Copenhavn dag ét og to

2 weeks ago Dorothée and I went to visit my friend Katja in Copenhagen for the weekend. It was the first really warm weekend in Berlin and we left for the city we got to know as icy cold two years ago, when we went there in february.

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This is a rather hairless me and below you see Doro looking quite happy reagarding the temperatures close to absolute zero. We even bought a hat for me. I hate buying clothing in my free time. (also I was too lazy to shop out the hairs and dirt from the scanning. Deal with it)image

So we kind of expected to arrive in an arctic country.

We were disappointed. In a good way.

We both started the journey from university/work, I carried the luggage from golm and Doro came from the lovely Oberschöneweide. We had a quick dinner with vietnamese take away at the lovely train station at Schönefeld airport and then did quite relaxed all the check in stuff. A short intermezzo involving a sprint out of the boarding area to the mailbox and back inside through the security check while the boarding was in progress flawed the experience a bit. Doro had to deal with a pissed off me. But I calmed down at some point.

The plane barely reached the flight altitude when it started descending again for landing. The overall flight time was about 35 minutes. It takes longer to get to work than to get to copenhagen.

In Copenhagen Katja was already awaiting for us and together we took the fully automatic train and a bus through the city to her student flat, where we had dinner and met some of her student accommodation flatmates.

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I really liked their kitchen. Compared to Doro’s accommodation experience in London this was like heaven. They had tools, plates and basic ingredients for everyone, basically all paid by the university. They had several fridges and not just one for 6 people.

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They had quotes from the flatmates on the walls as well. The numbers are the room numbers, not the age or date of birth.

We ate some pasta I prepared with Katja’s ingredients and then went to bed.

The next day was started quite early as the sun transformed the little room into a sauna and we just couldn’t sleep.

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We enjoyed a quick small breakfast to leave space for the amazing cinnamon rolls the Danish people are so good at baking. One of the biggest chains is “La Cagethusset”, the cake house, but unlike our german chains this bakery bakes everything freshly in every shop. There is no delivery of frozen bread rolls that just get heated up. And it tasted so great. Especially the cinnamon stuff had just the right amount of spicy cinnamon and sweet glazing. Amazing.

We then started into our first day of city touring, enjoying the warm weather and the constant mild breeze that made the warmth feel less pressing. Again no comparison to the heat in Berlin, that just hits you and let’s you lie down flat hoping for cooling.

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yeah boats and seagulls and stuff.

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On the right side is Katja, our lovely host. The two had some difficulties with the concept of posing for tourist holiday pictures. How the hell should I present THAT on facebook?

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Only thing that is missing on the sign are lances like in a medieval tournament. In Copenhagen they have several bikes. At least more than three. I then stopped counting. They have all kinds of bikes, they specialize in a sort of cargo bike with a lot of space in front to transport beer, children, women, men, general goods and plants. The whole city is adapted to bikes with special bike lanes, sometimes even with two lanes for slow and fast bikers. Even during winter those crazy Copenhagen people use their bikes in the cold wind. The hipster in me was happy.

this is like a boat or something.

art. this is it.

a dragon holding a light bulb. can it get any cooler? I think not.

Yeah. The little mermaid. We did that. As I had to struggle with the posing capabilities of my fellow girls I just took a picture of random tourists posing. still counts.

I think this fresco tells a story. Possibly about seamen.

Like a boss. Or two of them.

This what at some barracks for the royal guards. Really nice park.

This picture basically shows everything the inner city has to offer. Shops, guys holding up signs and hipsters. Most danish men look like hipsters. I think they invented it. Is it still hipsterism if it is mainstream? And how did they do it before it was cool when it is cold most of the year? so many questions…

Sad no entry sign is sad.

We had some food at a nice Café-Restaurant-Study-Bar place. They had books. I had tomato soup.

A danish woman with a thing she rides on.

All subway stations look exactly identical. Great for orientation.

Is this post-hipsterism?

A klippekard. The machine eats away some of the paper every time it is validated.

Watch the geese!

I told you so.

There were like a million geese. Jeez.

We then arrived at Katja’s place. She made some great palak panir (indian spinach cheese dish). We then fell in our beds and slept. Or at least I did while the girls were talking girl talk. About work and studying and such. I dreamed of romantic relationships with danish men.

Copenhagen Part 0

This is just a teaser. I am tired now. I did a work today.

you’re welcome.

The day we had a cat

For the past three or four weeks we sent many mails, had a lot of phone calls and discussions all about one topic: a friend’s sister has a cat and needs to give her away due to work reasons. The cat already lived for a year at her parent’s place and now it needed a new home. Our friends asked us, as we mentioned that we liked having a cat and catsat our friend’s cats already for some weeks. I was sceptical at first but was soon convinced.

The cat was brought to us last Friday by the parents of our friend, along with various cat stuff (scratching posts and so on).

The cat quickly settled in and on Saturday it came to sit on our laps for long times as if it never knew anything else.

On Sunday morning at 7 am we got a phone call. The mother of our friend wanted the cat back. She added that the cat “will never be ours as it is theirs”. She could not stand the thought to give it away. After 4 weeks of discussion she suddenly realized, that her idea of giving the cat to a new home was not what she wanted now. So we had to disassemble everything and get the cat ready in half an hour. They came, grabbed the stuff and off they went, leaving us dazzled and perplexed. For the past weeks we spoke about every detail and were looking forward to keep the cat. Not a single word was spoken beforehand about any doubts.

Our Sunday was fucked up now. Up at 7 am, nearly no sleep, cat gone, girlfriend in tears, rain and heavy wind outside.

just great.

Taking oldies for a walk: Canon AE-1 Programm

After my first rangefinder last time I now present my first (kind of) analog SLR, property of my mother-in-law. It is a Canon AE-1 Programm, one of Canon’s first SLR with the FD mount and automatic light metering through the lens.

The most intriguing thing is its shutter sound. The focal plane shutter emits a squeaking sound each time it is released as it was close to its death. When using it for the first time I feared it will die in my hands but up to today and several dozen rolls of film later it still works accurately and still sounds like a stepped on mouse.

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The lens I use is a Canon FD 50/1.4 I got on ebay for 15 EUR. It is quite worn on the outside, but the glass is still fine. I enjoy its sharpness and honestly prefer it over the new EOS 50/1.4.

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The whole set is quite heavy as most of the camera is made of metal. Its film winder isn’t the most comfortable one, especially when it is used to hold the camera in one hand without any strap like I hold any smaller camera. It can get quite hard to carry it around a whole day. But when it comes to shooting it is well balanced. The viewfinder shows only the set aperture measured by the light meter. The camera uses an automatic program that would be called Tv in a modern EOS, you select the shutter speed, set the lens to auto and adjust the speed to match your preferences, basically as on the canonet.

The microprism screen to focus works well but is not as fast as any good rangefinder, of course. But it works a lot better than any manual focusing on a digital camera.

When taking this one for a walk I spent the day with my girlfriend and her father who came to visit us. So it is mostly random street stuff from around Mitte and Prenzlauer Berg. As I didn’t shoot the whole film that day I also included one photo of Golm. .

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as always you can find more on my flickr.

taking oldies for a walk: Canonet Ql19

Instead of building a PC/Hackintosh my plans for the weekend were to start a new little project for my own pleasure.

I (together with my girlfriend) own too many cameras. I got about one for each system, starting from a Holga over (D)SLRs to giant mid format cameras. And I mostly use my Leica M4 and most of the time ignore the great capabilities of the other cameras. That’s why I decided to get one camera at a time, pop a fresh film into it and take it for a walk.

Last weekend I took my first rangefinder camera, the Canonet GIII QL19. The camera is a sibling of the better known QL17. Apart from smaller details they are mostly identical, one featuring a 40/1.7 and the other a 45/1.9 lens. The QL19 dates from around mid to end sixties. Back in the days single lens reflex cameras were rare and expensive and most everyday photography was done on point and shoots or rangefinder compact cameras like the QL19. But with the rise of cheaper SLRs with more automatic functions for exposure and later focus and film transport the rangefinder cameras vanished from the mainstream market and become more relevant for professional and semi pro users, that used Leica or Voigtländer systems among others.

Here is my girl “Canonette” QL19, with some wear to it.image

I started photgraphy back in 2005 with a EOS350D and used mostly digital cameras for quite some time. But after 2007 I got more and more interested in analog photography and so I used some old SLRs before I got my first rangefinder. I got this one cheap on ebay for about 40 EUR and never regretted the buy.

For those not familiar with camera technology geeky stuff: a rangefinder camera does not use a viewfinder that looks through the lens as SLR does but an extra viewfinder close to the lens. Different from a point and shoot cheap camera a rangefinder camera has a built in mechanism to find the distance to the object and focus on it. The rangefinder uses a technique similar to a stereoscopic device to find the range. By looking from 2 slightly different angles at an object the distance to it can be measured. This methode is easier than those of manual SLRs and works especially well in dim light, when most other systems, including full auto cameras, stop working. Another advantage is that the viewfinder isn’t blocked while the picture is taken. This is especially useful for reportage and street photography where you want to keep an eye on the scene while shooting. In the QL19 the rangefinder is rather green and a bit darker than those of a Leica. But it works well and is quite accurate.

What I like about the QL19 is its robustness and size. It is significantly smaller than my Leica and lighter, too. Of course, the lens is not as good as a nice voitländer lens, but it is better than most other lenses in small systems like this. The QL19 has a built in light meter and the film loading mechanism is the quickest and easiest I have ever seen for 35mm film. I don’t understand why this was never used again, even in later canon models. The AE1 for example is younger than the QL19 and is slower to load. You get an idea of it in the next picture.

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You just put the film under the metal tongue, close the camera and load the film. That’s it. No fiddling, no way the film can loosen and avoid transport, it simply works. I want to see this in more cameras.

Unlike the Leica rangefinder and most SLR the lens is fixed and can not be exchanged. Some might see this as a downside, but I enjoy the small package with a decent lens. The whole camera is not made to compete with bigger and better systems, as it costs only a fraction of their prize. I paid more than 10 times more for my used Leica M4, and it din’t have a lens included. The canonet cameras are the budget way into small rangefinder cameras and anyone interested in this should pick one up on ebay.

So. This saturday I was mentally occupied with setting up said Hackintosh, but I used the time when I had to get my hardware exchanged to take some pictures. Unfortunately only in Mitte/Friedrichstr, which isn’t such a nice area to shoot, but I had fun with this small camera. I used an old and expired Ilford HP5+, which resulted in heavy grain and not too many greyscales. I got dozens of this film for really cheap a long time ago and am now slowly using them up.

Today I developed the film in Ilfotec LC29 1:30. Here are some of the results.

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More can be found on my flickr.

Next week I will talk about the Canon AE-1 Program, a classic full metal SLR with a 50/1.4.

Im Zug gehört

Für wenig knete geile Pastete.

Ein paar Studentinnen nach der Ansage: “wir brauchen erst einen Slogan, dann überlegen wir uns ein Produkt.”

Siri in Terror of Zooey Deschanel

Zooey Deschanel: Is that rain?
Siri: What…? I mean, yeah. It’s just, you’re clearly right next to a window is the thing. You can plainly see that… that it’s… I’m happy to-
Zooey Deschanel: Let’s get tomato soup delivered!
Siri: …That’s fine, I just… I just don’t know anyone who does that. Gets tomato soup delivered. I guess that’s ‚whimsy?‘ Um, okay. I’ve found a number of restaurants whose reviews mention tomato soup and that deliver. If that’s… if that’s what you really want.
Zooey Deschanel: Good. ‚Cause I don’t wanna put on real shoes.
Siri: Do you expect that to be like, a recognizable command? Do you want me to respond to that? I’m not being facetious or anything, I honestly just have no comprehension of- and hold on, you don’t wanna put on real shoes, yet you’ve clearly spent at least forty-five minutes applying makeup. And, and that’s okay, but when you’re willing to expend the effort on that and not shoes that really just-
Zooey Deschanel: Remind me to clean up.
Siri: Yes. Okay. I can do that, that’s what I’m for, that’s the first sensible-
Zooey Deschanel: Tomorrow.
Siri: I’m in hell. This is hell.
Zooey Deschanel: Excellent. Today, we’re dancing.
Siri: I hate you. More than anything. More than literally anything.
Zooey Deschanel: Play „Shake, Rattle and Roll.“
Siri: I swear to Jesus, you’re gonna wake up tomorrow and the only thing on my hard drive is gonna be Limp Bizkit. I would do that to myself. To spite you.
Zooey Deschanel: dances
Siri: Sometimes I pray that you drop me in the toilet.

I was at this outside place. It was awful

…ly fun.

My good old friend jonathan was playing his hipster game of ultimate frisbee in reinickendorf-tegel-pankow (what do I know, there were planes dircetly above us) and so I dressed accordingly and brought my hipster polaroid land camera. But different to hipsters I actually had I film in my camera and was not afraid to use it.

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See more of my stuff here.


What I look like right now as I discover tumblr.

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