Day 3 - Train delays and evening in Stockholm

After a rather uncomfortable (and mostly sleepless) night in seat 32, I woke up as the train pulled into Hamburg station. At this time it was already over 1h delayed but I hoped it would still make up some of that time.

Little did I know that it would not only not make up that delay but add another hour on top of it. The good 'news' is that it stopped often enough to be able to see and admire the Danish landscape. If you only wake up in Denmark you might be forgiven to think the train took a wrong turn somewhere and headed back to Holland, both countries have a very similar landscape and are quite flat.

Thanks to the train taking it's time to get to Copenhagen, not only did my time there did get cut down to 6 minutes but I also almost missed my connecting train to Stockholm.

A lesson to be learned is that you should expect delays and ensure you have longer time to spend in a connecting city and not to get an isle seat in the night train because it's uncomfortable, although a middle seat is no better, window seats are probably best in terms of available space.

The train journey to Stockholm in a modern train was on time but took around 5h. The good news is that the seats are comfortable and the views change dramatically once you enter Sweden, with pine forests
and lakes dotting the landscape.

The first views of Stockholm you get from the train are very nice and just a teaser of what you get to see once you start exploring the city. My hotel was right next to the central station and while the room had no window, it did the job and was relatively inexpensive when compared with other hotels.

After dropping my bag off in the windowless room, I headed outside for a walk and to explore the city.
Some people will research a city and plan out what to do and see while they are there, especially when they only have a limited time there. I am too lazy for that and like to improvise and explore on my own. This can be good and bad, it means I see things at my own pace and might head outside the beaten path or it might mean that I miss out on some stuff and don't quite know what I see. Still, why change what works and too muc planning is not good either. ;)

I did get to see the Stockholm Stadthus and touristy Gamla Stan, where I tried to find a place for dinner. While there are a lot of restaurants to choose from, the prices are really expensive.

Stockholm is so expensive that I can label it the most expensive city I have been to so far and not only do I live in London but have been to New York and Tokyo but neither felt as expensive. After consulting Google and Tripadvisor I settled on a place and not only was it inexpensive (compared go the rest of Stockholm) but also served nice food. In case you are looking for something decent and inexpensive to eat try 'Stockholms Gästabud AB' in Österlänggatan 7.

Aside from being expensive, Stockholm, made a very good first impression and it looks like a very nice city. While the landscape in Denmark did remind me of Holland, the 'friendliness' of staff in Sweden did remind me of Amsterdam although there were exceptions and some were quite nice and friendly.

Tomorrow, I will have till 16:00 to explore Stockholm some more before having to catch the Viking Line ferry to Helsinki.

Day 2 - Essen and train to Copenhagen

Since my train to Copenhagen only leaves at 21:25 from Cologne, I had time to see friends in Essen. We walked around the city centre and drove to the Zollverein later to take pictures.

After spending the day in Essen picking my bag up, I found myself back at Cologne station waiting for the night train to Copenhagen.

Having never taken night trains in Europe before, I did wonder how the journey would shape up to be. Having only booked a seat only, I hoped it would at least be halfway comfortable. It turned out to be quite uncomfortable after all but the journey was pretty enjoyable thanks to my fellow travellers.

The biggest issue for me turned out to be a complete lack of plugs in this train. This put me in a predicament as I was not organised enough to charge my Fonepad before so will have to do without it for now and hope I get a charger in the next train.

All going well, I will have 2 hours to spend in Copenhagen tomorrow morning before heading onwards to Stockholm.

Day 1 - London to Brussels, Cologne and Hilden

First day of my journey and the first stage started from London St. Pancras. It was an early start, I got there before 8am to have time for coffee and some photography.

It felt good to finally set off to the journey I have been thinking about and planning for the past months.

Checking in and going through security at the Eurostar terminal was quick and the train left on time at 8:58 towards Brussels Midi.

During this first journey I realised that my initial plan to have Google Tracks track the whole journey will not work out as the GPS reception in trains and through the tunnels is not very good and the Fonepad has a pretty crap GPS built in. Will have to leave this part out and maybe just track my walks instead.

The journey was otherwise uneventful and we arrived on time at Brussels Midi to a grey sky and heavy rain.
My first thought was to go and seek shelter in a cafe or bar, have some coffee and maybe some Belgian beers.
Then I realised that this will not be the first time I will get rain on my trip so I took my jacket out and set off for a walk around Brussels to take some photos. I had just over 2h in total to spend till my next train to Cologne.

Most of my photos from Brussels were street photographs of people as the buildings and architecture was very uninspiring due to the grey and dull weather. This combined with the fact that I tried to keep the lens free from drops so tilting the camera up was not really what I wanted to do too often.

The ICE train left on time at 14:25 with the usual German efficiency and I managed to get my favourite seat in the train. If you ever travel on the ICE, don't bother to book a seat but just go for the bar car and find a seat there, it's the best place as you have a table, get served and can enjoy a coffee or beer while watching the landscape go by. The only downside is there are no plug sockets but this is not really an issue.

Arriving in Cologne to a brighter sky was a relief and meant I could pack my jacket away. Rather than taking the first train to Hilden, I decided to go for a short walk around and take some pictures around the Dom.

After my time in Cologne, I took the train to Hilden to see my parents and brother before I will head onwards to Copenhagen tomorrow evening.

Walking back home in Hilden, I saw this nicely lit shop and had to take a picture. I am very impressed how it came out and it it my favourite photo of the day.

You can see all pictures I took today on my unedited Flickr stream here, I will upload automatically all pictures there taken with the Eye-Fi card ad will manually upload the others to have as a cloud backup.

As a side note, I will try to post more of my preparations and planing stages throughout the journey and will keep the blog updated whenever possible. If you post a comment or send me an email, I will always reply as soon as I can.

Photo-Blogger Abroad

Click on the map for the interactive version.

What do you do if you are a bit fed up with work and the same routine day in, day out? Easy, you quit your job and do something crazy and fun for a while.

This is what I decided a while ago, you might have noticed my blog updates were mostly from Greenwich rather than the City and I dropped hints with my visa applications.

Well, today is my last day in London and tomorrow is the first day of my travels around the world. At least around the world is the plan for now, you can see the map with destinations above.

All going to plan I will visit all of the above places and hope to take not only lots of photos but also blog about it and give you an idea how it is to plan a journey like this.
The journey itself will be done with trains, buses and ferries as much as possible. The itinerary might change from what you see above and on this spreadsheet but this is to be expected on a long journey.
If you live or are somewhere on my route let me know as I am always happy to meet up for drinks and some photography.

If you are curious what I am taking along for the journey, next to a backpack with clothes that is, wonder no more and look below.

Lots of foreign money from previous trips, Fonepad for phone and tablet duties, Microsoft Surface for blogging and writing, Ricoh GR, Ricoh GXR with Heliar 15mm and Jupiter-8 50mm lenses, hard drive for backup, spare batteries and SD cards, travel adapters and cables plus a small travel mouse.

Eagle eyed readers might have noticed the new 'Donate' button in the top right corner, this is if you feel generous and want to donate anything towards the trip or the blog.
Since I don't like taking money without giving anything back, everyone who donates £5 more more will receive the ebook versions of my 'people with umbrellas' and the 'GRD III -  Serious Compact' books. I will also look for other things I can give back to anyone donating.

For an unfiltered view of my photos from the journey you can view my Flickr stream directly from my eye-fi card uploads here.

Ricoh GR Review

When Ricoh designed the first GR1 film camera, they set out to make a camera that "brings a smile to one's face, just by holding it". Not only have they accomplished this but they have been constantly improving and evolving the subsequent GR film and GRD digital cameras.

With the new GR, Ricoh went back to basics with the naming but not with the ergonomics or controls. You still get a camera that will bring not only a smile to your face but will also inspire you to go out and take pictures. It accomplishes all this while staying out of your way thanks to the improved and highly customisable controls. The controls are all where you expect them to be and if not, chances are you can customise them to suit you.

The addition of the new AF switch and button is great and makes it very easy to leave the camera in Snap mode and just briefly switch to Spot AF when needed for one shot or to quickly lock focus and allow the exposure to be set at exposure time (or vice versa if you prefer).

The new effects button under the flash release is the only button you can't reach with one hand but I have mine set to the 35mm crop mode so this works well as it's not a setting I change often and the effects are set in the Adjust menu.

As always the Adjust menu is great and remains a very quick and efficient way to access settings you need without ever going into the menu.

For everything Ricoh improved, they have also inexplicably taken away the Auto-ISO option in Manual mode and the ability to confirm menu options by half pressing the shutter button. This might not be an issue for new users but for someone who is used to the older Ricoh GRDs or the GXR, this could be an annoyance.

All this would of course not matter much if the camera would not take good pictures or be too slow to capture the decisive moment but here the GR excels.

Thanks to the GR 28mm f2.8 lens and the 16MP APS sensor without anti-alias filter, you get very sharp and really detailed photos with a lot of dynamic range and a nice tonality. The sensor is so good that it does not need to hide behind the full frame Sony RX1 when it comes to details or dynamic range under normal circumstances.
The image quality is so good at any ISO that I don't have any problems with using ISO 25600 knowing that not only will I get less noise but also more details than the old 12MP sensor in the GXR.

The camera is also fast enough at powering on, focusing and writing to the card that you will never miss any moment. Where it really struggles is low light focusing and here you will miss the moment, unless you use the Snap focus mode or have a very stationary subject. The strange thing about low light focusing is that at times it's very fast and accurate, other tines it's slow but accurate and in rare cases it's both slow and misses the focus completely. This is so bad that i reminds me of the first firmware for the GXR A12 50mm so I have hopes Ricoh can and will fix this a they have done with the GXR A12 modules, which incidentally are both actually faster in low light focusing. The good news is that once the camera has achieved focus or if you have prefocussed there is zero shutter lag.
The display refresh could also be better given how snappy the camera performs otherwise and especially in low light it struggles to keep up with you if you pan around. This is again something that Ricoh needs to fox as it stands out like a sore thump on such an otherwise very responsive camera.

A huge bonus of the GR compared to similar cameras is the available 21mm adapter, this adds a bit of bulk to the camera but gives you the ability to shoot at 21mm and f2.8 without any perceivable loss of image quality. The corners are a bit softer than you would get with a 21mm lens or you get with the GXR A12-M and the Heliar 12mm and 15mm lenses but either of them not only cost more than double of what the adapter will set you back but are also some of the best wideangle lenses you can find and are not a simple adapter mounted in front of a lens.
The adapter works very well and extends the abilities of the GR quite a lot, unfortunately Ricoh has taken away the ability for the camera to automatically detect the adapter so you have to remember to set it manually in the menu if you want the EXIF information to be updated. This is a huge issue for people who might switch between 28mm and 21mm a lot and is an unnecessary step back. Sure, it's only for the EXIF information and does not actually affect the shooting but this was not necessary and if the GRD I could automatically detect the 22mm and 40mm lenses then I simply expect more from a camera which is essentially the GRD V.

Overall the GR is not only the most refined Ricoh camera and the best GR camera you can buy but it's the best serious compact camera out there. This is thanks to the fantastic handling, great image quality, speedy operation and small size. There are some small problems with the low light AF for example but most can easily be fixed with a firmware update and given Ricoh's track record of updating the firmware of the GRD cameras, this will most likely happen sooner rather than later.

Some people will look at it and miss a built in EVF or VF and/or flip screen but to those I say tht this is the wrong camera for this. The GR line was always about being as compact as possible, in other words fit in a jeans pocket, while delivering the bes image quality possible. Fitting a OVF/EVF or flip screen inside would make it bigger and it is already as big as it can possible get before it's too big. Once it passes that threshold and does not fit in a jeans pocket anymore so you have to carry it in a bag (like the Fuji X100s for example) then it becomes too big and you would demand interchangeable lenses (I know I would). This would make it a different class of camera altogether.

For travel, especially if you want to travel light, there is nothing better than the GR period. For me this is the bes camera out there at the moment, followed by the GXR A12-M.

I know, this is not the big in-depth review I promised and I still owe you the comparison pictures but rather than wait for me to get around on my travels to write and post this just go out, buy the GR and have fun with it. You can't go wrong with the GR, it's that good.

NOTE: I will try to post the comparisons when I can but before that I will provide the images to download for everyone to do have a look at this. It will also serve as a sample pictures gallery.

Under the Pier

GR, f2.8, 1/125, ISO 100, RAW

Took this while walking to a different pub with friends after spending most day chilling at the Brewfest in Greenwich.
The tide was low enough at first but while taking pictures and fiddling with settings I did manage to gt wet feet so it's a good reason to post this picture.

My Workflow

Since almost everybody who's a photographer and blogger has at some point done a post about their workflow and I got asked about this only recently, here my very simplistic workflow for managing, processing and posting my pictures.

I know a lot of people use Lightroom and swear by it but I don't use it and don't like it's database driven approach, call me old school but I want to access the files directly on the file system. I have tried it a few times but could not make it work for me, I can see why it works great or some people though and understand where the database driven approach is good.

I use Windows on my Surface Pro but have used Windows on my Macbook Pro before that in order to be able to use two, in my view, absolutely fantastic and essential programs.

The first is FastStone and for everyone who grew up with ACD See (before it got slow an bloated), will be instantly familiar with it. It is a very fast photo viewer with the ability to view and edit JPGs and most RAW files very fast (thus the name ;) ) at 100%, batch process (resize, rename, etc.) images and compare pictures. This alone is the reason I used Windows on my old Macbook Pro because I could not find anything that comes near it on OSX (if you know of something please let me know as it might be useful for people using OSX).

The second program I can't live without is RAW Therapee. It is probably the best RAW developer out there and gives great results, especially with Ricoh cameras. It also helps that it is very easy to use and understand, while providing the ability to apply profiles and batch process. A you will see below, I am keeping my processing to a minimum.

The great thing about these programs is that both are free to use, although I have donated to FastStone after using it for years and it being the very first program I install on any computer I use (even if it's not mine ;) ).

After the long introduction, which will probably end longer than the actual workflow content, let me show you my processing steps that I go through 99% of the time when you see 'RAW' written in the EXIF information under a picture.

1. In FastStone, I go to my SD card, browse through the pictures and already delete blurry and crappy shots, because we all take them but don't have to waste space importing them.

2. Once I narrowed my selection down, I compare the JPGs to quickly establish which DNGs (or even the original JPGs) I want to copy to my 'Blog_tmp' folder for further processing and consideration as the picture(s) of the day.

3. Once I copied the pictures for consideration into my 'Blog_tmp' folder, I move everything from the card on my drive into a dedicated folder to back them up and free up space on my card (necessary if your biggest card is 8GB and you use mostly 2GB and 4GB cards like me).

4. I now start RAW Therapee and select the DNGs, I want to process, right click and apply the preferred profile to all photos I want to edit. You can download my profiles for RAW Therapee here (these are what I use but you should use them as a starting point).

5. Should I feel the need to tweak one or more photos, once the profile has been applied, I open them in editing mode and might tweak the contrast, lightness, blacks and exposure compensation. I stay away from most other settings unless I want something specific and feel like spending more time processing (which I usually don't have).

6. If I processed more than one picture, I go through step 2 again in FastStone, otherwise I just resize the picture in FastStone, save it under a different name and post in on my blog.

I know, some might be disappointed as they might have expected more but this is what I do and how I managed to keep my blog updated almost every day since 2008, I like to keep it simple.

If you have any questions or comments post them below, I am also interested to hear what other people use an how they go about processing their photos.

Babies

GR, f6.3, 1/500, ISO 100, RAW

Every year they have the Whitecross Street festival going on with always new art along the street and on the buildings. It's always cool to go by and visit it and if you're there during the week at lunchtime do get some food from the market.

Evening Chat

GR, f2.8, 1/60, ISO 1600, RAW

Took this while walking through the City late in the evening.
The GR is doing a great job in low light and produces natural colours and detailed images thanks to the lower noise compared to the older 12MP sensor in the GXR.