quis custodiet ipsos custodes?! coloniae claudiae arae agrippinensium stadio conspectum*
quite some time ago i was a happy student of latin (even in cologne itself!). today, i can’t even say my name in latin anymore. i still like it, though…
*who will watch these watchmen? seen in the stadium of cologne.
cologne, 2018
my favourite superhero… maybe not only because we share the same initials :)
cologne, 2018
köln, 2017
cologne, 2017
a backyard in cologne, 2017
this arrow on a plane’s wing always reminded me where i came from… (in this case the arrow pointed to köln)
somewhere over germany, 2017
from a bus stop in köln, 2017
köln-deutz, march 2017
köln-deutz, 2017
ectoplasmatic friends from cologne, september, 2016
i’m back from my vacances and also used the opportunity to go to cologne and visit the photokina again. i somehow really like this fair a lot. all these photographers in one place… and you can touch all the expensive cameras…. i even held the new mirrorless hasselblad (x1d – “well under 10000 Euro” ;))! and i can tell you that everything felt right about this camera. it even had a quite fast autofocus. nice one.
so the first post-holiday post is a photokina post and contains some impressions from my visit in cologne and photokina. normal operations on this blog will resume soon.
besides the hasselblad i have also tried the new 12-100mm f4 m.zuiko pro zoom and the 25mm f1.2 m.zuiko pro prime. i could even insert my sd card into the em-5 mk2 models that carried those lenses so i could take some snapshots. unfortunately my current version of lightroom does not support the em-5 mk2 yet, so i have to present the ooc jpegs. since this is an indoor enviroment the zoom (or at least the attached camera) struggled a bit with the system being f4. but see for yourself later in this post. (i apologize to the mobile readers, because the gallery feature that shows the captions of the pictures when ‘hovering over’ with the mouse is not really available on mobile devices…)
let’s start off with some photography instead of gear from the leica stand:
leica has two stands on photokina. one gear oriented one and this gallery stand that is a real highlight of the show. they present several photographers in very nice surroundings. it feels quite like a very modern museum.
most camera manufacturers try to get some attention by using female models. it kind of works when i consider the crowds…
the friendly but quite slow (in terms of service) guys from lomography had a little contest to win a lomo instant! i was interested of course and the objective only was to shoot one film of fuji/lomo instax – and donate your personal data of course… i couldn’t resist. since fuji shut down their peel-apart films and so made my polaroid unusable in the mid-term, i’m considering a replacement. so i tried out the lomo instax wide. it is not really comfortable to use but the moment it ejects the photo… still magic after all those years!
some stuff from sigma and an interesting apparel manufacturer with quite nice looking and well-thought out clothing stuff (cooph), albeit very expensive so i guess i’d rather buy a lens than a jacket.
the panasonic stand had some information on some future lens additions to the micro-four thirds line-up. i think i’d be interested in the wide angle zoom probably…
three new bright panasonic m43 zooms under development or study
a catchy truism by olympus. i like the font, though
i was really interested in the new olympus lenses that got announced on the first day of photokina. the new olympus 25mm f1.2 pro prime lens and the 12-100mm f4 pro zoom. both seemed really big too me and they are big. both felt good in the hand and almost balanced on the em-5 mk2. but only almost. i guess on the em-1 mk2 this might be different. i don’t think they are particularly well suited for shooting with the pen-series and looking cool at the same time.
on the other hand both lenses look really nice, they feel really nice and i was under the impression that one can make really nice pictures with both lenses.
here are some out of camera jpegs from the 12-100mm f4 mounted to em-5 mk2. if you go into the gallery you can even view them in full size. i think this lens is definitely a winner in the realm of versatility :)
since i only took booth people pictures with the 25mm f1.2, i won’t show them here to protect the innocent (and me, because the pictures are not really good for i might have messed up the settings in the quite dark surroundings).
and here a gallery with some random shots that i happen to like both from photokina and from my walk to the hauptbahnhof to get back to berlin.
… and as i said before: normal operations on this blog will resume soon.
a house in cologne ehrenfeld. unfortunately i haven’t found any information on the artist. so if you can help out please do it in the comment section below :)
UPDATE: the mystery is solved! a big thank you to sheffield and the fantastic Mr C – the mural was done by british artist Lucy McLauchlan in 2011.
it happened in cologne. he won…
some reflections on/of cologne.
this was made on hohenzollernbrücke last monday.
found in cologne on the photokina parking lot. it made a quite impressive sound, too.
the anwohnerpark (local residents park) by the office for subversive architecture osa in cologne.
be careful at the edge!
and it might as well be me. seen in cologne.
a football stadium detail. shot in cologne.
the coat of arms of the city of cologne on a container.
this is the cccc’th post on this blog. if you are confused and/but interested check out the excellent article on roman numerals on wikipedia. i’d love to have done this (or something similar) with berlin and the berlin coat of arms but the romans did not use the letter ‘b’ for numbers and i was not really in the mood for something hexadecimal…
.documenting.the.obvious 