When not perfect is perfect

It is not always you get perfect sharpness, composition or snow. But sometimes it ends up perfect anyway. This Photo is slightly out of focus and it is also tracks in the snow but does it make the photo bad. I don't think so, sometimes it just works anyway and this is one of those times.

One thing that annoys a lot of photographers, including me, is when you don't have sharp images looking at it at 100%, so called pixel peeping. But truth to be told sometimes you just have to let it go and zoom out a bit and look at the image as it is. If it is good who will complain? Maybe that out of focus or other faults is the thing that makes it stand out.

Finally on the mountain again

So finally the snow is here. It has been a hectic christmas like always but now it is settling down and I got time to bring my camera on the last hike. I felt kind of tired after working a lot the last weeks but we got up there and found some beautiful snow. I even got some nice photos of it too. Enjoy!

Andri Bieger

Ludovic Palmade 

Andri Bieger

Autumn light

Autumn might be the best time for photography. I might not be a superfan of yellow and green leaves but the light is always fantastic in Autumn. You can start shoot really early in the afternoon and still get that warm evening light. There is nothing to it really. Just get out and enjoy the golden light!

As you see newborns also enjoy the Autumn sun, just like photographers. He also seem to enjoy being around cameras just like his father.

And a one day trip to Zurich.

The big picture

Sometimes you just can't get all you want into one frame. Like the photo above. You could buy a new lens that is even more wide angle but that is expensive and will also drag down the quality of the photo since wide angle lenses are not the best performer. But there is a way that will help you in a lot of situations. Taking several images and then stitch them together. The image above is 4 photos stitch with the software PTGui.

12 photos stitched together

This is a great software specifically made for panoramas and stitching, much better than Photoshop. It is easy to use and helps you blend images together and compensate for exposure differences. But I do really recommend using manual exposure on your camera, no autofocus and stay on the same iso. This helps a lot in post process and will make for a better picture in the end. I won't go into the technique much more since there are endless guides on internet. But there are some pros and cons you might want to think about using this technique. Some you might not think about at first. The Pros are not many but can sometime be important.

Made of 38 photos. See photo below for 100% zoom. This photo can be printed with full photo quality up to 3,5m.

These are the houses on the left side on the photo above at 100% zoom.

Pros

• Lightweight, you don't have to carry around an extra wide angle lens
• You often get better quality photo using a normal lens instead of wide angle
• You can stitch together huge images and get several 100 Mega pixel at the end
• If you downsize the photo afterwards you still got better sharpness than normal
• The software will be able to handle small movements as clouds moving 

Cons

• You can't shoot moving subjects if they cover more than one frame
• Not good for sports
• Harder to compose, since you don't see the finished image in camera
• You must have a reference point in photos, just blue sky and the software will not understand how to put it together
• The files can end up being huge, 2, 4 or 10 GB depending on how many photos you stitch together
• Dusk and dawn you have to be fast since the light changes fast
• You can do it without tripod but it is much easier with one
• Requires a quite powerful computer to edit
• Sensor dust will be repeated all over the image
• You have to check all stitching edges so that they are aligned
• Requires more post processing
• Final file will not be raw

14 Photos stitched together

 But in the end it is a good technique when you need more field of view than your lenses can do. There is one last thing you might want to consider to. Make sure to keep the raw files. If you want to enter a competition they might want you to send in the raw files to to make sure it is not photoshopped. But try it it's a lot of fun.

Acla da Fontauna

Acla da Fontauna is an abandoned Hotel in Disentis. It was built in 1971 and was for a long time very important while it brought a lot of tourists to Disentis. Nowadays it is considered the opposite. Not very pretty to watch and something that is blocking future development. It is also built with asbestos which further complicates thing. You are not allowed to renovate it and it is very expensive to tear down. But what about photographing it? Well it is made up of a lot of repeating lines, concret, hard edges and as a bonus nature is trying to take it back. There is really nothing else to say except that everybody thinks this is the worst part of Disentis since it is huge and it is situated at one of the best locations in Disentis. Maybe this can change some minds.

Disentis Trainstaion

Yesterday it was raining after a fantastic summer with a lot of biking. I kind of spent all my time on the bike the last two months and that's why there has been no updates. But as I said yesterday was raining and I always wanted to use the reflections of wet tarmac. So there is more or less only one spot in Disentis that has colored lights to get that big city feeling I wanted. But it kind of shines through that Disentis is still a small town since there was no one there. But I liked the way it turned out and it is also fun to do something different. Full of vibrant colors and deep blacks.

Disentis Bahnhof 4 sec @f/11 ISO 64

Disentis Bahnhof 4 sec @f/11 ISO 64

One thing that is hard though is that the light has such different temperature, but you can always adjust it a bit with a adjustment layer and slide the kelvin meter to the colder side. Don't over do it though, that will just come out weird.

I kind of got inspired of this, maybe it's time to go to Zurich and try something new. Hope you enjoy!

Disentis Bahnhof 4 sec @f/11 ISO 64

Vacation in Sweden

A couple of mouths ago I was in Sweden. I spent an afternoon outside Uppsala in Hågahögen. It's a small nature reserve with some beautiful view. I was trying out my camera since it was brand new then. I was so eager that I forgot about these photos. But a couple of days ago I reinstalled my computer and discovered these again.

Nikon d810 Zeiss 25mm 1/25 sec f5.6 ISO 200. 

It's a completely different landscape compared to Switzerland. Almost flat and long sunny evenings. This makes it a lot easier in some aspects and harder in other. Is is off course much easier to get that nice warm evening light while there are no mountains casting a shadow, but on the other hand it might be harder to find those dramatic scenes.

Nikon d810 Zeiss 15mm 1/400 f9 ISO 400

I know people say that you should stay in your backyard and get to know it to get the most out of your landscape and push you to find new angles. But I don't agree fully, it can be so nice with a change, find new things, don't knowing what you are going to find. Using the light and weather you are served. That also pushes your photography. So bring your camera when you go for a vacation. You don't have to shoot every day but one or two days is always fun and you will develop your skills for the unexpected.

First Summer Shots

Today I had some time over and thought I would try an old 20mm extender. I bought this years ago on Ebay, sadly it was the wrong one. I had a Canon back then but now I switched to Nikon so now it fits. I had forgot about it and found it just a while ago.

Nikon d810, Zeiss 135 f2, 20mm extender, 1/320 sec

Nikon d810, Zeiss 135 f2, 20mm extender, 1/250 sec

An extender shifts the focus so that come closer to your subject. Perfect for Macro photography with other words. You do lose a bit of light with an extender but with today's excellent cameras that is no problem. I can easily go to ISO 1600 and get usable photos with my d810. You will not get full on macro but I think it was enough. There are some problems with getting to close too. Like camera shake, extremely short depth of field and a lot of post processing. So this was a good middle way to go.

Nikon d810, Zeiss 135 f2, 20mm extender, 1/320 sec

Nikon d810, Zeiss 135 f2, 20mm extender, 1/320 sec

I used my Zeiss 135mm with the 20mm extender. This turned to work perfectly. The Zeiss is manual focus but that dose't matter, the auto focus would have to slow any way. So I just set the lens on closest focus and moved the camera back and forth to get in focus. A god tip is to take a lot of pictures since most of them are going to be blurry. Don't be to harsh it is more or less the first time I try Macro photography but I think the spider and butterfly shot turned out fantastic. Enjoy!

Nikon d810, Zeiss 135 f2, 20mm extender, 1/320 sec

Nikon d810, Zeiss 135 f2, 20mm extender, 1/320 sec

Don't stop

Perfect weather, snow, motivation and colleges. Me and Matilda met up with Gian and Steffi yesterday. Everybody was excited for such a excellent day so we went up and prepared for the day we get those perfect shots. But as soon as we started I couldn't get it to work. Everything just felt wrong. Nothing worked I couldn't get the timing right. There was some misunderstandings of what line they should ride. The sun was getting higher, stronger and therefore the photos flatter and harder. But we decided to go for another run and try our luck.

Matilda Croy Nikon 810 24-120mm at 120mm 1/4000 f8

This time we ended up with more or less the same experience so we gave up, ended up in the sun enjoying some pasta. We said the day before that it would be nice to end the day with a run in Val Strem. To get there you have to do a small hike and then you end up in the neighbouring village taking the train back. After some discussion Matilda and I ended up doing the run. It was late and the sun was going down. Beautiful golden light but since we had such a bad aftertaste from the rest of the day we decided to just have fun and ride not stopping for photos.

Matilda Croy Nikon 810 24-120mm at 78mm 1/4000 f6.3

Next day I load the photos into my computer and realize some of them were actually quite good. To my surprise we nailed some of them and they didn't turn out as boring as I thought. They might not be the best I have taken but I thought they are worth a post mainly because I realized that you should never stop. In the future I will always continue shooting through the day even if it feels like it's not my day. The most frustrating part is that we didn't take those last photos, they could've been perfect in that golden sunset. So from now on I will never stop.

Matilda Croy Nikon 810 300mm 1/2000 f5.6

Stefanie Schmid Nikon 810 300mm 1/2000 f5.6

Piz Pazzola & Piz Ault in two days

So these last two days we did two classic mountain tops around Disentis, Piz Pazzola and Piz Ault. Both hikes ending up to be 2300 meters of altitude all together. That translated in to one 4,5 hour hike and one 3 hour and some nice photos. I'm quite amazed how far you can get on snow. Doing this in Summer would be really hard but with a paar of good skins under my splitboard, water, food and good friends time just flies.

Linus Persson Nikon 24-120 f4 at 66mm 1/5000 f5

Matilda Croy Nikon 24-120 f4 at 120mm 1/6500 f5

This was actually more or less a test for Matilda and me since we been planning to go on a 3 day tour in the next couple of weeks. We were both surprised how well it went. Of Course a longer hike will be more intense but now we are sure to make it. I also just brought my Nikon 24-120 f4 lens to see how it performed. I wanted to know if it is enough to bring just this lens for the hike.

Linus Persson Nikon 24-120 f4 at 66mm 1/3200 f8

The zoom range and weight is really nice and that is the biggest reasons I chose this lens over the professional Nikon 24-70 f2.8. I think it has been performing very good. Autofocus is accurate, I would say it nails it 98% of the time so I don't have to worry about that. The bigger problem have been to be able to freeze the subject. I often have to be close to 1/4000 of a second to do that. I guess it's because the sensor has such high resolution. I would like to have more zoom sometimes, but again, luckily the Nikon d810 produces huge files so I can alway crop them quite hard. When it comes to sharpness it is not even close to my prime lenses but it does perform well enough. But this is not such a big thing as most of us think though. Since I mostly print my photos at the lab with the help of a Lambda printer (classic photo paper, no inkjet printer) you don't need the pixel sharpness since the paper has a slight blur to it. Off course I would love to get as sharp pictures as with my other lenses but as a "light weight" (1,6 kg) kit it's really pleasing.

So would I buy this lens again? Yes, I would but I might also check out the Nikon 28-300 f3.5-5.6. That might be a good contender.

Getting ready for Piz Pazzola

All food is good food when you are hungry

Ready to drop in, Piz Ault

Half way down, Pez Ault