There is a new part to this blog. It’s called Top 5 Spots and it’s list of the top 5 places in the cities I know. Of course i started with Bratislava, but I will add few more later on (Vienna, Prague…). Hope you like the list and also find it useful, if you ever plan a trip to Bratislava.  So check it out here Top 5 Photography Spots – Bratislava

Storks in Segovia

I know it’s little harder to see, but on the two trees in front are stork nests on top. As I still don’t have a zoom lens, I had no chance to take a closer photo :) But that will change hopefully quite soon.

This photo was taken from the top of the Alcazar in Segovia. I wanted to add a photo of the Alcazar too, but I don’t know what I was thinking about while photographing it, as I don’t like the composition in a single one.

Number of exposures: 3; Camera Model: Canon EOS 5D Mark II; Lens: Canon 24-70 mm F2.8;
Focal length: 45 mm; Aperture: 5.6; Middle exposure time: 1/1250s; ISO: 250; Tripod used: no

Where was this photo taken:

Another reflection photo. I just can’t stop taking them :) Yesterday I again had one of those days, when I just can decide what photo to put here. It happens from time to time. So in the end I decided for this one :)

Number of exposures: 7; Camera Model: Canon EOS 5D Mark II; Lens: Canon 24-70 mm F2.8;
Focal length: 70 mm; Aperture: 4.0; Middle exposure time: 4s; ISO: 100; Tripod used: yes

Where was this photo taken:

Another ship themed photo. The yesterdays elevator was on a similar ship to this one. And as summer is closer and closer there are more ships on Danube. Not as big as the ones cruising the seas, but still huge :)

Number of exposures: 7; Camera Model: Canon EOS 5D Mark II; Lens: Canon 24-70 mm F2.8;
Focal length: 50 mm; Aperture: 9.0; Middle exposure time: 1/160s; ISO: 50; Tripod used: yes

Where was this photo taken:

During a little photo work I had the opportunity to visit a beautiful new ship called Amacerto, which now cruses the Danube river. I had little time, so I took only few shots inside, but I couldn’t resist to take a shot of this glass elevator. It reminds me a little of the one in the Old town hall in Prague.

I used the fish-eye lens on this one. I’m still getting used to it, and I thought that this would make a nice scene for it. I removed the distortion a little, as I was standing quite close and it was a little to much for my taste. Is it just me, or It is quite hard to center a fish-eye photo? I was a little off on this one, and I’m still not sure it perfectly symmetrical.

Number of exposures: 7; Camera Model: Canon EOS 5D Mark II; Lens: Canon 15 mm F2.8 Fisheye;
Focal length: 15 mm; Aperture: 9; Middle exposure time: 0.6s; ISO: 50; Tripod used: yes

Where was this photo taken:

Just another view of the Bratislava castle. I took this one just yesterday. As you can see, the weather was just beautiful. And the light was so nice, that I could get this image without even using bracketing. I could get all the light into one shot, without having any black areas or any overexposed areas. I even took this one handheld :). I of-course did HDR processing on it, to lighten the hill a little and darken the sky a little. But not very much.

Btw. those little tents, you can see next to the castle, were a food festival :)

Number of exposures: 1; Camera Model: Canon EOS 5D Mark II; Lens: Canon 24-70 mm F2.8;
Focal length: 70 mm; Aperture: 5.0; Middle exposure time: 1/1250s; ISO: 100; Tripod used: no

Where was this photo taken:

As you can see, the weather was not good when I was in Budapest two months ago. But still I wanted at least some interesting photos. And as the Hungarian parliament just asks for a nice symmetrical photo, I took this one. The ship was just passing by, so I included it, to give a little life to this scene.

Number of exposures: 7; Camera Model: Canon EOS 5D Mark II; Lens: Canon 24-70 mm F2.8;
Focal length: 45 mm; Aperture: 11.0; Middle exposure time: 1/400s; ISO: 100; Tripod used: yes

Where was this photo taken:

At first I did a straight on photo of the Three towers in Bratislava. But it looked quite boring with the clear blue sky. So I searched for something to fill the frame better, and this is what I ended up with. They say, that you should never have the horizon under an angle of 15 degrees, as then it looks line you made a mistake. So I think that with the almost 45 degree angle in this one, I’m on the safe side.

Also this is the first photo I’m publishing, which is not done using tone-mapping. I used exposure fusion on this one (second technique available in Photomatix). Exposure fusion can give more realistic results than tone-mapping, but it’s not so good if the dynamic range is very high. But it worked quite nicely on this one. If you would like to see my Photomatix settings, head over to my Facebook page, where I uploaded a screenshot yesterday.

Number of exposures: 7; Camera Model: Canon EOS 5D Mark II; Lens: Canon 16-35 mm F2.8;
Focal length: 16 mm; Aperture: 8.0; Middle exposure time: 4s; ISO: 100; Tripod used: yes

Where was this photo taken:

Few days ago I released the source brackets from one of my photos on my Facebook page. It is so anyone, can try and edit them. There are still available for download, so if anyone wants to try HDR processing, you can easily download and use them.

They can be found here: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/xeaj3in493k5kmu/FysTgnR8XW

A little tip on processing. You should correct the white balance first, tungsten works great here. Please share your results on my Facebook page, and if you want to share it somewhere else, please don’t forget to give me credit for the photo and link back to this page. Thank you

The Eiffel tower in Bratislava

I had no idea there is one in Bratislava. I just stumbled across it one evening while shooting around the Kuchajda lake. I wish I also had photos of the big one in Paris, but since the last time I was there was in 2000, I had absolutely no photos of it.

Number of exposures: 7; Camera Model: Canon EOS 5D Mark II; Lens: Canon 24-70 mm F2.8;
Focal length: 24 mm; Aperture: 5.0; Middle exposure time: 4s; ISO: 100; Tripod used: yes

Where was this photo taken:

Not much composition in this one, just the horizon line on the gold ratio line. But the colors here are just stunning.

Number of exposures: 3; Camera Model: Canon EOS 450D; Lens: Sigma 10-20mm F3.5;
Focal length: 12 mm; Aperture: 13.0; Middle exposure time: 1s; ISO: 100; Tripod used: yes

Where was this photo taken:

I took this photo two times. One at F2.8 and one at F9. I just wanted to see the difference. And in the end I went with the one at F2.8. It blurred the background a little, which made the bikes stood out a little more. Sometimes really having the whole image sharp makes it just worse.

Number of exposures: 7; Camera Model: Canon EOS 5D Mark II; Lens: Canon 16-35 mm F2.8;
Focal length: 16 mm; Aperture: 2.8; Middle exposure time: 0.6s; ISO: 100; Tripod used: yes

Where was this photo taken: