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Posts from the ‘Germany’ category

My Fuji X70: CineStill 800T (XTrans2 recipe)

Above/featured: Archangel Michael dispatching the devil: St. Michael’s Church, Vienna – 1 Jun 2023.

The Fujifilm X70 mirrorless fixed-lens prime camera has added a lot to my approach to photography for projects in domestic and international scope. To satisfy my curiosity about Fujifilm’s analog-film simulation (film-sim) recipes for varying “looks” and “palettes” applied to images, I’ve provided examples of X70 images with these recipes:

• Ektachrome 100SW (saturated warm)
• Fujichrome Slide
• Kodachrome 64
• Kodacolor
• Kodak Platinum 200

Here I show images made with the “CineStill 800T” recipe, which Ritchie Roesch describes in Fuji X Weekly:

… CineStill 800T is Kodak Vision3 500T motion picture film that’s been modified for use in 35mm film cameras and development using the C-41 process. Because it has the RemJet layer removed, it is more prone to halation. The “T” in the name means tungsten-balanced, which is a fancy way of saying that it is white-balanced for artificial light and not daylight. … Even though the film that this recipe is intended to mimic is Tungsten-balanced, the recipe can still produce interesting pictures in daylight. It’s a versatile recipe, but it definitely delivers the best results in artificial light.

The recipe is for the X-Trans II sensor; the settings on my X70 are:

“Pro Neg Std” built-in film-sim
Dynamic Range: DR400
Color: -1 (Medium-Low)
Sharpness: 0 (Medium)
Highlight: +2 (High)
Shadow: +1 (Medium-High)
Noise Reduction: -2 (Low)
White Balance: 4300K; -3 Red, -3 Blue
ISO: Auto, up to 3200

I assigned this recipe for the “nighttime” setting as 1 of the 7 camera’s custom presets, but I also experimented in daylight at a variety of locations. The following JPG images are “almost” straight-out-of-the-camera; only adjustments to brightness level and a crop to a predefined image size have been applied, with no corrections to colour, contrast, geometric distortion, or rotation. I agree with Roesch’s statement about getting “best results” after dark in artificial light, but I got some interesting images in daylight as well.

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Kleinwasserkraftwerk Wehr 1, Neue Donau, 22. Bezirk, Donaustadt, Wien, Vienna, Austria, Österreich, fotoeins.com

22 for 22: Foto(ein)s for 2022

Above/featured: Vienna skyline from Kleinwasserkraftwerk Wehr I in early morning light. Photo, 7 Jun 2022.

For 2022, the act of looking forward and backward is dominated by a 4-week stay in the city of Vienna. In between the collected images is a reclaimed longing for the Austrian capital to which I was first introduced 20 years ago, but for which there was no camera and, sadly, no recorded pixels.

I’ve already described a set of images setting the urban scenes in Vienna from 2022. Below is an additional set of 22 images selected from a period of 35 days; the time interval represents only 10% of the year, but it appears to be a personally important “watershed moment” as well.

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My Berlin: Humboldt University’s courtyard of honour

Above/featured: Illuminated by autumn morning light, Helmholtz stands proud in the Humboldt University’s “Ehrenhof”.

If you’re in Berlin for the first time, you’ll likely make your way to the city centre and the classic tree-lined avenue Unter den Linden. When you’re not people-watching, you’ll likely admire the architecture along the way. Across the street from Bebelplatz plaza is the main building of the Humboldt University (HU). In its front court or “court of honour” are several memorial statues dedicated to some key figures in the history of arts, sciences, and the university: Hermann Helmholtz, Lise Meitner, Max Planck, and Theodor Mommsen.

The Humboldt University was one of many stops in Berlin during my visit in November 2021.

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My Berlin: the buried Bibliothek at Bebelplatz

On a clear cool late-autumn morning, a young child is looking through an opening in the cobblestone plaza. She looks up to the man standing next to her.

“Daddy, why is there a glass window? What happened here?”

The thing to keep in mind is that this square in Berlin is called Bebelplatz (BAY-buhl-platz), and not Babbleplatz. It’s easy to make the mistake. After all, a great repository of books was once created inside the building seen above, in what was once home of the Königliche Bibliothek or Royal Library.

But then came along a large racist blather.

Accompanied by a big ugly fire.

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Berlin Wannsee cemetery: Helmholtz, Fischer, Conrad

Above/featured: Friedhof Wannsee Lindenstrasse with Andreaskirche in the background.

I came here looking for a physicist, but I also found a Nobel-Prize winning chemist and a successful banker.

In the southwest corner of metropolitan Berlin tucked away under rows of leafy trees in a quiet residential neighbourhood in Wannsee is a small cemetery, next to a tall red brick church Andreaskirche. With the main (east) entrance off Lindenstrasse, the cemetery is called Friedhof Wannsee Lindenstrasse; alternate names include “Neuer Friedhof Wannsee” and “Friedhof Wannsee II.” Opened in 1887, the cemetery is one of the smallest in the city with an area about 1.9 hectares (19-thousand square metres) or a shade under 5 acres.

(My day trip to Wannsee was one element of my “quick” 11-day hop to Berlin in autumn 2021.)

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