well I'm sitting here and look at the pictures I took with the DP-1 from sigma and have to say that I'm very very happy that I did not buy this camera. It's not the fault of the camera, the pictures are nothing special, but very nice for such a small camera and the handling of the camera was very good, but boy the software sucks. I never saw just an ugly piece of software. Even the nikon software is nices, which says a lot..

Well my current result

• manual focus is nice
• fixed lens is interesting, but bad on a compact camera, some zoom would be nice
• it's just to pricey, half the price would be good
• software is impossible to use
• manual controls work very well

final conclusion, lets wait 1 - 2 years or see what the EVIL standard brings.

I'm also so frustrated right now and really tempted to just buy anything. But for some reason all the things which are interesting are out of stock...

Well time to go back on the balcony and wait that the hawk which is circling my house finally lands somewhere close enough for me.

I can convince myself to buy a 300mm F/4 (out of stock) but why the hell is there no 400mm F/4 of F/5.6? the next bigger lens from nikon is the 400mm F/2.8 for 5k+ or the 500mm F/5.6 for 5k+ too.

well being back from Germany and preparing my self to go to Boston for a week.

On the left a tree in the berlin tiergarten, exciting isn't it?

...still trying to figure out how to take great landscapes...

just some dog shots for lindsay...

Just spending the day outside and still working on my street photography. And well so far nobody complained that I took there picture and most of them I deleted anyway.

Basically these are the only ones which had a nice expression. If you happen to recognize your self and don't want this picture be able to see, please drop me a line and I remove it.

just being bored at the airport in chicago a couple of days and happily snapping away till I got the 'look' from one of the airport security guys...

The car picture was just taken to practice panning at low shutter speeds and get some feeling of speed into the picture.

...i'm weak...

I bought an ipod touch 16GB...

...and I still don't really know why...

...maybe I don't want to pay thousands for an iphone?

A couple of days I was asked to take a couple of pictures at a soccer game to help somebody to evaluate the tamron 70-200 F/2.8.

His focus was to use it for highschool sports at night times and in the evening. Now noramlly there are lights on during these kind of events, but in my case it was very dark, I was barley able to see anything in the viewfinder and the lights were off...

Means I went to the absolute max of the Nikon D80 and shot at ISO 6400 (3200 in camera and +1 stop in pp) at F/2.8 and 1/50s. Normally you would shoot soccer at 1/500 - 1/1000s to freeze the players.

After all I was surprised that I got some usable pictures at all out of this. I would never imagined that the camera could focus or produce an usable exposure.

Well needless to say, the person was very happy with the result.

...i really need to stop starting all my posts with 'well'...

Well I really have to learn to take good macros. I normally get the color right, but i never get the sharpness I'm looking for.
Maybe I need to stop using natural light for this kind of stuff and use speed lights again.

But I seriously need to find a way to make money with this hobby, since it becomes way to expensive. There are so many toys I want and I hate to wait and save...

some things are weird I was really not happy with the 17-55mm F/2.8, but I'm really sad that I returned it. For some strange reason I miss this lens.

Some squirrels are to curious for there own good...

And my tamron 70-200 + TC seems to have front focus issues at really close distances which is normal for a combination like this. I did not really expect to ever need the macro functionality of this lens...

I always woundered how people get these really nice sunset color done, whenever I tried it, well It never looked real...

So I kept reading and the answer was like always very simple. Define a fixed white balance instead of auto white balance. If you use auto white balance, it just washes out and looks like 'blah'

The picture itself is nothing special and really boring, acceptable composition, blurry trees, but the colors start to go the way they are supposed to be.

Well does anybody know what kind of flower this is? I hate to take pictures of stuff I don't know. As a reference bunnies eat it and is ca 12 wide.

Taken with Nikon D80 + 90mm macro + 1.4 TC, hand held at iso 800.

yes would be nicer without the noise, but there is no space for a 70-200mm F/2.8 + camera with 90mm macro and a flash. So the flash had to stay at home for now...

Well my quest for the holy grail of chipmunk images starts to return the first results. I still don't get closer than maybe 8 yards of them and I'm covered in dirt after trying to sneak up to these little bastards. But at least I start to get reliable results with the tamron 70-200m F/2.8 + TC 1.4

now I just need to get 7 yards closer to them, maybe I should watch caddy shack again...

I discovered Herby, he was hidden under tree and covered in rust and dirt...

he is even missing his number :(

Like with every embassy appointment, I arrived early, way to early, about 2 hours to early. So I took the time to take some pictures in the area of the German consulate and I really like the area so far and would love to live there.

It's just so beautiful.

At least 3 shots out of 800 turned out to be pretty nice. And I really like the flying bird, which is pretty sharp.

• my first successful bird in flight
  
• just four birds
  
  
  


• the three stugges
  

At moments like this I wish I had a Nikon D300 and a Nikon 300mm AFS, the Nikon D80 is a wounder full camera, but the focus tracking is really really awful sometimes.

And it finally managed to catch up and focus when the bird landed with the crab...

well the longer I look at this picture the more it bugs me, for example all the detail in the hair was lost.

Well now it's back and I really should be happy with this look.

Btw this is the original picture our of camera with 0 adjustments

Since I was not really happy with the original version, I went back to the drawing board and did some more magic. I guess now it really rocks :)