Foggy Forest

DSC02800SONY ILCE-7R (22mm, f/8, 1/60 sec, ISO125)

Nothing but fog! This is what you usually get in and around Vienna, Austria from late October to early January. Most of the time but not always.

Sometimes we have sunny winter days with blue skies here too. No need to drive to some ski resort to see the sun. Last weekend was like that. It was sunny and a cloudless sky so we decided to drive to the neighbor town for a little walk. On the way we saw that there was heavy fog so we changed our plan and went to a nearby lookout tower instead. On our way we passed a forest were the sun fought with last patches of fog.

I stopped the car and we went inside the forest. I was there just in time to take a couple of shots before the fog was gone.

DSC02809SONY ILCE-7R (16mm, f/8, 1/60 sec, ISO100)
 DSC02815SONY ILCE-7R (20mm, f/8, 1/60 sec, ISO160)

The leaves have changed to yellow and have started to fall. I took some shots of the golden glowing trees. I love the high dynamic range of the Sony A7R at low ISO settings but in those images I did not push the shadows because I like the contrast of the glowing leaves against the black tree trunks. Click on the images to see a higher res version. I can’t offer full size because it would take up to much space but 1.500 pixel wide is a good compromise. On my first website the pictures were 450 pixel wide but at that time we all used to have CRT screens.

Today it’s different. If you are serious about photography you use most likely use something like a 24 or 27 inch screen, maybe even 4k or 5k. I got a 27 inch Cinema display when I bought my first MBP in 2010. I still use it and I have no plans to change that anytime soon. The new Retina iMac looks gorgeous but the reports of the poor performance in Lightroom put me off. I was also a little nervous if my computer can still handle the large files that come from the Sony A7R. Good thing is it can. I recently replaced my 5 year old MPB with a new one but even the old one was able to handle the files.

DSC02820SONY ILCE-7R (23mm, f/8, 1/60 sec, ISO125)

All shots are handheld. Don’t trust the stories on the internet that the A7R can only be shot on a tripod. That is nothing but nonsense. I stopped using my tripod a while ago unless a want to shoot long exposures. Even the shot below is handheld and the tilt screen of the A7R helped me to get it without laying flat on the floor.

As much as Fuji X-T1 is the perfect travel, street or reportage camera the Sony A7R is the perfect landscape camera and best of all is that I can use my Canon lenses. Brilliant for Sony but very dangerous for Canon. They better offer something special when they finally  update the 6D. I tilt screen would be a good start.

DSC02826SONY ILCE-7R (19mm, f/8, 1/60 sec, ISO1000)