say that I spend all my time at my laptop doing "something". Sure I spend some time at my machine but that is only because I am taking a lot of images and have to postedit and select them. Trying to stay up to date with e-mail and news too becomes very difficult then, as writing blog entries does.

But finally after getting many times on my father nerves we finally finished selecting and postediting the photos I made in the Gdynia week. The gallery is finally online here. I hope you enjoy the images.

I do also hope that I will get some Warsaw images online in the coming days. It still stays a challenge looking through imaginary, removing bad and crappy shots, cleaning some of them up, converting to the right format, uploading to my sever and adding to the gallery. It is a pretty long process and also time consuming so that the gallery does not get cluttered and looks like a dumpster. I will do my best. I hope that at least my family will like the imaginary. (if so please write me a comment ;) I will really appreciate it as always)