Late night show
Posted on Juni 10th, 2015
If the day goes to the end, you can either watch tv or you go out and watch nature.
In my last post I gave you the advice to go early enough to see the sunrise. But why go not a bit earlier and you can see all the beautiful stars too?
So I did it and I was early enough on the peak and I could take some nice starscapes of the alpine skyline. And like always again, I am surprised how much light, my dream team, the Sony A7s with the Samyang 24mm f/1.4 , can take. It’s really amazing what I get. This is a manually made HDR image out of 3 images with 2EV steps. And it’s so easy to take the image, set the bracket series and push the button.
One tip, if you are also a Sony shooter: bracket series are a bit foolish on the sony cams. You can not take a bracket serie with 2 second timer delay, you have allway press the shutter until the third image is running. But if you use an external shutter release with a cable, then you can use the bulb pusher and you will not shake your image.
An alpine view
Posted on Mai 25th, 2015
Watch it all, from the Mythen across the Rigi and the lakes, to the central swiss alps.
While the sun is already gone down behind the horizon you can sill see her red light. And it’s already dark enough to see all the lights of the villages down in the valley.
Because this is the ending of the blue hour you can also see the first stars and you can see the two planets, Venus and Jupiter.
This is an HDR panorama image, which means I took five times a bracket series to get all the dynamic I could also see by my eyes. My advice, if you ever go up to a sight seeing place like the Rotenfluh here, take your time and stay until it’s dark. Because after this pano I shoot also a night time pano with a lot more visible stars. The disadvantage is, after you took all the awesome photos and you are prepared to go down to the valley, you will notice that you missed the last funicular by far.
Moonshine valley
Posted on Mai 10th, 2015
When the moon rises, the milkyway fades out and the landscape begins to shine.
At the beginning of the night I could see a very intense milkyway behind a dark landscape. But with the rising moon the landscape got more light and shadows. This was my last image of the night on this day. On the eastern sky I could already see a silver lining, time to pack together and go the long way back to home.
As we started our way back, was the landscape still very dark, but soon I could turn of my headlamp, short after I pulled off my rain pants and another night in the mountains was over. Before we reached the car, we crossed the first hikers on their way up, well they didn’t know what they had missed.
Star noise
Posted on Mai 3rd, 2015
Is there no moonlight and less light pollution, then you will see, how many stars are in the sky.
Unless the last pair of images I published, on this image you can see a very dark landscape. You may think, this landscape isn’t so dark at all, but watch the sky, compare it with my last images and see how many stars you can find on this image. The landscape is so bright, because I used the best gear I know for nightscape photography.
And now a bit technical information, this is a night HDR panorama image, boah! Yes it was veeery difficult to fix it together, that’s the reason, I published it one day later, it took me too long to fumble it together. First, it’s not possible to use an HDR software for a starry sky, you will get only dirty stripes. And then, 24mm was also not the best choice. Photoshop was not able to construct a pano, but with Kolor Autopano, which is now part of GoPro, was it possible to stitch it together. Also you have to fix all the manually parts, like the light trails of the car on the pass street, before you stitch it, because every stitch run will give you another, not compatible image to the other runs.
Waiting for sunrise
Posted on April 29th, 2015
To be ensure not to miss the sunrise, you have to get up early.
You also have to calculate the way until you are on your desired spot. But sometimes it happens, that I’m so early, that there is no sunlight and instead there are some strange light points in the sky.
Normaly I’m hanging boring around but this time I was playing a bit around with my camera. I was clicking here and clicking there, fiddled and fumbled on all the useless knobs on my photontrap and at the end I had this useless image on my memory card. Only the strange noise in the sky and hard shadows of a dull moon.
I have to plan my journeys better to be at the right time on the place, so I don’t have to waste so much time with waiting for the sunlight…
Night HDR
Posted on April 19th, 2015
A classical 3 images HDR shot with 2EV steps, but I did it during a moonless night.
Normally I can’t take a bracket series at night, because of the durage of the exposure time. But with the Sony A7s and the Samyang 24mm 1.4 I take the image with only 8s exposure time and this gave me possibility to take a 2EV bracket serie because +2EV is about 30s which is the maximum exposure time of all system cameras I know.
For the first time I could take a night image with only one click on the shutter button and the thing was eaten. If the nights will be more dark, when the snow is melting and 3200 ISO with f/2 is no more enough, I can use the huge reserve of this body and go up to 12800 ISO or use one stop more at the aperture. The only thing you can’t change is the maximum of 8s exposure time, if you still want to have stars instead of stripes.
Btw, the light you can see on the floor and at the mountains and at the clouds, came from the cities down at the valley.
Star gazing
Posted on April 16th, 2015
Last night I was for a short evening trip on the peak.
Just decided, because of the clear weather, I was for a few hours on a night tour. This time I visited the Rotenfluh near the Mythen, the mountain behind me. I drove to the Ibergeregg and walked about an hour to this viewing point. Good I had my snow shoes with me, there was still snow covering the ground and the snow was very slippery, but with my snow shoes I walked easily a steep red ski slope upwards. Okay easy with the traction but I had always be careful not to step on my tongue.
Anyway, I spend a few hours on the top with a spectacular starry sky and a good view to the near mountains. But for the moment is this the only image I processed to see what you can expect 
Midnight sun
Posted on April 11th, 2015
A clear sky, the bright moon and sparkling snow.
Next winter, if you spend some nights in a snowy area, like a winter resort, you should go for a walk in the night. And do this not only between the bars, go through the forest and enjoy the silent night.
Someone asked me, whether I had photoshoped the sprinkels in the snow, because she couldn’t belief to see it so clear. But I can confirm that you will see the sparkels and it glittering all around you while you are walking.
It’s like in a fairy tale to walk nightly through a winter wonderland, you have just do it.
Grosse Scheidegg
Posted on März 26th, 2015
You are walking and walking, it goes upwards from curve to curve and when you think it will never end, then you reach the top and you will rewarded with this amazing view.
I was already late, because of the weather, the sky was completely covered with clouds until 4 o’clock and then, while I was driving to my starting point, my car stuck in the snow mud, the snow chains where a hell for mounting, then they cracked after I started and and the end I couldn’t unmount it for a whole while.
But after all I reached the Scharzwaldalp, the last point you can drive to with your car and started my nightly hike to get dreamy winter wonderland images. First it comes the work and I had to walk over 500m altitude difference up to the Scheidegg. I reached the top after about 2.5h. First I saw some huts and then I could peek over the ridge down to the Grindelwald valley.
And what a stunning view does it present to me, all the sparkling snow, bright and white illuminated by the moon. Down in the valley the lights of the village and at the slopes the lights of all the snowcats and overall the blue sky with all the sparkling stars.
Wintertale
Posted on März 12th, 2015
The bright moon was shining on this valley of silence in the middle of the alps.
It was only half moon but the night was so bright between the snow captured mountains, you could walk without any additional light source. It was really enjoyable to use the new camera. A whole new feeling, I could walk, stop and shoot. No stacking nor any astro tracking was needed. One single shot with 10 secounds apperture and this with astonishing 200 ISO.
The reason was the bright scenery and the fast lens which I used at f/2 and therefore I could easily take this panaorama with four quick shots. Zoom into this image and enjoy the noiseless landscape.
