Your Canon Photos No. 22: 1st to 7th October 2023

Then and Now 1

An old photo of Seilerstätte 22 in 1900 identifies it as the Imperial and Royal Court for the first district of Vienna. (It also housed a sub post office.) If you walk past today you might be forgiven for not being aware of the history of the building. The long exposure of the old photo captures the movement of the people on the right!

David

Then and now 2

This building, the Österreichische Postsparkasse (Austrian Postal Savings Bank), was designed by Otto Wagner and built in 1904-6, using reinforced concrete (then a new material) and faced with marble ornamented with aluminium rivets. The scuptures on top are cast aluminium. Until recently the building served as the main post office and was open 24 hrs a day. In 1980 I had to go there one night to make a long distance call to the USA, as you couldnt do this from a public call box in the street!

The black and white photo also shows the memorial to Georg Coch (1842-90), the first director of the institute. This was placed in 1913, when the square was named after him, and resited in 1985, when a car park was built under the square.

More information on Wikipedia.

David

Digi,

I have a book of old photos of Vienna, and I find some of them quite interesting. Some of the places are quite unchanged, and others are very different (often because of war damage). But even in the latter case, one can often see tell tale signs from small details of the architecture that it is the same building. In this case, the address had not changed and one can see architectural details. I plan to show some other comparisons. I find the background information on the internet, often on pages only in German.

Research into music and musicians is one of the professional hats that I wear: this requires a similar mindset.

David

Hi Digi!

LOL! It's a question of perspective and angles. Here is the uncropped version:

As you can see from this, I was standing back from the memorial. I couldnt get any further back because some idiot from the town hall has placed a pole in the sidewalk bang in front of the memorial with No Parking or something on it. The ground in the square behind the bust is at a higher level (about 5-6ft or 1.5-1.8 meters) than the sidewalk I was standing on. This is probably because this area of the city is where the city walls and ramparts used to be before about 1870. So what you are seeing is a view of the bust from below, and the 250 feet (75 meters) or so from there to the Postsparkasse building make the bust look taller. I reckon it is 15-20 ft (4.6 - 6.1 metres) tall. For reference, the aluminum figures at each end of the roof are 4.3 meters tall. You can estimate the height of the monument by knowing that the lens was about 5.5 ft above the sidewalk, and horizontal. So you can see where it is looking and take it from there, I'll leave you to do the math! 😄

Another interesting detail is that the two buildings on left and right look as if they might be leaning. I was worried about that, as I tried to take great care to get the verticals correct. In the end I realised that the buildings actually move inwards for their upper stories!

David

Text with emphasis

Steve,

Two things are definitely required to achieve your goal:

1. The right kind of clouds.

2. A tripod. (A remote shutter release is also useful to prevent movement.)

To get a longer exposure, there is no reason not to use f/22. If you have two linear polarising filters, you can use both of them to create a variable ND filter. Another option is to take several long exposure shots in quick successsion and combine them.

Best wishes,

David

"f/22 is 10 stops up from f/7.1"

How do you make that out, Steve? 22->16->11->8 is three stops by my reckoning, so for the same value of ISO, going from f/8 to f/22 needs 1/8 of the shutter speed for the same exposure. As you say, not enough.

I have four ND8 filters, which are the normal ones (3 stops). I have never used them, and cannot find them! I believe that you can get 10 stop ones from Hoya; but I cant find their catalog, either!

For an experiment, you can always try rigging up the polarised lens of sunglasses over a polariser, and rotating it... 😀

David

Yes, 1/3rd stop intervals, for which I see no need. I suggest you reset it to 1 stop intervals.

David

Welcome, Dave! This is a nice shot, and I encourage you to visit us regularly. Comparison between your camera and phone of the same subject would be interesting.

I usually downsize my files to 2000-2500 pixels along the long side. This brings them down to about 3MB, while still leaving them large enough when displayed at full size.

David

Simplejoy started this week with a plant that had broken through concrete, together with a mysterious macro shot of a peanut.

Steve Thomas, learning from his earlier attempts, countered with two photos of the moon. Later he took photos of goldenrod, experimenting all the time, this time taking some nice studies with a 50mm lens. He has now moved on to the challenge of long exposures on clouds against bright skies.

At the beginning of September, Digrame took photos at the Oregon State Fair and rounded up his best shots for us. Later he went looking for, and found, wood ducks -- not swimming, but sitting on a dead branch in the sun. This was followed by a superb picture of a crow. Great shots and great variety!

Photobygms was back home in the Netherlands and showed us some interesting plant life, including one photo of a spectacular spider's web.

I was up next with photos of Vienna's Michaelerplatz under lovely afternoon sun. Later I showed two other churches from the same afternoon. Chestnuts, or conkers, are falling fast here and it is hard to avoid being hit by them, or stepping on them in the streets. I showed some that I couldnt avoid picking up. Later I presented some comparative photos of other local landmarks that I had found in a book of old photos from 100 years ago. More of these are planned.

OpenCube found us a lovely pink flower with an appropriately non competing background, and followed up later with a surreally coloured country scene! His stone statue of a child was also strangely placed in a country setting, rther than on a church or memorial. we are still waiting to here how that happened. He then moved on to another picture in another strange country with a tale of witches attached to it. He has a great eye for the unusual!

Dunlin's woodland scene showed little evidence of autumnal colours as yet.

Welcome to DaveNJ, who is transitioning from his smartphone to get more natural styles. You are welcome to join us and exhibit regularly.

The new weekly thread is open here. Please start using it now.