hamburg on a sunny day

hamburg is a wonderful city. especially on a sunny day. i guess the hamburg port is one of my favorite places in the city.
both photos were taken with the amazing fuji x100.

weddings 2011 #2

while editing and printing pictures for a client i came across this picture.

jazz

my friend and great pianist patrick bebelaar warming up before a gig.

taken with ricoh grd3

a personal fuji x100 review/opinion

back in the film days one of my favorite cameras was the konica hexar. it was an autofocus rangefinder style camera with an excellent viewfinder and 35mm f2 lens build in. for me,  it was the perfect travel and documentary camera.
since i went digital with my photography i was always looking for a camera like that. great viewfinder, compact, fixed fast lens. and i bought a lot of cameras that could possible fill that gap. i used the grd1 and 3 (which i still love), the gxr, some canon gs, a nikon p7...., the leica x1 but nothing really got close to the hexar experience.
so now after some hesitating i got myself the x100 and i must say that it is quite perfect to me. it has a great viewfinder, a sharp lens and it produces amazing files. it is the closest it could be to a hexar.
some people say that the fuji copies the leica m but i don't think so.  to me it is much closer to the hexar or the legendary contax g series. that is were it is coming from not the leica.
 
the autofocus is fairly fast, maybe not the fastest when compared to other state of the art cameras, but fast enough for anything i shoot. and that is mostly street photography and people.
the menu and software setup is a mess and it has some quirks, mostly relating to firmware. but overall the tactile feel of it and the simple straight forward control layout is a joy to use. set the aperture (on the lens), focus, frame and shoot. perfect. that's how a camera should feel and i guess that why the fuji x series gets so much recognition among photographers.

it is my only camera that i shoot in jpeg mode. simply because i get better and faster results from it then adjusting the raws. the jpeg engine is really great. the only other camera i trusted with jpegs was the olympus e-1.

i am looking very much forward using it at my next wedding assignments and i believe that it could replace my nikon d3 (which i also mostly use with primes) for most of the time. if that turns out to be true i will consider getting the x1 pro with the 3 primes and make it my main wedding setup.

here are a few examples from shooting the x100. all shot as jpegs and then converted with silver efex pro and color efex pro.

fashion victim #1

back in 2007 i shot a series called "fashion victims" for a designer in hamburg. i really liked the story telling of those pictures. this particular shot won 2nd prize at the canon professional fashion award 2007. enjoy...

solitude

elevator

spring #2

spring #1

nola 11/12

earlier this year i spent an awesome 4 weeks in new orleans visiting friends. i had a fantastic time in this great city. naturally with all its jazz new orleans speaks to my soul. here are some of my favorite pictures during that time.....

most of the pictures were done with the ricoh grd3 or the gxr and the 50mm lens.

best of weddings 2011

since this years wedding season is around the corner, i was reviewing some of my favorite pictures of last year. so here is the first batch of photos i really liked and wanted to share.  enjoy...

drama - love songs and other jazz

it is now almost 3 weeks that we showed the last performance of my latest tap dance production "drama - love songs and other jazz". the show was co produced and and performed at kampnagel, hamburg.
we had a lot of fun rehearsing and performing the show, so here are finally a couple of photos from that time.
the dancers were: ellen murray, laura mogalle, thomas kolczewski and me. on bass was kurt holzkämper. text edits by miriam mandelkow, production assistant: johanna bock
gefördert durch die kulturbehörde der hansestadt hamburg.

back in hamburg

ok. i am back home in hamburg. the weather is still cold but sunny. so here is the pic of the day.

jogging around the alster.

... and finally vienna

i don't know why some people claim that the fuji x-100 is not good or fast enough for street photography. i think the opposite is true. i love roaming the streets with this little camera. the af is quick and accurate and the optical viewfinder just perfect for composing street scenes.