I still have a lot of Amsterdam photos to share with you, so lets look at another one. I took this one the first evening there, while already returning to the ship, I arrived with. That evening I tried more to get a feel for the city, to see how it looks like, but of course I also took few shots. Btw. that’s not XXX on the ship, but it’s three white crosses, on a black and red background, which is the sign of the city :)

This is a HDR from 5 exposures, created in Oloneo Photoengine, finished in Photoshop. I also took one exposure at ISO 1600, to get the ship in the foreground without any movement. I then blended it into the HDR.

Technique: Oloneo Photoengine, Number of exposures: 5+1, Camera Model: Canon EOS 5D mark II, Lens: Canon 16-35mm F2.8, Focal length: 16mm, Aperture: 7.1, Middle exposure time: 12s, ISO: 200, Tripod used: yes, Location: 52.37177, 4.895504

Some thoughts on the Sony a7R

Some thoughts on the Sony a7R after the first week. Few pluses and few minuses of the camera:

+ great dynamic range
+ 36 mega-pixels are great for landscape photos
+ good color on automatic white balance
+ fast start
+ very nice, high-res display
+ custom buttons
+ 14 times zoom in live view (great for manual focus)
+ focus peak
+ great shutter sound (one hears it so many times, would be horrible if it was bad :))

– weak battery life
– takes long to charge the battery (but only if it’s empty)
– no external battery charger delivered with the camera
– the screen gets dirty very quickly (haven’t noticed it to this amount on other cameras)
– screen stays on during long exposures (it’s black, but still on) which just uses battery
– low screen refresh rate when in dark situations (makes manual focusing harder)
– camera randomly restarts and returns to some previously used settings (average once per hour of shooting)
– very few settings for exposure bracketing, and no possibility to take all with a self timer
– no time indication on the screen when doing a bulb exposure (the screen is on though)
– stupid placement of the menu and shutter buttons (especially don’t understand the shutter button placement)
– very slow auto-focus (but could only test it with canon lenses)

Will do a bigger article/review after more usage.

Blue hour city

I didn’t get any nice fireworks shots on Saturday, but I took few city shots with the a7r while I was there. I actually don’t remember ever having green trees in my blue hour shots from here. The Sony gives quite different colors than the Canon.

Technique: Oloneo Photoengine, Number of exposures: 4, Camera Model: Sony a7R + Metabones Adapter ver. IV, Lens: Canon 16-35mm F2.8, Focal length: 35mm, Aperture: 6.3, Middle exposure time: 6s, ISO: 200, Tripod used: yes, Location: 48.13704, 17.10491

Let’s get back to Amsterdam with another photo smile emoticon I spend so much time walking around the canals, trying different compositions, panoramas, framings, and a lot of another stuff. The weather was not perfect, especially with very low clouds, that reflected the city lights, but there should be few nice shots anyway. So here is the first one :)

Technique: Oloneo Photoengine, Number of exposures: 4, Camera Model: Canon EOS 5D mark II, Lens: Canon 16-35mm F2.8, Focal length: 27mm, Aperture: 7.1, Middle exposure time: 20s, ISO: 200, Tripod used: yes, Location: 52.36671, 4.884720

Here is another photo from the Sony a7R. I’m really impressed with the dynamic range of this camera. It’s just stunning.

Here I used 6 exposures to create this HDR (just the middle part is HDR, the sky and water are from single exposure) but while experimenting with the RAW file, I managed to create almost the same result with using only a single file in Lightroom. That’s really impressive when one takes into account the huge difference between the castle and the hill under it. And so you can see it yourself, I uploaded the middle exposure from this photo, in it’s original RAW file here so you can download it and try it out yourself (please only for personal use :))

Technique: Oloneo Photoengine, Number of exposures: 6, Camera Model: Sony a7R + Metabones Adapter ver. IV, Lens: Canon 16-35mm F2.8, Focal length: 35mm, Aperture: 9, Middle exposure time: 13s, ISO: 100, Tripod used: yes, Location: 48.13704, 17.10491

Let’s continue with another Amsterdam shot :) It’s another early morning one, that’s why there are no people in it. I actually wanted to have the Rijksmuseum centered, but since the tulips were placed quite randomly around the pool of water, I could not get a nice composition that way. So instead, I did this.

This photo is created from two HDRs, each one from 4 exposures. I used a second series focused on the tulips in the foreground to blend them in, so they are also in focus.

Technique: Oloneo Photoengine, Number of exposures: 2×4, Camera Model: Canon EOS 5D mark II, Lens: Canon 24-70mm F2.8, Focal length: 38mm, Aperture: 7.1, Middle exposure time: 12s, ISO: 200, Tripod used: yes, Location: 52.35841, 4.883135