Articles about "photokina"

Like I wrote before I visited Photokina now. I was in Cologne from Tuesday to Wednesday and met a friend, David Leuck. On Tuesday we made a photo tour to the historic city of Cologne. We ended with shooting the sunset at one of the photographers meeting points, at the Hohenzollern Bridge where you have a nice view to the Cologne Cathedral, the Rhine and the cityscape of the historic city. We were relatively early for the sunset so I spontaneously decided to timelapse it. This shot may be part of a timelapse collection I plan to cut soon.

On Wednesday we went to the Photokina itself. A big crowd was already in the queue at the entrance but in the big area of the exhibition grounds the crowd dispersed so it was relatively easy to see and test all we wanted without waiting or with only having to wait few minutes. The main problem I experienced is that one day isn’t enough to go to all the nice talks you want to hear at different booths. But I set my priorities before and saw all that was important for me. But to begin I got one of the best shots in my collection. In the outdoor area near the entrance hall of the south entrance there where some falconers with their animals where I got the great shot on the left.

Best things first: The talks I watched were great. The first one was somehow accidently. When I was at the Nikon booth I saw that there was a talk by Sandro Miller and Anthony Arendt about to happen. They talked about how Sandro was asked to make a short for the D800 release – Joy Ride – and how it was shot. After this I was at the Canon booth watching the funny Philip Bloom talking about the C300 and the Cinema EOS line. Later I saw Nino Leitner talking about tripods and Sebastian Wiegärtner talking about DSLRs and large chip camcorders in the movie park. All the talks where cool and I think next time I’ll plan some more time especially for the talks.

Gear-wise I was a bit disappointed from some stuff but happy about some other stuff. Here are some short comments about some stuff I tested:

• The Sony A99 has a better viewfinder than the A77 but it’s still way inferior compared to an OVF. And in contrast to the specifications on the Sony webpage and the brochure I didn’t find 24p and 60p on the A99. Focus magnification is also still not available in video mode. So expect of clean HDMI output and the audio stuff nothing new on the A99 which excited me.
• We were able to test the Nikon D600 at a photo dealer in Cologne so we had done this before but we saw a good thing on the D600. The D600 is capable of bracketing with 3 Frames ±2EV and ±3EV. This is good for HDR timelapsing and the point I’m really disappointed by the D800 which I liked expect of this.
  
  

  BMD camera

• The Cinema EOS line – especially the C300 and C500 – from Canon is really cool and nice to handle. I hope I can try them out on some shoot sometimes.
• At the Zeiss booth I saw the one camera I really hoped to be able to try out. Equiped with the nice CP.2 50mm/T1.5 there was the Blackmagic Design Cinema Camera. Handling seems cool. And the footage coming throw the web seems to speak for itself.
• Being used to filming with foto zooms it was really nice to play with the Compact Prime and a Compat Zoom CZ.2 70-200 with an FS100. The wide focus range and fixed focus while Zooming are really nice.
• Trying out a Glidecam with a vest was nice but it also confirmed what I read online often before: You have to pratice if you want to be good with it.

More photos from Photokina and the Cologne trip in my 500px collection “Photokina 2012”.

To end this article here is a sneak peek from my holidays in Oberstdorf. Dislcaimer: Edited and graded in the rush on the last day there to have something to show to my grandparents the next day. I then decided to upload it with this disclaimer. The final pice will get some more attention in editing and grading.

Also coming soon: I developed a little script to help me smooth my timelapses which I will write about later this month.