Dave's Photo & Travelblogue

Las Vegas Nights

These are not the lights of Las Vegas, Nevada… but rather a different kind of lights in the tiny town of Las Vegas, Tenerife. I set up my Nikon D7000 and tried out some Milky Way star trail timelapse sequences. By pure chance, one of the nights happened to be the 2011 Geminids meteor shower! Lots of Sternschnuppe made it onto my 30s-exposure photos.

See how many shooting stars you can count. Can you find Venus, the Pleiades, and the Andromeda galaxy? I recommend 1080 full HD on Youtube to give your peepers the best resolution possible!

As I’ve been doing a lot of timelapse stuff lately, here are

Dave’s TOP 10 Night Timelapse Tips

• Make sure nothing annoying is moving in your photo, like trees that cover a large portion of the frame.
• Avoid super bright lights being in the shot, they can create lens flare at long exposure.
• Beware of battery life. Even my D7000 (one of the longest battery-life cameras) lasts under 400 shots at ISO 2000 and 30s exposure.
• If possible, choose a location without motion detector lights. Unfortunately I couldn’t do that in this video, so I minimized the amount of scenery that was hit by the light.
• Watch out for the moon. If it comes up during a night timelapse it will wash out all the stars.
• Use a steady tripod and put it somewhere it won’t be disturbed by wind gusts, pets, or other people while you (hopefully) sleep.
• Make sure to set a fixed (manual) focus, and don’t let the camera autofocus during the shoot. I use Live View on a bright star or very distant house light for the initial focus.
• Keep the aperture constant to avoid changes in depth of field during the shoot.
• Use manual exposure mode and fine-tune the ISO and shutter open time with some test shots. Of course you’ll want to set the widest aperture of your lens.
• Last but not least: Check the weather report and pick a day free of clouds! Forecast should be 0% chance of rain unless you want a wet camera.

Timelapse Sunsets in Greece

On a recent trip to Greece, I tried out timelapse photography on my Nikon D7000 D-SLR. With about 500 photos you can get a great 20 second sunset sequence in 24p! Taken in Athens and on Aegina island. Here’s a shot of the setup I used:

With my Intel-Atom-powered Asus Eee PC along, I was able to check out the results directly after each timelapse shoot. I used free software (Virtualdub with the deflicker plugin) to compile the single shots into a video. This quick feedback enabled me to fine-tune my techniques on the fly and get increasingly better timelapse videos each day.

I foresee a lot of changes in cameras during the next 5-10 years. Higher-end models will have (real, quality) HDR functions integrated. The sequential photo setting now used for timelapses will integrate the photos automatically into a video in the camera, including exposure adjustment to avoid flicker. This is going to need a more powerful, yet still low-power processor built into the camera.

Let’s see what happens as cameras + processors improve. One thing is for sure, technology isn’t slowing down yet!

Oktoberfest Nights

What better time that Oktoberfest for a Guided Munich photo tour. I took some clients around the city on the first night of Oktoberfest 2011, and we were lucky enough to get this beautiful sunset.

A nice longer exposure shot:

Then off for a few really long-exposure nighttime shots before a thunderstorm brought our evening to an end. Yeah, I was too lazy to perspective-correct these in Photoshop (hehe).

I love the stationary car in front of the archway!

So get out your tripods and let’s see some long-exposure car trails! (All photos here with a Nikon D7000 and 18-200mm VR lens)

Beauty around Buda Castle

Buda Castle sits high atop a hill overlooking both sides of the city, Buda and Pest. In the evening you can find stunning nighttime panoramas. But under the castle is yet another world of caves and tunnels, used by man since prehistoric times. Unfortunately the Labyrinth of Buda Castle was misused during the Cold War, turned into a concrete-lined bunker. Since then it has been converted into an interesting artistic display of history.

In some caves are reproductions of prehistoric art, mostly copied from Lascaux in France.

With a mini-tripod and a bit of patience you can get a nice naturally-lit shot like this without needing flash. You’ll need low ISO for a clean photo, and custom white balance. The hardest part was staying still for 15s…

My favorite display was about a newly-discovered extinct race of hominids found in Hungary. You’ll have to visit the Labyrinth to learn more about Homo consumes.

Outside Buda Castle it’s spring!

I’ll leave you with this lovely sunset shot taken from near the castle.

If you’re headed to Eastern Europe I highly recommend to make Budapest a priority on your itinerary. It’s well worth the trip!

Relaxing in Budapest

German holidays are great, as long as you can avoid the traffic. Leaving at 7am from Munich we missed most of it and made it to Budapest in the early afternoon. Our greeter was an enthusiastic howler in need of a toenail trim:

Late lunch at the hotel restaurant. This fantastic dish of homemade smoked salmon and quail eggs was six euro. (The pumpkin soup was also up there with the best I’ve ever had, for 2.50).

After wandering around the beautiful castle above the city at sunset…

…we had a coffee and enjoyed this great night view! I think this is officially the best view I ever had from a coffee shop. It was definitely worth the pricey cuppa. (Hungarian expensive = Munich standard price!).

I’m already looking forward to the next 2 days of sightseeing!

Happy Easter. Just to cover my bases, I’ll be pouring one out for JC… probably a real Czech Budweiser

Verona at Night

When I arrived in Verona with a friend, the first thing we found was a lingerie fashion show in the central square. Verona is one happenin’ city! I’m going to have to pore over those photos… maybe I can find one or two that are (ahem) suitable for a later post… but here’s what we saw afterward. All photos taken with a tripod.

The Arena in Verona dates from Roman times:

As the evening’s pop concert emptied out of the Arena di Verona, I got some ghostly photos of high heels and a bike on the Piazza Brà. ISO200, f/5, 2s.

Here’s what 0.8s will get you:

And finally, an interesting church, well-lit at night.

Verona is a great city to visit, and even though you can’t shop at night, the town is abuzz with activity. Bars, events, and restaurants are packed full, spilling out onto the streets. It’s definitely worth a full weekend looking around this beautiful city!

Oktoberfest Lights

On my way to a friend’s party I saw these spotlights over Oktoberfest 2010. As I didn’t have my camera or half an hour to spare, I made sure to go back another day and try these long exposures.

The church in the foreground is the St. Maximilian Kirche.

All these exposures are 10s at ISO200 with a wide aperture. I didn’t want to go longer, because the lights moved too frequently.

It was a great Oktoberfest 2010; hopefully Oktoberfest 2011 is just as much fun!

Toytown Photo Walk – October

I met up with the Toytown photo club and walked around Munich in the dark for a few hours. Here are a few shots I managed without any tripod.

I was going for a different angle on this red-lit mannequin.

Shooting from the hip in the dark at f/2…

Eisbach surfers! I played with the strobe effect of my Nikon D90’s built-in flash. Next time I’ll bring a tripod and my SB600, turn down the ISO, and pump up the flash. That should blow out the orange highlights from the d*mn sodium vapor lights. I am too lazy for flash gels and a white card, heh.

That’s all for today!

Singapore Jungle Nights

Singapore’s Night Safari is quite an interesting attraction. I was expecting more, so it was a bit disappointing when I went there on July 16th, but it’s still worth a visit.

Here’s the skinny: it’s open from 7:30 until midnight. Adults $22 SGD. BUT you can’t see everything from the walking paths! Many of the (granted, less-exciting) animals you can only see from the tram, which costs another $10. This really pi$$ed me off, because I hate touristy tram rides. AND the tram does not stop, so you basically can’t take photos, because with this light you NEED a long exposure.

One thing I felt I missed out on was the lions, which you can just barely see from the walking trail. Here’s a crop of the best photo I got with my mini-tripod: 1/3s, ISO 1600, f/2.

The Night Safari is basically a normal zoo with the same old enclosures for the animals. Most of the animals are the same, too. But many of the animals you see at a normal zoo are nocturnal, so they sleep all day. At the Night Safari, they are more awake and active.

But beware: you cannot use flash to take your pictures (though a few idiots try). It’s not good for the animals. And it’s almost impossible to get a decent shot with under $1000 of camera gear, flash or not. You need great low-light performance (non-grainy ISO 1600-3200) and a pro lens of f/2.8 or faster. My D90 with the 35mm f/2 AF-D did okay, but it was still tough. A $2,700 D700 and 50mm f/1.4 would be ideal.

Here’s a great shot that I got when someone else’s flash popped just as I had my shutter open for 1/4s. The hyenas were NOT happy about that flash.

That’s still 1/4s with a mini-tripod, ISO 3200, and f/2. So I guarantee their photo with a pocket cam (2m farther away than I was) sucked, despite the flash.

The animal show had potential. But most of the animals did not cooperate. The jumping cat didn’t jump:

The grape-sniffing whatever-it-was could not choose the hand with the grape, it was too distracted by someone’s camera flash. Then, these recycling otters decided to play with the cups & cans instead of tossing them in the proper bins…

Overall, the park was interesting, but as I said my expectations were much higher. If you go in realizing it’s just a zoo at night, and not an amazing safari-like experience, you’ll be impressed. One thing I learned: porcupines do not shoot their quills. They back into their attacker, then the spines detach from the ‘pine and stick in whatever scared them, because of their fishhook-like barbs.

For today’s last (and I think best) photo, here’s a clouded leopard. This beautiful cat was about one meter from the camera, through a pane of glass. 4s, ISO 3200, f/2 with a mini tripod. It was pretty funny watching people try to take pics through the tinted (probably one-way-mirror) glass with the flash.

By the way, I can recommend the park hopper pass, where you get to go to 2, or all 3 of the Singapore animal parks for one fee: Jurong Bird Park, Singapore Zoo, and the Night Safari. For all 3 it was $45 SGD, a very full two days worth of activities. Awesome!

Bangkok’s Steamy Underbelly

By steamy, I mean several things. Yeah, there are Bangkok’s red-light districts. But then you have the humid summer heat – and the clouds of actual steam rising from every street vendor stall. How the Thais eat skewers and plates of hot, roasted meat and veg in this heat, I don’t know.

On July 6 I attempted to find out, by walking the streets and taking candid photos of the locals. Okay, I got shots of a few tourists here and there as well – they are the lifeblood of this city, after all! I mean that literally – they are a transfusion of cash into Bangkok’s arm. There wouldn’t be so many tuk-tuks and motorcycle taxis without us tourists. “Where you going?”

The “Zen” mall in CentralWorld was burned down during riots in this summer’s red shirt protests. Now it’s surrounded by walls, prepared for rebuilding. To help promote goodwill there is a thoughtful poem from the president of Zen, and lots of heart-shaped posterboards where some people have scrawled messages of hope for the future of their beloved mall.

To others it’s a good spot to sit and smoke:

I’m going to use a cropped version of this photo so you can see what’s so great about this scene. All eyes are on this beautiful woman:

The contrasts don’t stop in Bangkok. This woman looks like she’s meditating as the epitome of wealth in Asia drives by: the BMW.

The pink slippers are classic.

Only half a meter of sidewalk separates these two, yet they live worlds apart.

For my last street photo I’ll throw in this food vendor snacking on her own wares. It’s a good sign if they’ll eat what they have cooked, right?

Now for the night photos, taken from the upper deck of the Baiyoke Sky Hotel. This was tricky, because the platform rotates. There is a screen with wide spacing (big enough to fit a D-SLR through), then a concrete outer ledge about a foot wide. The screen moves, but the ledge doesn’t.

I set my camera & mini-tripod on the outer ledge and clicked the shutter release. With a 5s timer, the camera stabilized as I pulled my hands back through the screen. Then I walked along the (rather fast) rotating platform to stay with the camera. Not much leeway here! Fortunately the camera is heavy enough, and the tripod small enough, that the high winds weren’t likely to blow it off the ledge.

There’s a lot of traffic in Bangkok. Even at night the streets and highways are crowded. During the day, the cabbies complain constantly about the traffic. “Don’t you wanna go some shopping on the way?” No, because the traffic will NOT be better after you drag me to some scam gem shop.

These wide shots were the best I could do, because there was no way to look in the viewfinder while placing the camera (through the mesh screen, and while walking slowly along the moving platform). If anyone finds a non-rotating vantage point in Bangkok with such good views, please let me know for the next time I’m there!