Thread: A world of doors

One from Barcelona and four from my trip to Coolart Homestead today. If you look closely at the second one you'll see my ugly mug in the relflection in the window .


Basilica de Santa Maria del Mar.jpg Buttery & Meathouse Door.jpg The Other Buttery & Meathouse Door.jpg Woolshed Door.jpg Stables 3.jpg

Originally Posted by Grumpy John

...what gear are you using (Canon I hope ). Did you use a fisheye on the first door in the Bratislav shots, or was it done in post processing.

Your hopes are fulfilled! A 7D, with a 24-105 f4 L IS for most of the later pictures on this page except for a few (obvious) wide angle. They were with a hand held GoPro. the Iranian ones were Canon A630 and the Paris ones a Sony DSC-S60 (which was my first digital camera but later got pinched from my car). No processing on any pix, except a little cropping on some.
I took the GoPro along on our most recent trip as a cheapy movie camera (I actually bought it for other reasons, my profile pic is a screen shot from a GoPro movie). But as I played with it a bit more I found it a handy, if not high quality, snapper for areas where the 24mm still wasn't wide enough. For pano shots of buildings etc in narrow lanes (or in small rooms!). Works OK _if_ the light is good.

I actually had a quick look at the thread with your new 10mm. I think I would like one of them, but out of my price range (for now). I used to have some Sigmas way back in the 80s when I bought my first SLR (Pentax MG) and I was happy with them. When I bought my first digital SLR (EOS400D) I specifically bought some reasonable quality Sigma lenses rather than the Canon kit lenses. However I was never really satisfied with them . Bought a second hand Canon 70-200 2.8 L IS. Great lens, weighs a ton, so not usually a traveler. Also have a Canon 50mm f1.8 which takes good quality esp. low light, but is a little too narrow in field of view for handy lens on a digital SLR.

Originally Posted by Grumpy John

Keep 'em coming .

Are you sure? between my lady and me we took about 14000 pix in May/June and I haven't even touched our visit to Asia in 2011 or the normal local ones!

SWK

Originally Posted by BobL

One of my aunts is a native of Asolo.

Ah, yes, I remember that square well.

Strangely, just about all the Italians in South Australia _seem_ to come from that general area. Since visiting I found out there were some "issues" post war with Slovenia (or whatever it was then) so a lot of them came over here in the late 40's early 50's.
My diving buddy's family came from near there, A work colleague's family came from Treviso, and an Architect I have been working with over the last year has a brother in or very near Asolo.
The people we visited near there were ex migrant friends of my lady's mum. The mother, daughter and one son went back to Italy after the father died. One son stayed in Adelaide. It was great to get the two old ladies (ex best friends for years) back together after more than 20 years.

SWK

Just to show range of equipment!

BoxSeptember2011_5.JPG
Day shot, Port Adelaide.
Camera = 1933 No 2 Brownie

IMG_2194.JPG
Night shot, Adelaide
Camera = Canon 7D

SWK

Originally Posted by swk

..............................................They were with a hand held GoPro.


Are you sure? between my lady and me we took about 14000 pix in May/June and I haven't even touched our visit to Asia in 2011 or the normal local ones!

SWK

I looked at getting a GoPro when I was on holiday up in Cairns last April but the missus had a tight hold on the purse . Can you do single shot with them, or do you have to "extract" an image using a video editing program?

Not 14000 pictures of doors I hope, surely there's a few windows in there .

If the price of the lense on the Sigma web site frightened you, I didn't pay nearly that much. $600 from DigitalRev (no connection etc.) P & P included, ordered on a Wednesday and arrived the next Monday.

Originally Posted by Grumpy John

I looked at getting a GoPro when I was on holiday up in Cairns last April but the missus had a tight hold on the purse . Can you do single shot with them, or do you have to "extract" an image using a video editing program?

Not 14000 pictures of doors I hope, surely there's a few windows in there .

Not just doors, but windows, churches/mosques, hardware shops, paintings, flowers, mountains, signs, tools, food, animals, aeroplanes, scenery, Pope Pius X house and and even some people! (aren't digital cameras great!)

The GoPro is sold as an action movie camera, but it has other picture modes. You can set it for
-Single shot (good for wide angle holiday shots).
-Burst shot, where it will take a bunch of photos over a short time, say 20 pix in 3 seconds. Obviously if you are on your bike or jumping out of a plane, good for action sequences. I found this mode interesting driving in the back of a taxi in Dubai. Point the camera, hit burst shot (as you are moving) then pick the best photo of your subject (buildings in this case) with the street lights, road signs or power poles in the least obtrusive spot (you know if you take one shot a speed limit sign or similar will be in the way). I have since used it to try to get pictures of some stormy waves breaking at an Adelaide jetty a couple of weeks ago. I wouldn't have chosen the GoPro, but it was the only camera I had on hand at the time. Not so good as the angle was too wide (subject appearred too small) and the light was a bit too gloomy.
-Timelapse, where you can set the camera to take, say, one picture every 10 seconds. It is possible to produce a time lapse movie with these shots and some software, but I haven't done it. I tried this mounted in the front of our hire car as we drove through the Austrian Alps. Bit of a pot luck method, but can get some good shots this way without thinking too much.

However, the GoPro is fixed focus, fully auto and needs good light to get good pix and they will often be distorted when you didn't expect them to be. But it is very handy.

SWK

door_2.jpg door1.jpg

French toilet, at least there is a door on the crapper (don't you just love the sign?).
Prehistoric burial mound, Estramadura, Spain.
SWMBO, Granada, Spain.
My old workshop door before I moved house a year ago.

Eggenberg Palace in Graz.
Doors to infinity (almost). Palaces of this style all the rooms adjoin. I don't think corridors were invented yet (seriously!)
I think the grey door is for the servants to enter spaces behind the main rooms. There were lots of these facing on to the courtyard.
The black iron door (detail only) I think is a doorway to the chimney or heating system. The door itself was normal width but only about 4 feet high. It faced onto the courtyard with all the other doors.

IMG_5619.JPGIMG_5645.JPGIMG_5653.JPGIMG_5655.JPG

For Afficionados of Dr Who (pity about the apostrophe!)
IMG_6351.JPG

Operahouse and high school in Bernsdorf
P5311198.JPGP5311240.JPG

SWK

Mostly Austria

Graz, the local bakery )
GOPR0702.JPG

Graz, the armoury (Landeszeughaus)
The inside door (which I only took a picture of top of to capture the lintel and hinge) has an interesting story, if I remember correctly. The building when new was the armoury for the local Austrian state, you can see the muzzles of some guns just to the left in the picture. But as an armoury it was a high security area for the state, the only people allowed in were about half a dozen weapons keepers and of course the king. In the 1700s Maria Theresa became empress and now only the small staff and the Empress were allowed in. Apparently this was the door to her royal dunny (gosh another one!) for when she visited. So for a while this was a door behind which only one person in the whole of Austria was allowed to go, or so the museum guide said. I wondered who cleaned it though...
IMG_5503.JPGIMG_5519.JPG

An older cellar door in Bad Radkersburg (no, don't bother looking on a map, it's probably too small to find!)
That writing in chalk is a thing I found strange when I first saw it but is an Austrian thing they do around Christmas. 20-C+M+B-12 refers to the year and the letters have a double meaning. One for the three wise men (Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar) and also for a house blessing "Christus Mansionem Benedicat” (Christ bless the house).
IMG_6279.JPG

Predjama Castle, Slovenia. Door of the local church.
If you have seen the Jackie Chan film "Armour of God", it's that castle.
IMG_6313.JPG

SWK