A walk through Sibiu’s historical center

These are a few photographs (only 13 this time 😁) taken during a walk through Sibiu’s historical center nine years ago (yes, 2009). If you’re wondering why I keep publishing photos from that year, it’s because I’m finally taking care of my editing backlog. Wait, Raoul, are you saying you’re nine years behind on editing your photos? Ahem… most of my photos, yes. When you take lots of photos, that’s what happens 🤷‍♂️.

Anyway, these photos were taken with my cellphone at the time, the now-venerable Nokia N95 which had a 5 megapixel camera. It was pretty good by the standards of its time and is woefully behind the times now, not necessarily in megapixels but in dynamic range and image quality. Still, it did okay in daylight.

Enjoy the photos!

Historic district, Sibiu, Romania

Sibiu, Romania

Historic district, Sibiu, Romania

Sibiu, Romania

Sibiu, Romania

Sibiu, Romania

And here is the grandfather of many of today’s cellphone cameras:

Places

Around the town in 2009

This is a gallery of photographs taken in and around Medias in the summer of 2009 (68 photos in total). As I look back on these photos, it’s interesting to see how the town has changed and stayed the same during this time. It’s definitely changed since 2006, when I took these other photos. Enjoy!

A distant hillside visible from inside the historic city center in Medias, Romania. The rooftop of one of the old German houses is visible in the foreground.

Medias, Romania

Historic district, Medias, Romania

Margarethenkirche, Medias, Romania

Historic district, Medias, Romania

Inside Margarethenkirche, Medias, Romania

Medias, Romania

Historic district, Medias, Romania

Relics from communist times, Medias, Romania

Doesn’t this fellow look like the mutt from “Lady and the Tramp”?

Historic district, Medias, Romania

Medias, Romania

Historic district, Medias, Romania

A man walks down a street in the historic city center, Medias, Romania.

Historic district, Medias, Romania

Medias, Romania

Historic district, Medias, Romania

Houses and villas from the city of Medias, Romania, on a bright summer day.

An older apartment building on a bright summer day, Medias, Romania.

Medias, Romania

Margarethenkirche, Medias, Romania

Historic district, Medias, Romania

Houses and villas from the city of Medias, Romania, on a bright summer day.

Medias, Romania

Medias Medieval Festival

A cityscape of the city of Medias, Romania, showing the older, medieval buildings of the city. The clocktower is indeed leaning.

Medias, Romania

Margarethenkirche, Medias, Romania

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

The towers of the medieval city of Medias, Romania are visible in the distance on a bright summer day. Houses and villas from downtown can also be seen.

A cityscape of the city of Medias, Romania, showing some of the city’s apartment buildings.

Historic district, Medias, Romania

Walking in the city of Medias, Romania, on a clear summer night. The city’s main clock tower is visible above the rooflines of the buildings in the foreground.

Inside the medieval city walls, Medias, Romania

Historic district, Medias, Romania

Medias, Romania

Medias, Romania

Historic district, Medias, Romania

Dusk, a watch tower at the Roth school, Medias, Romania.

Medias, Romania

Walking in the city of Medias, Romania, on a clear summer evening. The city’s main clock tower is visible above the rooflines of the buildings in the foreground.

One of the towers marking an old medieval entrance to the fortified part of the city of Medias, Romania.

Old brick chimneys on the roof of one of the old houses in the historic city center, Medias, Romania.

Medias Medieval Festival

I used the following cameras and lenses to take these photographs: an Olympus C770 UZ, a Nokia N95 (my mobile phone at the time), a Canon EOS 5D, a Canon EOS Rebel XTi, a Canon PowerShot G10, a Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L IS lens and a Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 lens.

Olympus Camedia C-770 UltraZoom

Nokia N95

Canon EOS 5D

Canon EOS Rebel XTi

Canon PowerShot G10

Canon EF 24-105mm f4L IS USM Lens

Canon EF 50mm f1.4 USM Lens

Places

Blue hour and snowfall!

This past Sunday morning, I woke up to a beautiful snowfall and luckily for me, about 10 minutes before the blue hour (which actually lasts less than an hour). I tiptoed down the stairs so I wouldn’t wake up my wife and child, put some clothes and shoes on, and because it was snowing heavily, I took my Canon 7D (my only weather-sealed camera), along with the 10-22mm EF-S lens (which is also weather-sealed). I wanted an ultra-wide perspective to the photos and also the ability to shoot without a tripod at low shutter speeds. An ultra-wide lens lets you do that because of the “reciprocal rule”: as long as the shutter speed matches the focal length, you should get a good photo (provided you have steady hands). A 10-22mm lens would let me use shutter speeds as low as 1/10th of a second, which is just what I did on some of the photos. Enjoy the gallery!

Taken during a mid-February snowfall in Medias, Romania

For those of you who love looking at camera gear (I know I do), here is a photo of the camera and lens I used.

Canon EOS 7D

Canon EF-S 10-22mm f:3.5-4.5 Lens

Places

Summertime in our garden

I was going through old(er) photos of mine taken in 2009, and I put together a lovely collection of summertime photos from our garden (even if I do say so myself). Look, I know it’s not summer now. It’s winter (sort of). Each season has its purpose and is beautiful in its own way. Should we get some snowfall or at least some frost, I’ll probably be out there taking photos that you’ll be able to see here. So I could have scheduled this post to publish sometime in May, or I could let you see these photos now, and let you dream of this next summer, which I hope is going to be a beautiful one for all of us. (Unless you’re in the Southern hemisphere, in which case you’ve already got your summer. Isn’t it weird how that works out?) Enjoy the photos, there are 82 of them!

Mitzi, exploring the yard, at 2 1/2 months of age.

Trixie, resting on a stone ledge on a hot summer day.

The vivid orange and gold colors of a squash flower. A honeybee happens to be pollinating this one. Medias, Romania.

An iridescent fly suns itself on a grape leaf. Medias, Romania.

Tiny white flowers with stringy white petals. Medias, Romania.

One of my favorite flowers

The unusual blossom of a small, soft, hairy flower with a deep-brown interior

The delicate blossoms of a climbing rose bush open up in the soft morning light. Medias, Romania.

A raspberry ripens on the vine. Medias, Romania.

Ripening sour cherries in our garden

Historic district, Mediaș, Romania

An iridescent beetle suns itself on a parsley leaf. Medias, Romania.

Trixie, exploring the yard, at 2 1/2 months of age.

Small, deep-blue blossoms of a forget-me-not flower. Medias, Romania.

An iridescent beetle perched on parsley leaves.

These photos were taken with the following cameras: Canon EOS 5D, Olympus Camedia C-770 UZ and Canon EOS Rebel XTi. For the Canon cameras, I used the following lenses: EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro, EF 50mm f/1.4, and the EF 24-105mm f/4L.

Canon EF 24-105mm f4L IS USM Lens

Canon EF 50mm f1.4 USM Lens

Canon EF 100mm f2.8 Macro USM Lens

Places

Winter photos from our garden

It’s been a hum-drum winter, I’ve said it before. It barely snows, and when it does, it melts right away. The temperatures hover between 0-10° Celsius, so it’s neither warm nor cold, just kind of annoying. I don’t know where the winters of my youth went, but I hope they come back at some point. I’m talking about snow that stays on the ground for weeks and months, big, thick, frequent snow that keeps the top layers fresh… Those kinds of winters are now only found in movies and fairy tales.

Fortunately, we humans are endowed with a little something called optimism. We can always call on that spirit and make the best of what we have. So the snow melts quickly. So be it. I’ll photograph the melting snow. The falling water drops make for great macro photographs.

This nifty lens I just bought, the M.Zuiko Digital ED 12-50mm, has a Macro button on the side, which locks it in Macro mode and lets me get right up to the things I want to photograph, as you’ll see below. Not only is it a versatile 24-100mm (35mm equivalent) zoom, but it’s also a macro lens when I want it to be.

Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 12-50mm side view with buttons

I always shoot in RAW format, on any camera that’s capable of it, but with my E-P2, I forgot how good the JPG engine was. During my early morning outing a couple of days ago, I shot both RAW and JPG together (there’s an in-camera setting for that) and then I compared the photos in Lightroom. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the E-P2’s color reproduction is very good and the noise reduction algorithms built into the camera are actually better than Lightroom’s. Yeah, surprise! I pixel-peeped those images side by side and the JPG files were cleaner and had the colors I wanted, straight out of the camera. Guess what I did next? I switched my camera to JPG-only mode.

The photos you’ll see here are SOOC: JPG files produced by the camera, imported into Lightroom, where I added metadata and exported with no modifications to the colors, exposure, contrast, etc. Other than the metadata, I added nothing. Full disclosure: I bumped up the exposure on three snow photos that came out a little dark, but that’s it. I think you’ll agree with me when I say this little camera is pretty good!