Zürich, St.-Peter-Hofstatt

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Zurich, St.-Peter-Hofstatt, 2014-12-28, with Sony A7 and Minolta MC 28mm f/2.0.

It's summer, so time for a winter photo. The church in the background is the St. Peter church, one of the five churches in the inner city of Zurich. It has the biggest clock on its tower in all of Europe, bigger than the one on Big Ben in London. The Swiss like to put a Lime/Linden tree on the central town square (in Germany it's the Oak tree). With the near by Lindenhof (square), one of the nicest places in Zurich. And the winter lights certainly don't take anything away from its beauty.

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Red Tomatos

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Zurich Photobastei, 2014-07-03. With Sony A7 and Nikkor 55mm f/1.2. Jpg conversion used out of the camera.

Zurich, Claridenstrasse

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Zurich Claridenstrasse, 2015-10-04, with Sony A7 and Olympus Pen-F 70mm f/2.0.

The Olympus Pen-F lens is designed for half frame 35mm film, that means 18x24 mm2 is used in portrait mode on the 35mm (the 35mm includes the perforations in order to spool the film - therefore its name). Yet the 70mm lens fully fills out the 36x24 mm2 frame (thought here the image is a little bit cropped on the right, and only slightly cropped at the top and the bottom).

The use of this half frame 70mm lens on a full frame digital camera is is very much to my delight, as it is very difficult to find any full frame prime 70mm lenses (and that is also fast). I realised over time that I prefer the 70/75 mm view very much (and for this the Leica Summilux and Summicrons are unfortunately bit out of reach:). As it happens it is just in this range that a real gap between the very popular 50mm lenses and the again specialised portrait 85mm focal length appears.

At this moderate distance and stopped down the lens seems also more than sharp enough (no extra post processing applied besides the slight crop). Still have to see how it works on close up range and fully open.. but that would be in another post.

Zürcher Lachmöwe

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Common black-headed gull in Zurich on 2014-11-10 with Sony A7 and Minolta AF 100-300mm f/4.5-5.6 (the non-APO version).

The small gulls are very common around the Zurich lake and Limmat river and masters in catching breadcrumps in flight.

The Minolta AF lens is actually very small (short when focussed to infinity), light, and cheap. It feels plasticy, because it is. But it allows a minimal focus distance of 1.5 m only. The little more expensive APO version is supposed to be very sharp, but for a web picture I am more than pleased with this one.

Church of Zurich

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Zurich, 2015-02-20.

The Augustinerkirche, first build in 1270, the least known of the five churches in the old town of Zurich. Hidden in a side corner of the trendy Bahnhof street - shot over lunch time.

It is one of the few Catholic churches in the Protestant Zurich of Zwingli, however this one is not Roman Catholic but belongs to the Christian Catholic Church of Switzerland .

After the reformation it was used for 300 years as a mint, therefore the name of the Münzplatz next to it.

Taken with the trusty old Leica M3 on Tri-X 400 and the Summilux 50mm pre-A.. ah, bullshit.
Used the Sony A7 with Canon FDn 50mm f/1.4 ;-). Stopped down a bit and some grain added in Lightroom.

Crystal Flowers

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Zurich, 2015-03-03, with Sony A7 and Olympus OM 35mm f/2.0.

The old Olympus OM 35mm f2 lens doesn't have a bad reputation, but is also not especially well regarded. Both compared to other Olympus OM lenses for different focus lengths as well as in comparison to some other often legendary 35mm Leica or Zeiss lenses. However I like its out of focus rendering, which to me is kinda thick and warm (thought it isn't so obvious in B&W :), and for the web resolution it also looks sharp enough.

Black and white conversion is directly out of the camera. Oh, and the flowers are not really crystals or even out of glass, but does it matter?!

Zuri Town Hall Quay by Night

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A view on the Zurich Stadthausquai in a winter night, 2015-02-02.

The building on the left with the clock on the tower is the post office.

Then comes the department of the major - the traditional city hall. Thought there is another town hall one bridge further down the river which is actually the parlament for the canton. BTW, the town house (on this photo) is also the final scene of the most famous Swiss movie, Die Schweizermacher (starring Emil Steinberger). That one is all about getting the Swiss Passport :D.

Then the famous Fraumünster, which is the number one must see for tourists here. This is because of the Chagall Windows, which you can see as the three narrow tall black windows on the front side of the building (plus one more window on each side plus a third rosette, which are all not visible in this picture).

At the beginning of the bridge you see the small silhouette of Hans Waldmann on a horse, one of the two Swiss main general of the Battle of Morat. He was also a major of Zurich.

Behind this statue is the Zunfthaus zur Meisen, the wine makers gild, which was the riches of the Zurich gilds and looks a bit like a French castle - unlike all the other wooden or old style Zurich gild houses.

Oh, and last not least on the right side the tower of the St.Peter church (with yet another clock, in this case the biggest church clock in Europe - yes bigger than the Big Ben clocks).

With Sony A7 and the lens used is the Leica Elmarit-R 28mm f/2.8 vers. 1, stopped down, so with its six aperture blades you see six "sunstar" rays from the lights near the boats and on the bridge.

Golden Moons

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Giant christmas tree ball ornaments in the moon light in Erlenbach, 2014-11-08.

With Sony A7 and Minolta MD 50mm f/1.2.

Family Formation

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2014-08-14, on (my) way to work.. with Sony A7 and Minolta AF 85mm f/1.4.

Zurich Crane

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Zurich over lunch time with a 10 stop natural density filter and the Olympus OM 50mm f/2.0 Macro and Sony A7. This one is with 30 sec exposure time. I also made one with 1 and 2 minutes, however it seems there are some artefacts coming up in the resulting picture. It looked like maybe (with a second 2 stop filter on top of it) there were some reflections between the two filters, but it was some rectangular imprint, so it must be something like a light leak on the mount or some reflections through the lens adapter, don't know yet, but for 30 sec and one filter it seems to be OK.

Otherwise zero post processing or cropping, the black and white is also straight out of the camera.

Oh yeah, and what do you think of the crane? Art?

Oh, actually this is a macro lens, which is very practical in itself with f/2.0, which can be just as well used as a normal lens. Actually I am surprised, it is one of my favourite lenses, thought I haven't had any picture with it published on the blog yet. And even this time it is no close up photo - for which I like to use this lens very much.

Stop Fracking

In Germany!

Right now there is a campaign on Campact.de (454.367 votes so far) against a new law planned to allow Fracking in Germany in order to get to the shale gas.

I don't know much about the technology, but here is a longer Youtube video explaining a bit and the experience they have with it in the USA: WARNING Fracking An Inconvenient Truth



Personally I have no idea about chemical stuff and so, but it doesn't appear very wise to me to pump a chemical cocktail deep in the ground with the potential to poison our ground water for some limited gain…

Here is a Spiegel article about the law they plan:

Riskante Gasförderung: Gabriel plant Fracking unter Auflagen

Studien gehen davon aus, dass der deutsche Gasbedarf mit den Vorkommen über zehn Jahre lang gedeckt werden könnte. Allerdings gelten 14 Prozent der Fläche als Wasserschutzgebiete, somit ist das Förderpotenzial weit geringer. Im Mai 2013 war ein erster Anlauf für ein Gesetz gescheitert, unter anderem weil die CDU in Baden-Württemberg zu große Risiken für das Gebiet rund um den Bodensee befürchtete.
Die Grünen kritisierten Gabriels Vorhaben und zogen in Zweifel, dass dabei wirklich Umweltbedenken berücksichtigt werden. "Laut dem Schreiben von Gabriel soll Fracking in Zukunft auf 86 Prozent der Landesfläche erlaubt werden, damit handelt es sich um ein Fracking-Ermöglichungsgesetz"

As one commenter on the page remarked, basically Germany is willing to mess up its underground water, for a 10 year supply of gas! Maybe can rally up everyone via social media to prevent this madness in Germany.

Talking Hands

Zurich, Landesmuseum, 2014-06-21.

With Sony A7 and Leica Elmarit-R 60mm f/2.8.

An Eye, Ear, and Antler.

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2014-05-25, with Sony A7 and Nikkor 85mm f/2.