Important: This page is only available in German language for now. Please do not hesitate to contact us for a guided tour. Thanks to remote support systems like TeamViewer we will give you some live-demonstration on request !

Thank you for your understanding.

Stay tuned …

Who is Joseph Kony ?

Joseph Kony is the world’s worst war criminal. In 1987 he took over leadership of an existing rebel group and renamed it the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA).

The LRA has earned a reputation for its cruel and brutal tactics. When Joseph Kony found himself running out of fighters, he started abducting children to be soldiers in his army or “wives” for his officers. The LRA is encouraged to rape, mutilate, and kill civilians–often with blunt weapons.

The LRA is no longer active in northern Uganda (where it originated) but it continues its campaign of violence in Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, and South Sudan. In its 26-year history, the LRA has abducted more than 30,000 children and displaced at least 2.1 million people.

What is the goal of KONY 2012 ?

Invisible Children has been working for 9 years to end Africa’s longest-running armed conflict. U.S. military advisers are currently deployed in Central Africa on a “time-limited” mission to stop Kony and disarm the LRA. If Kony isn’t captured this year, the window will be gone.
We are taking action to ensure these two things:

1) That Joseph Kony is known as the World’s Worst War Criminal.

2) That the U.S. military advisers support the Ugandan Army until Kony has been captured and the LRA has been completely disarmed. They need to follow through all the way and finish what they have started.
Why are we making Joseph Kony “famous”?

Invisible Children’s KONY 2012 campaign aims to make Joseph Kony famous, not to celebrate him, but to raise support for his arrest and set a precedent for international justice. In this case, notoriety translates to public support. If people know about the crimes that Kony has been committing for 26 years, they will unite to stop him.

Secondly, we want Kony to be famous so that when he is stopped, he will be a visible, concrete example of international justice. Then other war criminals will know that their mass atrocities will not go unnoticed or unpunished.

More information can be found on
Kony2012.com
Invisible Children
about Kony 2012 on Wikipedia

As a professional Photographer the amount of image data (RAW files, postproduction files, client files) produced per year is enormous. Now, I decided to test the remote storage solution myself: For the next month I will be using 500 GB provided by Strato.

The offer is fair:

• 500 GB
• free trail for 30 days
• 5 user / 1 admin account
• secure (encrypted) transfer
• unlimited traffic
• 16,90 € per month (after the trail period)

The first steps will be the download and installation of the “Hi-drive app” in order to include the additional space seamlessly into my existing setup. Then I will test the performance when transferring large amounts of data from my local server to the remote storage space.

First results will be presented here soon …

Update :

After around three hours STRATO was sending the login credentials and the Hi-Drive was activated. I started a first data transfer test with an image folder of 39,24 GB. Technically my maximum upload speed is 2.000 kbits/sec. Right now the “copy progress” indication says “50 h left” which would be roughly ten times slower than possible.

Update :

Now, 14 hours passed and 11 GB are uploaded. Considering the fact that 2,2 TB would have to be transferred, the amount of time necessary is the negative aspect.

Update : 07.03.2012

I finished my test today. During the upload of the 39 GB folder the transfer interrupted two times. With an average upload speed of 1.800 kbits/sec it took more than 2 days to complete the transfer. One has to permanently keep an eye on it to be able to interfere in case of a problem or interruption.

Personally, I would conclude that due to the limitations in currently available upload-speeds iCloud storage space is only practical for small amounts of data in the order of a few GB. Backing up a large data-archive of a few TB is still costly and would require weeks of upload time alone.
With an option to send in a physical hard drive for the initial data transfer (www.crashplan.com is offering this – unfortunately only in the United States) and higher upload speeds of let’s say 100 Mbits/sec, combined with moderate storage costs of let’s say 100 Eur per year for a TB of data, a combined system will make sense. Not yet …

So, Stay tuned …

A few more impressions from the Berlinale can be found in the “press images” section on the main website.

Mr. Martin Wieser (Techn. Representative Retail) gave a very detailed presentation about the stunning features and technical developments all combined in the new top-model that will be available at your local store around April 2012. The main features and specs are of course already on the web since several month but he explained in much more detail how this new camera is trying to make life of the Photographer more easy. Here, I would like to mention only the very sophisticated (adjustable to the shooting  situation) AF, face recognition, freely programmable buttons, the Ethernet-port, the clean and clear menu-structure (there are many, many new functions) and the low-light capability (ISO 6400 is really useable now).

After one minute, I could use it like my own cameras. All the buttons and switches are right where I expect them to be. To learn about all the functions and new features will take much longer, that’s for sure (Like this the camera will stay “new and exciting” for a long time). With a price tag of around 6k Eur it is clearly aimed at the professional photographer, who will find a camera that allows to work fast and efficient in practically any shooting situation.

The resolution of the full-frame CMOS sensor is 18 Megapixel. Why not 20+, 30 or even more ? The answer was interesting: “The current portfolio of EF-lenses would not allow for many lenses to really show the image quality of such a sensor”. Many mainly newer  L-series lenses are capable to stand up to the demands of such sensors. As there are still many “bread and butter” lenses out there that would only give a “sharp image” in the central area of the image, the resolution is “limited to 18 Megapixel” at the moment. This will change in the future.

Enough words, let pictures speak :

I would like to thank Canon Europe, Calumet Photographic Berlin and the whole Central City Studios Berlin team for making this interesting event possible.

Stay tuned …

Looking forward to shoot again in half a year at the next Fashion Week.

Stay tuned …

Stay tuned …

Over the years the one question I am most often asked, is “what is the perfect ‘always with me’ camera” ? The answer sounds stupid, but the one you always carry with you ! In the end a ‘not really perfect’ image of a rare or never repeating itself moment is better than not having taken the picture at all because of the ‘right camera’ being just at home.

Over the years, I tried and changed many of these ‘always with me’ cameras. One camera that could a very nice compact model to fulfill these tasks could be the Canon PowerShot G1 X. Let me briefly summarize the key features: It comes with a large 14.3 Megapixel Canon CMOS sensor (18.7x14mm) and DIGIC 5-based HS System for exceptional shots up to ISO 12,800. The lens is a precision Canon 28mm wide-angle lens, with 4x optical zoom and 4-stop Intelligent Image Stabilizer. A versatile 7.5 cm (3.0”) vari-angle PureColor II VA LCD (920k) screen and an optical viewfinder make the image composition real fun. As expected for a camera intended to be used by professionals and serious amateurs it comes with full manual control, 14-bit RAW and DPP software. Full HD movies (1080p) with stereo sound, record button and HDMI connectivity round up the list of useful features. 4.5 fps High-speed Burst HQ mode is quite rare for a compact camera. A smart auto-focus with multi-area white balance HDR mode and a built-in ND filter could turn out to be very handy as well. As usual, there are extensive accessories, including Canon Speedlites and Lens Filter adapter on the market. For the hardcore outdoor photographer the optional 40m waterproof case might be interesting.

I will be doing some extensive tests and report about the use under “every day life” conditions and present images of course. At the end of the day this is what counts – can it deliver the image quality me and my clients are looking for ? A question to be answered.

Stay tuned …

The last few month have been busy and I did not manage to take care about this blog as much as I should have. First of all, this is going to change a bit next year, second I want to thank all of you who left feedback and commented on various posts !

fashion shooting, November 2011

For now, I want to wish all of you a MERRY CHRISTMAS and a few peaceful days with Family and friends,

Hope to “see you” soon again here.

Peter

Personally, I can not hire a dedicated online system operator in order to keep my various web presences up to date. A balanced mixture of website updates (this is my main priority), blog-entries (they come 2nd in my priority ranking) and SN-postings works well for me and brings the needed amount of time to do it down to a few hours per week.

Quality is more important than quantity!

Stay tuned …