redelijkheid.com

In a couple of weeks I’m off to New York for a couple of days. This time I’m packing a DSLR instead of the old Canon IXUS V. And to save my back (and neck), I’m not taking any of the regular zoom lenses with me. It’s just gonna be me and a couple of prime lenses. These lenses aren’t as flexible as a zoom lens, but they weigh a lot less Three primes approx. equals 1 nice zoom lens (nearly 2 pounds), but you mount only 1 lens at a time on the camera.

Currently I’ve got a 35mm f/2D and a 50mm f/1.8D prime for my D300. The lack of zoom capabilities will force me to be a little more creative while strolling the streets of NYC.

It would be nice to have a 24mm f/2.8 (or 20mm f/2.8) as well for a little more wide angle. Downside is that those are relatively pricey, or not available. the biggest photo/video store in NYC sell those at low prices, but they’re out of stock…..

UPDATE: first images of the Nikon 35mm f/2D looks promising. The lens is a bit larger than the 50mm f/1.8, but image quality looks better (contrast, colors).

I ‘found’ a couple of ‘weird’ photo’s in my Lightroom collection. It seemed that they were supposed to become a panorama, but I somehow forgot to create it…..

It has been a while since my holiday to China and Tibet, but it’s better late than never :-).

More panorama’s on my flickr page

I’ve been to Africa three times now. I’ve seen lot’s of animals. Even fighting elephants, but unfortunately I haven’t seen any real action.

Some tourists in Kruger Parc (South Africa) captured some awesome piece of action between buffalo’s, lions, and a couple of crocodiles.

Oh boy, this makes me want to go back to Africa right now…..

Two more pictures from our trip to Africa. The beautiful african sunset at the Ngorongoro crater. Taken from the Ngorongoro Sopa Lodge.

When we were in Africa, we had some money problems. Even though they accept credit cards in most of the hotels, it’s hard to withdraw cash from ATM’s. During our stay there were a gazillion number of public holidays in Kenya, and Tanzania, and during those holidays, the banks are closed. So getting some serious cash was a problem. Especially when you’re on safari (not that many ATM’s on the Serengeti).

When we entered Tanzania, we needed cash, because we needed to pay some fees (in cash). We were taken to the Impala Hotel in Arusha. Here we could charge our credit card for cash (Tanzanian Shillings, and US Dollars). I seperated the 300 USD, because we needed to pay exit-tax when we fly home again from Zanzibar.

At the end of our vacation, we needed to pay the exit-tax (or departure tax) to get form Zanzibar to Nairobi. The official in charge of collecting the departure money told us that most of our money was fake…… Well, that’s just great.
The only place where we could have gotten the fake dollars was in the Impala Hotel. ‘Damn those bastards….’

Back home, I contacted the Impala Hotel by e-mail, and explained the situation. Fortunatelly, they remembered the transaction and suggested to correct the problem. They were very cooperative on solving this issue.
A few e-mails later, I got the details of a Western Union Money Transfer. They had sent me the complete amount of 160 USD.

There is only one thing I can say about this: Awesome service. Keep up the good work.

I’ve placed a rough selection of photos on my Flickr page. They can be found here.

They’ll be ‘fine-tuned’ in the next couple of days (tags, descriptions etc.), and there might be some new ones later on.

Enjoy them.

Yesterday we got back from Africa. The trip was great, but kinda different, because of the things we ran into (literally at one time). Anyway, we made about 3000 digital photos, and shot about 5 hours of film.

Here are some samples:

It’s time to wrestle through the thousands of pictures and upload them to Flickr. More on our Africa adventures in about a week (or so).

Just a couple more hours, and we’re off. Off to Africa for a well deserved vacation. This time for something completely different (NOT). We’ll be going on safari in Kenya (been there, done that :)), and Tanzania (been there, and done that too :)). After that we’ll be resting our asses off in Zanzibar on the beach for a couple of days.

When we get back, I’ll post the photo’s (and a summary of our adventures) here, and on my Flickr page. So stay tuned.

Hakuna Matata

Just got back from a deserved (ultra short) vacation from Dubai (United Arabic Emirates). Damn, it was hot. At night the temperature got as low as 35 degrees celsius(!!!!). I didn’t want to know what the temperatures were during the day. Thank god for airconditioning.

Four days of sun, and bloody good food. Dubai itself isn’t that attractive, because most of the city is still under construction. Everywhere you look are construction sites, and every building company wants to deliver a bigger and more beautiful building. That results in a massive amount of 50+ floor buildings.

Mind you that Dubai isn’t the cheapest place to stay. I was gratefull for the “sponsering” we received. It’s definitely a place for the rich and famous (which I’m not). It is, however, a good place (for our mortals) to make some good money in a relatively small period, since you don’t pay taxes over there :), and they do need lots of hands to build the city.