November 2011

Red October. This should have been the title of this months picture. So why is it not? The answer is simple: I like the picture above more than the images I took during my first business trip to Moscox. But lets start with Moscow first. For some reason I can not explain I always wanted to go there. As I said, I can´t explain but this place ( the red square ) was always special to me. But strange enough I never went there even after the wall came down I did not consider Moscow or Russia for a vacation. I thin k the reason is that you still need a Visa to get there. Thanks to my current job I got the Visa for one year.

November usually is the worst month of the year. Not only regarding photography! Simply regarding everthing. The leaves on the trees are gone but there is still no snow. It seems that there is no sun at all. It is just foggy, grey and wet. In one word: horrible. This November was different. It was worse! Well depending on where you live. If you are at home in the western part of Austria or if you live at 1000m above sealevel or higher it was wonderful! It was the dryiest November ever. There was no rain or snow at all. There was fog in the cities and sunshine in he mountains. In the fog it was very cold and frosty, outside the fog it was warm and sunny. The November in the cities was so bad that the fine dust became a major problem. The only way to see the sun was on flights or in the mountains. On one weekend we decided to ride to Mariazell just to see the sun. There was one partly sunny weekend though where I took the street scene in Vienna and the landscape shot in the forest where I was able to get out of the fog by riding up a mountain with my bike.

How come that the image of the month shows snow? I mentioned that there was none. It is not snow it is frost. It´s just the "fallout" of industrial steam falling down because it is trapped in the smog cap. It is beautiful as beautiful as snow anyway. I took it on my way home from work. It was the last chance to take images of the frost because the next day a strong western wind just blew the fog away. The shot is quite simple but I like it. I like the crop that a 35mm lens gives. Technically it is a 23mm lens but on the crop sensor it is 35mm. My first zoom lens was a 35-70mm Nikkor. My first pocket digital Canon Ixus 2 had a 35-70mm lens. So I´m used to this focal lenght many people consider as not spectacular and boring today. But this is the good thing about 35mm it goes out of the way. It does not drag attention to itself. When I look at landscape shots taken with very short wide angle lenses ( 14-24mm ) it always feels artifical. It´s not like we see the world. Somethimes I like the effect but the technical part of photography is visible. Maybe that is why I like using 35mm so much. I really think that most people would take better images if they could concentrate on the subject instead of thinking about which lens or focal length they should use for the shot. That is the strong point of the Fuji X-100. There is only one lens, there is only one focal length and there is nothing you can change. Of course I´m looking forward to see Fuji´s mirrorless camera where we can switch lenses but I truly think that the reduction to just one fixed lens is a chance to free the mind. That´s why I loved my Contax T2 so much and took some of my best images with it.

The image of "our" cat is the illustrate another big advantage of the Fuji. It is whispering quiet! Try to take this shot with a DSLR or with a Sony NEX. Your cat will tell you the difference.

setting main shot: Fuji Finepix X100, A-Mode, 1/60@f5.6 at 400ASA, BW conversion in LR

on the other shots the setting are not worth to mention except the shot from the red square where I had to shoot at 2500ASA !!! An ISO value unthinkable a couple of years ago. X100 of course ( all shots except the forest: NEX 5 )