Tonight I met a friend and we grabbed our cameras and tripods and headed out onto the Krefelder Str. and the soccer stadium (Tivoli) Aachen to take some images.

I shot with a Tokina 11-16 f2.8 and my good old Samyang 8 mm f3.5. Nice lenses, I am starting to develop a taste for wide-angle lenses. While the Samyang is a sheer monster concerning the opening angle (and distortion…) the Tokina 11-16 shows other strengths. While 11 mm is still very wide the distortion is not that heavy.

The first image (being the long-time exposure of the street with blurred traffic) and the subsequent two were shot with the Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 lens. Especially the side view of the Tivoli stadium is remarkable, because it was shot at 11mm but there is no significant distortion. Nice lens. Only the last image, as you can obviously notice, is the work of the 8 mm Samyang.

Time for some images. I keep writing on equipment and technology so much that I tend to neglect posts which actually contain images shot with the oh-so-wonderful photographic equipment.

A few months ago I did a shooting session in the machine halls of the institute where I work. I mainly shot analog there with my Zenza Bronica ETRS middle format camera. Today I want to share these images and comment on them a little.

This is an industrial robot used in a so-called Preform Center. In a Preform Center, fabrics made of reinforcement fibres are cut and subsequently handled by the big robot.  Preforms are dry textiles, e.g. from carbon or glass fibres, which are draped into a specific form and then infused with a polymeric resin to form the fibre-reinforced part. The robot can attach different heads to manipulate the textiles: He can grab them, glue, sew, inspect and drape.
The small robots are models. I wanted to recreate the impression of a bird feeding its young.

Another angle of this scene, also shot digital.

The following images were all shot on film using the Zenza Bronica ETRS middle format camera.

Yarn tension control elements on a circular knitting machine (on such machines the bodies of T-Shirts are knitted for example).

Another angle on the circular knitting machine.

Non-crimp fabric laying head. the head can place glass fibres on a moving chain with needles. The glass fibres are wrapped around the needles and the laying head can go to the other side. With multiple heads multiple layers with different fibre orientations can be created. In the image the head applies the second layer at an angle of 45°. The first layer is oriented 90° (The angle is counted relative to the direction of production. The chains move from left to right in this image).

Glass fibre rovings (a roving is a bundle of single glass monofilaments).

 Yet another angle on the robot.

 And another one.

 And another one.

The needle locks on a circular knitting machine. These elements contain channels which guide the movement of the knitting needle.

 Getting tired of the robot ?

Another robot with a radial braiding machine. The robot can grab a core and guide it into the braiding machine. A textile can be braided over this core. This way complex geometries of preforms can be realized (again the application area is fibre-reinforced parts).

Carbon fibres stringed on a warp knitting machine.

A shot of the backside of a weaving machine. What you see are thin metal sheets called warp thread guardians. The warp threads (the ones which run in production direction of a weaving machine) are monitored by these metal elements. When a warp thread breaks the metal sheet drops on a rail, creating a short-circuit which stops the machine.

The warp threads of a weaving machine. You can see the rail with the warp thread guardians blurred in the background.

Detail of a warp knitting machine.

Glass fibres.

Coping with the huge amount of data which accumulates over time (mainly images in my case) I had to find a backup strategy. Today I want to present you my personal backup strategy. I do not claim that it is the best strategy possible, but it is one which works for me.

I copy all images from my camera onto the Mac and process them with Lightroom. To organize the files on the Mac I use a folder system with a date code in the folder name. Images made on December 24th 2011 would be stored in a folder named “20111224 Christmas” for example. This way the folders are sorted in the sequence they are created.

My main backup system is a Drobo. This is a plug-and-play RAID system, meaning that you insert the naked HDD into the Drobo and the data is automatically distributed across the drives. You can use up to four HDDs in Drobo. This way the failure of a harddrive can be compensated. Check out the Drobo website if you are interested in more information on this. To further minise the probability of data loss I use HDDs from different manufacturers in Drobo.

To backup the files on my Mac I use Time Machine, which is a built-in feature of Mac OS. Time Machine automatically copies the newest files to Drobo, it is very convenient and reassuring. Therefore I consider the data from the HDD of my MacBook Pro as safe.

When the MacBooks HDD is full I archive data, meaning that I copy it to the Drobo system and delete it from the Mac’s harddrive. On the Drobo the archived data should be safe since the files are stored on each of Drobo’s harddrives.

To further minimize the danger of data loss I use another external HDD (no RAID system but a normal external HDD) and copy the archived data on it, too. Now there are two identical copies of the archived files. The external HDD is usually stored in a drawer since I do not need it very often.

The cream topping of my backup system is the introduction of a second external HDD. It contains the same archived files as the Drobo and the first external HDD. This second external HDD is located at a friend’s house. Why ? In case of a burglary or a fire in my home (let’s hope it never ever happens) the most crucial archived images are still available. Every few months I collect the second external HDD from my friend’s house and copy the latest archived files onto it. This is some work since I have to manually synchronize the data on the Drobo and both external HDDs, but it is worth it.

I feel pretty safe with this backup strategy. Of course I have to work a little for this level of security. Sometimes I have to upgrade to bigger HDDs (external HDD 2 is only 320 GB, but HDDs are so expensive at the moment due to the floods in Thailand) and I have to remember to collect the external HDD from my friend’s house. But that’s the price one has to pay for safety and I feel confident with investing my time in these actions.

Summary:
My backup strategy provides protection against multiple data loss scenarios:

• Accidental deletion or damage of data (Time machine backup on Drobo)
• Theft of or physical damage to my notebook (Time machine backup on Drobo)
• Failure of the Drobo, e.g. somebody empties a bottle of water over it (Data still on the Mac and on the first external HDD)
• Burglary or fire in my home (second HDD in my friend’s house)

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 12,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 4 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

I started the Lumenatic webpage and blog as a fun project. In the course of this year I decided to make a business out of my photography skills and had the honour of making the first paid jobs. Hopefully more and bigger jobs will come next year. Up to this point the pages of the Lumenatic website are all kept in English since I feel comfortable in this language and keeps me fit in what is a foreign language for me.

But since I am a German photographer it is advisable that my homepage is also available in German so that potential customers can read the webpage comfortably. Therefore I made a copy of this website and translated it. The German version of Lumenatic is accessible under http://lumenaticfotografie.wordpress.com or by clicking on the German  flag in the widget bar to the right.

The blog, however, will still be written in English. I think most customers will be more interested in the picture galleries than me rambling on about the newest Nikon camera models.

So enjoy the German pages and tell your friends and family that you can book me as your photographer !

Stuff keeps on piling and sometimes it is good to go through your items. Then you will realize that you have items which is no longer in use. I did such a screening these days and decided to put up a few photography things for sale.

First item to go on eBay is an old Nikkor tele lens, an AI-S 80-200 f4. It has a push-pull zoom and no autofocus. The lens has always been used indoors and is in perfect condition.  No scratches or fungus on the glass. It is a very sharp lens and I definitely recommend it. If you don’t mind manual focussing this is a very good tele zoom for you. The buyout price is 190 € plus shipping. I am selling this lens because I have a 80-200 f2.8 zoom lens.

The second item is a lens for a Zenza Bronica ETRS middle format film camera. It is a Zenzanon EII 75 mm f2.8. I have two identical lenses of this type. Why ? My first Zenza Bronica had a non-repairable defect in the body. So I sold the body for spare parts and bought another Zenza Bronica ETRS, which also came with the lens. The Zenzanon comes in the original packing and is in very good condition. The buyout price is 80 € plus shipping.

Please note that these auctions are private and do not run under the headline of my photography business. Therefore I can not give warranty or refund for the items.

Have fun bidding !

What exactly happens when you expose an image using a DSLR camera ? To illustrate the series of events which take place in that short “click” moment the image is taken, I borrowed a highspeed-video camera from work during lunch break and filmed my Nikon D300s without lens and my Zenza Bronica ETRS analog middle format camera.

The Olympus iSpeed camera I used can take up to 15.000 frames per second (fifteen thousand), which slows even the fastest events down to super-snail-slow-motion. Also with an exposure time of 1/15.000 sec you need a strong light source, which is provided by the super-bright lamp you see in the image above. Actually fifteen thousand frames per second slow the exposure cycle down so significantly, that the raising of the mirror took 40 seconds in the original video. The footage you see in the above video is played back at twelve times the normal rate !

I recorded the exposure cycle of my D300s at 1/125 sec, 1/2.000 sec and at 1/8.000 sec (without lens) to illustrate what happens. After that I filmed the communication between the internal flash of the D300s and a SB-900 speed light flash which is used in slave mode. Finally I filmed the exposure cycle of my Zenza Bronica ETRS camera with and without the lens attached.

It is interesting to see how the front and rear curtain form only a narrow slit when the exposure time is very short (1/2.000 sec and 1/8.000 sec). Also I was astonished to find out that the curtain in the Zenza Bronica is in the lens. Well, it’s quite obvious because there is no curtain in the body, but I never thought about that before, just used the camera.

Enjoy the video !

Beginning of December I was booked for a wedding ceremony at Aachen townhall. The ceremony and subsequent toast with friends took about 1.5 hours and I pressed the shutter button 600+ times (If I was a soldier the applicable word for me would be “triggerhappy”…).

Back home I encountered a rather delicate problem. Some of the images seem to be broken. Lightroom displays the image, but I am not able to process or alter the RAW file. “Unexpected end of file” is what Lightroom is offering me for an explanation.

I was very lucky, because no critical images were damaged. Mostly shots of which I had multiple versions were not processable, so I skipped any effort to rescue the images.

I used an 8 GB Sandisk Extreme 30Mb/s card. My first step was to contact Sandisk for assistance. Unfortunately there is no tool for checking the integrity of memory cards, instead Sandisk sent me a long list of questions to narrow down the sources of the problem. These include:

• Did the card always work correctly in that camera ?
• Do other cards work correctly in the same camera ? Which cards ?
• Are there any error messages from the camera ?
• Are the contacts on the card clean ?
• Did you test the card with an external card reader ?
• If yes, were there any error messages ?
• Did you update the firmware of your camera ?
• Did you format the card with Disk Utility ? (Mac)

My answers to that were yes, yes, no, yes, yes, no, yes, yes.

In the end the SanDisk support advised me to return the card to the vendor and request an exchange. Which will be interesting because I bought the card via Amazon.de over a year ago. I will try this and report the outcome.

In the meantime I can give the following advice:

• Do not delete the memory cards until you have processed the pictures ! This will give you the chance of re-copying the files to your harddrive. If the copy process was the problem this could be solved.
• If your camera has two memory card slots consider saving the images on both cards simultaneously.
• Have always spare memory cards at hand. You can switch quickly when a card breaks down or when you have no time to process the first batch before the next shoot starts (see tip 1).

Right. Differences….. let’s see…. the buttons are now back-illuminated. The box on the back stating “. OK – MENU” has vanished. There is now a dedicated menu button, which was she “ZOOM”-Button on the SB-900.

Apart from that I am having trouble finding differences. But hey, who am I to judge. Equipment is just like a person – it’s the inside that matters Here are the features which have been overhauled / improved according to Nikon:

• Menus and user interface reworked
• illuminated buttons
• dedicated menu button
• Thermal Cut-Out function which delays the flash recycling time when the flash overheats
• three standard illumination patterns (standard, center-weighted and even)

So far the improvements seem to be minimal and from the specs I do not see any necessity to throw the SB-900 overboard if you have one. But hey, a flash is a flash, they make great light already and I am lacking the fantasy about which revolution in flash technology is waiting.

That is, unless we exclude video. There were speculations about an LED panel on the underside of the flash head. When the flash is pointed upwards this LED panel could be used to illuminate the scene which is filmed. But it seems as if we have to wait for video illumination (if it is to be included in a Speedlight unit at all) until the next version of the SB.

Until then we are still expecting the D800 to be announced…

In the last post I stated that “the image is shaped by the lens (and) the lens is more important than the body”. Which is still true, but I have to amend this statement:

The photographer is the single most important part in the process of creating the image.

NOT the equipment. I was reminded of that when I showed pictures from my gallery at a party yesterday and somebody asked me “How much do I have to invest in equipment so that I also can make such photos ?”

The equipment is absolutely secondary and I regret a little that I am focussing so much on the technology issue of photography on this blog. I have to confess: I love technology and am excited about new cameras and lenses. But in the end this is not important. Because it is the photographer taking the image, not the camera. The camera won’t tell you how to compose your image, which angle you should take, how to create a certain mood with lighting.

It’s experience, a good eye, maybe talent and some photographic basic rules which make good images. To illustrate this I would like to quote the Youtube channel DigitalRev.TV again. They started a series where they issued the cheapest of the cheap cameras to professional photographers and see how they perform. And the results are stunning .