Photography

Sigma 12-24mm on Canon EOS 5DSr Test!

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The Canon EOS 5DSr is a beast. Not just because it’s a highly professional, full frame, versatile and complete camera.

It also features a Low Pass Filter (LPF) Cancellation filter. When you have any other digital (SLR) camera, there’s a Low Pass Filter in front of your sensor. This causes a nice piece of anti-aliasing which effectively blurs your image slightly, to prevent moire. (Read more about it) This is very noticeable when you shoot area’s with small patterns such as the texture of clothes. However, to get maximum sharpness, the 5DSr has another filter cancelling this effect out.

Another reason the 5DSr is a true beast is it’s sensor. Canon must have thought “Ah more sharpness, let’s capture that in all of it’s glory”. So they came with a 50.6MP sensor. But with all this sharpness and all these megapixels, will your favorite lenses hold up?

Sigma 12-24mm 4.5-5.6 II DG HSM EX

I wanted to have a super wide angle lens without the fisheye effect. I love the Sigma 15mm fisheye, but a regular wide-angle does have it’s benefits. The new Canon 11-24mm f/4l looks superb, but so is it’s price-tag. So I went for the Sigma 12-24mm. Well, this isn’t going to be a review, but I have to say I’m very pleased with the results. IMHO, they’re easily ready for large scale print. Enjoy!

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Arnhem CS – the new trainstation

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It’s always fun to bring your camera to work. When you go there, or go back, you’ll always see some nice stuff.

The new trainstation is something I pass everyday to work. They’ve been working on this for over the past 5 years or so, but it’s finally getting there. Here are three pics I took with the Canon EOS 5DSR and Sigma 15mm fisheye lens.

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Arnhem Centraal Station, NS, Canon EOS 5DSr Sigma 15mm fisheye lens

New Pathé cinema in Arnhem

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Who said cinema’s are dead? Pathé is opening a huge new cinema in Arnhem, and it’s really nice.

So in just two weeks time, this new cimema will open it’s doors. There’s still a lot to be done but you can already see it will be sweet. I was asked to join a fella journalist for Ik hou van Arnhem to check it out and  take some pics.

It will officially open the 20th of October for the grand public, but we’ll also be at the opening the 19th for guests and press. Nice!

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A bike trip, and 15mm fisheye

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Yesterday, I went on a cycling trip with Camilla. We did a total of 50km and ended up getting home way later than expected…

I wanted to buy something and then go to two friends in Brummen. We both took our camera’s and shot quite some pics. Camilla brought a 18-55 and a 70-200 while I was stuck with just a 15mm fisheye. All of these were taken with my full-frame fisheye setup.

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Can we get any closer?

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Yes we can.
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Bridge from Arnhem to Westervoort.

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A nice street in Doesburg.

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Camilla enjoy the sky ‘nd freedom.

 

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Hello there.
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Bringing it to the next level

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Monday, for many people a day where the weekend ends, and your job says hi again. But not for me, since Monday is my day off. Yet, I still had to go to the office for one important meeting.

But after the meeting I was of course free to go where I want. I walked back home when I passed Arnhem’s famous Eusebiuskerk, the large church in the middle of Arnhem. I’ve been capturing it a lot, since I can see it from my window, but I’ve never actually been on there. So let’s do it! Brought my 15mm fisheye and 70-200 to enjoy the view through the Canon EOS 5DSr’s monstrous 50 megapixels. And this is what Arnhem looks that way.

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Canon EOS 5DSr first shots and more

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Allright let me start with this: a LOT has changed. But a lot of good things too. I got a LOT of new gear, so I’ll be showing off soon. Also a new camera body… the mighty Canon EOS 5DSr. took it for a spin, here are some results. Will give a nice review later on.

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I guess the last shot kinda gave away what one of the new gadgets was… hehe.

Logitech UE Boom review

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There are a lot of bluetooth mobile speakersystems out there, but which one to go for? I’ve had Harman kardon’s Bluetooth speakers before, but had to bring ‘m back. Then I saw Logitech’s UE Boom…

They look good, Logitech is a well known brand and after googling a bit, I saw they’re getting very decent reviews. So I got on my bike, raced to the Mediamarkt and got ‘m. My first impressions?

Sound

The sound is the most important aspect of course. I was impressed. The bass is nice, not as booming as perhaps some others (which cost roughly over $300…) but it’s noticeable and nice. All other tones are very fine, especially for the price, even at loud volume. Speaking of which, the volume is great. If you have a closed space with 70-100 people, this could be the music-provider of the evening.

It’s also working very well for outside use. I was amazed how well it worked in an open field. So Sound-wise, it’s all good here.

The speaker is supposed to be truly 360 degrees of sound magic. However, if you rotate it you will hear some differences. Not 100% true 360 degree sound, but it comes easily close enough. It’s omnidirectional for sure.

Pair ‘m up!

Do you have two of these? Or does a friend of yours have one too? Then you can pair ‘m for a louder surround feeling. Nice!

Design

Well, as you can see, it looks nice. It feels very solid and looks great. The huge + and – are actually volume controls which work just as expected, after pushing the soft rubber it has a nice click for confirmation.

There’s also a small C-ring at the other side, so you could hang it upside down. Excellent idea.

Also, it’s water resistant. Now don’t go diving with it, but it should resist a couple of splashes. Good stuff.

Last but not least, there are a LOT of designs out there with various colors. They all look stunning and I had a serious difficult time choosing the one I wanted.

Battery

So far I’ve been using it all day on one single charge. I’m not sure about the hours, but I guess at 60% volume you can use it at least 10 hours or more. Google other reviews for this. However, so far I just charged it because I could, not because I should’ve.

Verdict

The sound is better than expected. The speaker isn’t cheap, but it’s totally worth it. It feels very solid and can easily compete with much more expensive models.

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Bikeride into Germany with Victor

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Victor has been a buddy of mine for a long time now. We’ve studied, worked traveled and even lived together for a while in the UK. So it wasn’t surprising that he started working as a colleague 9 months ago.

But all good things must also end, so he had his last day of work last tuesday. Since I had a day off the next day, we decided to do a one day bicycle trip into Germany. We ended doing about 170km, and it was awesome. Here are some of the pics.

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This was already in Germany, about 10km after Emmerich. We had a small stop since I wanted to check the map. A little bit further and…. we’d be at this beautiful castle.

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For me, this is a typical German town. Some larger houses, a wheat field and the townsname on a yellow sign. As German as it could be.

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Close to Rees is an abandoned building. I’m not sure what it was, but there were coal-carts, rails, ovens and boilerrooms. I’ve been here a couple of years ago, but things have changed. People actually turned it into a “Chill-Lounge” as they called it themselves. Looks kinda relaxed! Click on the image of a larger version of the panorama.

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These are actually 3 photo’s merged together since I didn’t bring any fisheye lens.

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A photo for our dear friends Sjoerd Bisselink and Clair Bissell.

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This was in Wesel, and was a bit typical for our trip. Often you find yourself cycling in a dull place, and all of a sudden something huge/old like this appears. We’ve seen castles like Hogwarts, or this in the middle of a boring neighbourhood. Cool stuff.

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This is actually only 10% of the whole image. And, it was taken while cycling on my bicycle. Didn’t stand still.

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Here, we’re back in the Netherlands. The sun was setting, it was finally getting a bit cooler, and we had a final 20km to go through forrest and open fields. But we managed to get to Boxmeer and take the train home.

It was an awesome journey, lot’s of fun and with some lessons learned.

  • Don’t underestimate the sun, use sunlotion. I’ve been called “tomato” and “lobster boy” all day the next day at the office…
  • Do a LOT of regular long trips to get used to your bicycle saddle. Even while using a bicycle-short with a pad, my ass hurt like hell.
  • Have some extra space for bottles/food. I had a small bag on my steer, but it wasn’t big enough.
  • Bring a small toolkit.

That was it, hope you enjoyed the pics. Can’t wait for my next adventure!

55km bicycle trip to Doesburg

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It was perhaps a bit late, but I wanted to do a bicycle trip yesterday. So at 17:00 I got on my bike and started moving.

I’ve been on the road from Arnhem to Zutphen/Brummen quite often, but I never went to Doesburg, which is close to the road. It’s a famous little town, so I had to visit it. I must say, it was quite nice.

After visiting the town, I decided not to go back the same route. I never like seeing the same road twice, so I just kept on going in the direction of Didam. There I cought up with my regular route to Germany, and went home.

Here are some pics of the journey, all taken with my Canon EOS M and it’s kitlens.

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Last but not least, here’s the route I did.

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Ye olde flowery lens garden

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Today, something different. A while ago I bought some lens-cups from Dealextreme. Received the three two months later and loved them. However,…

One of the bastards started to leak at the bottom. I wasn’t going to glue or fix it, since I don’t like glues in my drinks, so I decided to recycle it.

I live at the top floor of an old building, so as you can guess I have no garden. Now I sorta have.

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Arnhem panorama: Boulevard Heuvelink

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So my landlord thought it was a good idea to explore our rooftop. Brought my camera, and I liked it’s view. So what’d I do?

Exactly! Pretty sure you guessed correctly that I took my 15mm fisheye, slammed it on my 5DII fullframe and I captured it’s view in 360 degree panorama. The result is OK, not perfect but it’s fine. I had to patch up quite a lot of things in Photoshop, but who cares. One of the photo’s is actually from the first panorama attemt, which I found out when I saw the shadow of a tree was a lot further than the other pic. I guess Earth DOES rotate around the sun hehe.

Want to watch the full 52 megapixel photo? View the full panorama picture (9mb!)

80km bike ride Arnhem Kleve Emmerich and back

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So, I didn’t need to work last Wednesday. What did I do? Well, I felt like going for a bike trip.

I left home pretty late, around 2PM, but ended doing a 80km trip. Had lot’s of wind, which wasn’t helping. And even a bit of rain inbetween Kleve and Emmerich. But in the end, I made it back home. I also got some groceries in Kleve, so my backpack was top-heavy. Wasn’t helping but it’s always fun doing groceries in a different country with different products.

A small experiment: took my EOS M Systemcamera along and shot all pics in RAW format. I never did that before with this camera, but I feel I should’ve used that feature a long long time ago.

Anyway, here are the pics. Enjoy!

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Tuna, beans and a ride to the top of the Posbank

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The weather became sunny again, and since I love to ride my bicycle I thought it was time to grab my bike and see what was out there.

Here in the Netherlands, we often have rain and cold weather. But not today. No, the sun was shining. I felt good, and in a very healthy mood so I decided to eat some beans and tuna in the morning. After that I went for a quick tour on my bike. Eventhough the Netherlands is famous for being as flat as a pancake, there’s a nasty little hill in our area which is still higher than the average speedbump; the Posbank. (not to be confused with Postbank, an old Dutch bank which is now known as ING).

After hearing many people talking about this horrific mountain, I decided to challenge it myself. Well I have to say, the view is quite nice, but the Posbank itself isn’t much of a challenge. It was fun tho! Here are some pics I took.

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Day at the barberstation

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 So, I needed a haircut. Saw this advert about this barbershop and decided to go.

As a photographer, I often have my camera with me. Started talking about photography and I ended up making some portrait pics of all the people working there. Best thing yet: I had a free haircut!

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Be sure to like their Facebook page, they’re awesome.

Rabbits in the winter

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Winter! Oh how much I love it. Near my photostudio is a small field with lot’s of rabbits, decided to go there and shoot some…

Of course this was with my camera, I’d never kill one of these bundles of joy. Brought my recently purchased 70-200 2.8 and well, check out these cute fluffy adorable sweet results.

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München, Dachau en Salzburg: vakantie 2014

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Emma and me like to travel a lot. Especially she likes Germany, and I like to go to new places. So it became München since it was also close to the Alps.

We’ve seen a lot of stuff and we experienced a lot of diversity. I mean, we stayed at a 4 star hotel in a shady neighbourhood, and used Couchsurfing to crash at an awesome guy’s place. We saw the horrific Dachau, and cheered at the finals of the World Cup. Saw nature in the Alps, and enjoyed the exciting city center of München. Here’s some pics, but be sure to check out the whole gallery for your enjoyment.

 

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Check out the whole gallery

Brainstorm sessie met Camilla en Emma

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Wanneer je fanatiek met fotografie bezig bent is het geweldig als je de volgende stap kan zetten; een eigen fotostudio. Maar als je de studio hebt krijg je er naast iets geweldigs ook heel wat vragen bij. Hoe ga je zorgen voor bekendheid? Wat ga je eigenlijk fotograferen? Hoeveel vraag je voor een fotoshoot? Wat kan je naast fotoshoots nog meer doen? Hoogste tijd voor een brainstormsessie.

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Samen met Camilla en Emma hebben we gisteren een geweldige dag gehad. We hebben vooral gedacht over creatieve en gezellige sessies die we in de studio kunnen hebben. We hebben alle drie heel veel ideeën opgeschreven welke zo out of the box konden zijn als we konden verzinnen. Ik weet niet zeker of de jacuzzi er ooit komt, maar het idee staat op papier. Zo ook de aanwezigheid van bordspelletjes, radiografisch bestuurbare wagentjes ter ontspanning tussen de shoots door en een groot stuk leeg papier waar elke bezoeker iets met stift op kan schrijven. Dit is iets wat ik ook bij veel couchsurfers heb gezien, en dat is echt onwijs leuk.

Concreet plan

Het meest concrete plan is een kleine receptie welke ik aanstaande vrijdag wil houden. Een gezellige groep couchsurfers uit de omgeving (en wellicht die tijdelijk in Arnhem verblijven) komen gezellig langs. Terwijl we ons allemaal klaar maken om vrijdag-avond uit te gaan en zo het weekend te beginnen, hebben we een drankje en maken we mooie foto’s. Gezelligheid en creativiteit, een perfecte combinatie.

En verder?

Verder zijn er heel veel concepten, steekwoorden en ideeën. Het is vooral nu belangrijk om alles wat ik écht in de studio moet hebben, er te krijgen. Dus nog een bureau/werktafel, de cadeau-gekregen-spiegel en een aantal mooie foto’s op canvas geprint.

We zouden rond 6u naar huis gaan. Echter, 9 uur zaten we er nog en Emma lag zelfs al te slapen in de studio. En tóch hebben we het idee dat we nog heel veel meer te bespreken en bedenken hebben. Snel dus een vervolgsessie, met nog meer goede ideeën!

Heb jij een goed creatief of leuk idee? Laat het ons weten! We staan altijd open voor creatieve gave ideeën.

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De fotostudio krijgt al vorm

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De studio begint steeds meer de vorm te krijgen zoals we voor ogen hebben. En dat is maar goed ook, want we willen ons vooral bezig houden met mooie foto’s maken.

Vorige week hebben we de zithoek veel meer vorm gegeven. Hier kan nu relaxed gezeten worden met een drankje, magazines en gezelligheid. Heel belangrijk om een shoot voor/na te bespreken of om tijdens fotoshoots even op adem te komen. Ook is het een perfecte hoek om inspiratie op te doen uit alle boeken en magazines.

De dag er na hebben we de zithoek meteen even uitgetest met Isaa en Esther, die ook model hebben gestaan. Zie hier de foto’s van die dag, en de zithoek.
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Lightning in Arnhem; an infrared love story.

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Last night, I couldn’t sleep. Then it started to rumble in the sky; lightning.

I left my 5D2 at work so I was left with my 11 year old camera, the EOS 10D, modified IR camera. With a fisheye lens. Usually not your typical combination for some storm/lightning photography. So what was the result?

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This photo is actually 4 pics merged together, blended in. Total shuttertime: 80 seconds.

 

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Here’s one of the photo’s, with a 20 seconds shutter time.

 

A happy 2014 from Roma / Rome!

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First of all, I’d like to wish you all a very happy and healthy 2014! It’s been a while since I posted something, and I actually still have to post some America photo’s.

Anyway, my girlfriend and me went to Rome for New Years Eve. I fixed my website and uploaded the gallery. Since it was a LOT of photo’s, I decided to devote a page to it. Enjoy!

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View the Rome gallery

Catacombes de Paris

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Last week My gf and I were in Paris, and what a trip that was. We’ve seen the most beautiful people, tasted the finest wines and cheeses. Met many interesting people, talked to artists, enjoyed the many romantic views and we’ve visited the well known touristic spots. 

Of course we’ve visited the Champs Elysee, seen the Arc du Triomf, Basilique du Sacré Coeur de Montmartre, Eiffel tower, Notre Dame and many more famous places. But we’ve also visited a more infamous place: the Catacombes de Paris.

Underneath the romantic city with hints to a long gone past, there is a 290 km long network of tunnels. Initially these were made to mine chalk. However, from 1786 till the 19th century, these tunnels were used to store the bones of about 6 million French people. Nowadays you can visit the final resting place of these poor souls. Here are some of the pics I’ve taken.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some happy stuff soon, no worries.

Formula 1 Belgian Grand Prix

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Three weeks ago I went for the first time in my life (how is that possible?!) to a Formula 1 Grand Prix. And not just a random track, but one of the most legendary tracks ever. 

Admitted this track also is the closest to my house. Either way. It’s the Belgian Grand Prix of Spa Francorchamps. Known for it’s famous Eau Rouge, les Combes and Rivage. Even though I was there as a spectator, we managed to get a very nice spot during both qualifying and the race to make some fence-less photos.

Last but not least, our congratulations to Jenson Button from the Vodafone McLaren Mercedes Team for winning the race. Excellent job!

Enjoy the photo’s.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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