day 11: into the light
into the light © Verena Fischer 2011
In the last couple of weeks I have been trying to get my head around my camera which I got for my birthday last year. It’s a Canon EOS 450D. Before this camera I had a HP Photosmart C850 and a Canon PowerShot A420. The first one is already very old and a bit clunky for its limited capabilities. The PowerShot is great for snaps, but has only automatic modes, so you can’t really do much with it. And one thing is for sure: You can’t take pictures at night with either of them. With my EOS however, it’s even possible to take night shots without a tripod which I tested thoroughly yesterday. I took my camera to a very nice open air tango spot at the Strandbar next to the river in the Monbijoupark. It was difficult to take pictures of the people dancing since there were no spotlights on the dance floor and just a disco-ball illuminating the scene. One picture turned out reasonably ok, but with the high ISO it’s just a little too grainy for my liking. However, I also managed to take some nice shots of people standing and talking, and also of a few places that had enough light, like restaurant entrances and shops.
Today’s picture shows the entrance of a Hotel at the Zunfthalle just around the corner from where I live. It reminds me of the cheap hotels my mum and me stayed in whenever we made our yearly journey together. This would happen every year when I was a teenager and we went to many different places including Berlin, Vienna, Salzburg and Florence. My mum always dragged me through one too many museums and for her liking I on the opposite was not “active” enough. She always asked me “Did we come here to lie in bed in a hotel?” and I answered “Well, I did”! However, in the end it was good for the both of us to be influenced by each other.
To come back to today’s picture though: I had to remove a little red pixel which recurred in all the night time shots I took yesterday. So, I thought there must be dust on the lens, but when I googled it I had to realise that my EOS has a dead pixel on the sensor! Oh the horror! The only way to get it removed is to send my camera to Canon for repair. You can imagine how I feel about this …
experiments in experience 