Some Baseball. Vienna Wanderers vs. Diving Ducks at Wr. Neustadt

Diving Ducks Batting
600mm, f5.6, 1/800s, ISO200

Time to shoot some action, haven't done it for a while
Been in Prague, Czech with my JBModel stand for last few days (no time for real shooting...) but today, back in Vienna, had to test new 300mm f2.8 lens!
Austrian Baseball League moved into their finals and today Vienna Wanderers played Diving Ducks in Wiener Neustadt. This is was 2nd game of the finals. Weather was good sunny with some clouds and dry. Perfect conditions with soft light and relatively bright. Next weekend I will follow further games.

It was purely one lens day, as I mentioned 300 mm and few times I mounted also 2x converter which gave me focal length of 600 mm! Problem with the converter though is that you loose 2 stops of light (from f2.8 to f5.6) and focus is slightly slower. In any case it is great and cheaper solution and worth trying.

My Press card helped me to get in without any questions and was able to shoot the game from and around dugouts. Every inning or so I kept changing position to get different angle and also when sun broke through I wanted to have it behind me. Most of the time though sun was behind the clouds.

Double Play by Diving Ducks
300mm, 1/1600s, f2.8, ISO400

New Filters Tests - Glass Enhancer, Straw, Blue, Sepia from Lee

I bought few new Lee filters during last weekend at Photokina in Cologne:
Glass Enhancer - unusual filter enhances any red or orange features within an image, leaving other colours unaffected.
Landscape Set which consists of
Straw Graduated - a greater yellow warm-up for landscapes. Accentuates foregrounds when inverted.
Real Blue Graduated - gives a deeper effect to skies.
Sepia Graduated - gives a brown tinted monochrome look.

It was time to run few fast tests at Wienerberg, in the park close to my house.
I setup the tripod chose simple composition with some water, bushes and sky. Setting sun was almost right behind me. Found correct exposure for the foreground took the shot with manual focus set 1.5m and settings: 16mm, 0.5 sec, F16, ISO100... and no filters at all:

16mm, 0.5 sec, F16, ISO100, no filters

Sky is clearly way to bright, I metered before the difference and it was about 3 stops brighter than foreground so I mounted 2 stops ND grad and placed my new Glass Enhancer. The scene does not contain too many reds but still wanted to see the result. Glass Enhancer takes 1 stop of light so I increased exposure to 1 second:

16mm, 1 sec, F16, ISO100, 2 stops ND Grad and Glass Enhancer

Difference is clear, colours are much vivid. You can see the moon on blue sky. Both pictures are straight from the camera without any post processing, and of course second is the winner. Tomorrow I will make more tests with clear reds.

Photokina 2012, Köln, Germany

Manfred Baumann's Photo Workshop

In almost last minute I (we) decided to visit Photokina 2012 fair in Köln, Germany. With two of my photographers friends based in Vienna - Rafal Konkol and Robert Kolsut - we were planning outdoor shooting and then idea popped-up... let's got to Cologne for Photokina 2012, one of the biggest photography fairs in the world, definitely the biggest event in Europe. Fast idea and fast decision and trip's plan quickly evolved and matured. It is only 900 km and that can be covered in roughly 8-9 hours using German motorways...

Just about to enter Photokina 2012

We left on Friday noon and arrived to our booked room outside Cologne, in Düren, little bit before 10 p.m. Quickly unpacked and looking for some food had a chance to see this small city's centre. Could not really go off having in mind early wake up in order to be at Photokina at 10 a.m.. We decided to leave the car and travel to Cologne by train. We found out that Photokina ticket also covers train trip to and from the fair.

Finally we got there... the place huge, massive to say the least. I do not remember so many people around me with cameras and tripods. Seemed like everyone had a camera, people were shooting each other like crazy. During those few days millions of pictures must have been taken.

Erlaufsee by Night. Night Photos Cont'd

Erlaufsee, 20mm, 36 sec, f/2.8, ISO 6400

Being in the mood to shoot at night and having good weather support I had to go somewhere last night as well. Somewhere further away from Vienna city lights. I thought Erlaufsee by Mariazell would be good choice. Small lake surrounded by hills and relatively far from larger city. I have been there some time ago remembered calm crystal clear waters of the lake. 130 km drive is nothing special so let's do it.

Having had short nap in the afternoon (got up at 6 p.m.) I headed south west towards Erlaufsee (lake). Border between Lower Austria and  Steiremark (Styria) roughly divides the lake into two halves. I have problems with captioning the pictures. Physically I was on Steirmark soil but overlooking Lower Austria (Niederösterreich) at the same time. How to classify such photos...

Anyway, got to the place after 9 p.m., and my hopes to be in really dark surrounding died instantly out of natural causes. Drove for an hour or so via serpentine deep dark forest surrounded roads just to see nice and calm place with small piers, as it used to be, now covered with restaurant tables and restaurant lights all over. What else could go wrong?!

Besides building's strong yellow lights there was number of strong lanterns placed along lake's beach so to speak. Light was all over me while I was looking for complete darkness!