Photography

Color-Ultron

Color-Ultron på min K-5 II

I have been fiddling around with a new lens. Well, not actually quite new, to be honest. It’s a Color-Ultron 1.8/50 from Voigtländer, a company which was founded in Vienna in 1756, making it the oldest optical company in the camera world.

My lens is only around 40 years old, though. It is from the time when Voigtländer was owned by Rollei, but based on a design by the previous owner of the brand, Carl Zeiss. Despite its name and heritage, this particular lens is made in Singapore, not in Germany.

But it has all the characteristics of a classic 50 mm of the film SLR-era: bright, sharp and solid all-metal construction. This particular lens is also featuring an M42 screw-mount. It can be used on a modern DSLR, such as my K-5 II, with the help of an adapter – in this case an M42 to K-mount.

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Go Raw

Detroit Riverwalk - final

The other day I was going through some older photos in Ligthroom, weeding out some of those that I should never have kept in the first place.

Detroit Riverwalk - underexposed

This one for instance. It was taken at the Detroit Riverwalk on an early summers evening two years ago. There was very much contrast to the scene, and the camera has obviously metered for the sky, resulting in severe underexposure of the children playing in the fountain. I should of course have dialled in +1 or 2 EV when I took the picture, but I didn’t.

However, milliseconds before hitting “delete”, it occurred to me that something might be hiding there in the darkness.

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Women in politics and photography

Tudor-Hart frontpage

On a recent trip to Berlin I happened to buy a couple of photo books. One was about Tina Modotti (1896-1942), whom I already knew vaguely, another about Edith Tudor-Hart (1908-1973) whom I frankly had never heard about before. The book was still wrapped in cellophane, so I could not take a look inside, but I decided to buy it based on the text on the back-cover alone.

Accidentally, Modotti and Tudor-Hart seem to have had a lot in common. They were both women, obviously, and not very far apart in age.  They both lived most of their lives in exile or as immigrants. And they were both very much involved in the political struggles of their time, as communists and antifascists.

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Light in the night

On the night of November 9, 1938, the Nazis attacked Jewish homes, shops and synagogues all over Germany, effectively initiating the holocaust. This horrible night has since become known as the Kristallnacht – or Crystal night – because of all the shattered glass in the streets.

The Kristallnacht is commemorated every year in central Copenhagen, as a manifestation for human rights, against racism and fascism.

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K-5 II: First impressions

In recent years, my DSLR has been a Pentax K10D. It is in many ways an excellent camera, but it also has its weaknesses, and since the model was launched in 2006, it is in many ways outdated by today’s standard. In fact, Pentax has launched four new top models since K10D. Finally, I thought it was time for a replacement, and have bought a K-5 II. These are some of my first impressions after a few weeks of use. The target audience is primarily other Pentax users, who might be considering an upgrade.

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Turkey

In April I made a short trip to Turkey, as I was invited to speak at the European Museum Academy’s presentation of the Micheletti-award in Bursa. A few travel photos are now on Flickr.

My new travel kit

Some times a DSLR plus extras is simply to heavy to carry along. Consequently, I’ve been on the lookout for a camera to take along, when portabily is of primary concern. Finally I decided on the Fujifilm X10. Is has good image quality for a compact camera, a viewfinder, good controls – including an ingenious manual zoom ring. And I like the retro-design 😉

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