Munich Photos
Saturday afternoon we took the train down to Marienplatz (St. Mary’s Square) and walked around taking pictures. I decided I’ve been stuck in a rut with horizontal-format pics lately, so these are all vertical. Maybe now I can get back to a balanced mix of the two.
In addition to the spectacular gothic architecture, we had some good people-watching opportunities because there was an animal-rights protest taking place when we arrived, and a football game had just let out when we decided to take the train back to the hotel.
Today Megan’s out at the museums and I’m in the hotel catching up on work. I’m not real patient with museums anyway, because they never let you take pictures. (I always take pictures anyway, of course, but it’s a drag to have to be so sneaky about it.)
Happy April Fool’s Day!
This entry was posted on Sunday, April 1st, 2007 at 5:41 am. You can subscribe to comments on this post through its RSS feed.
on April 1, 2007 at 9:17 am orcmid wrote:
Great pix. Megan looks very happy to be there.
I notice that some of the architectural pix show a fish-eye effect. Is that from going wide to get it all in the frame? I don’t know what digital cameras have to support parallax correction. It’s an interesting problem (and an useful effect done on purpose).
on April 1, 2007 at 10:16 am Doug wrote:
I’m carrying three lenses these days:
- 18-200mm VR (vibration reduction) zoom
- 12-24mm wide-angle zoom
- 10.5mm fisheye
So that’s an actual fisheye lens on shots like the middle thumbnail above. It’s a fun lens to have. I especially like it for closeups of people, because you get SO much of the background in the frame when you use that lens.
I know there’s software for correcting the parallax effect, but I’ve never played around with it. When I want a wide-angle shot that isn’t distorted, I use the wide-angle zoom open to 12mm.
on April 2, 2007 at 7:45 am George Siede wrote:
It seems like you have a lot of photo-curious people reading your blog so I thought I’d throw this bit of photo geek info out…
Technically speaking every lens (or focal length of a zoom) has “distortion” because it does not see the same as the human eyes.
Distortion from wide angle lenses is just the most obvious because of the way they bend straight lines, an effect known as “barrel” or “pin-cushion” distortion - very obvious with the fisheye.
But even the 12-24 has quite a bit of distortion - it only seems “normal” when compared to the fisheye.
Distortion effects are most noticeable at the edges of the frame. You may have noticed this in a group photo where a person at the outside edge of the frame appears to be having their head sucked out of shape by some unseen force just off-camera.
Longer focal length lenses compress (distort) space in a certain, very pleasing way which is why a lot of fashion is shot with longer lenses.
There are two distortion effects I’ll call “big-shoulder” syndrome and “pin-head” syndrome caused by tilting the camera up or down from the horizontal axis when making a photo - the wider the lens the more obvious the effect.
Because objects closer to the camera appear larger you can end up with a very comical “bobble-head” effect in a portrait shot with a wide angle, especially if the photographer is taller than the subject and standing very close.
Lens distortion is correctable in Photoshop CS2 under filter/distort/lens correction. You can also correct for tilted horizon or tilting up/down here.
Xorge
on April 2, 2007 at 10:19 am Doug wrote:
Hey George, thanks for explaining all that.
I love to take fisheye shots and then crop the middle out of them, avoiding the extreme distortion that occurs out at the edges. And it’s also sort of cool to get that stuff, like the girl in the lower right corner of this photo:
http://www.mahugh.com/images/blog/2007/03/27/photo33.htm
on April 2, 2007 at 1:45 pm Tom wrote:
Hey, speaking of photo stuff, that’s a cool effect you got with the ghostly feet on the cobblestones here:
http://www.mahugh.com/images/blog/2007/03/27/photo43.htm
Dunno if you meant to do it, but I just noticed it. It wouldn’t be so cool except for the woman standing stock still taking a picture of her own.
on April 2, 2007 at 8:56 pm Doug wrote:
Not really intentional — I thought those people would be blurs and was pleased to see their feet so visible.
I noticed that on some night shots in Sydney: people walking were just blurs but their feet were sometimes very clear. And it sort of makes sense: when you plant a foot, it stays still for a while, but the rest of your body is always moving.
on April 4, 2007 at 10:14 am Tom wrote:
Forgot to mention … here in America we have helmets with beer holders so you don’t have to walk around holding the glasses like that.