My most recent globe-trotting adventure took me to the Frankfurt region of Germany. I started out in Frankfurt, then moved on to Rüdesheim, then back to Frankfurt to round out the trip. The people were very hospitable, and so very patient with me as I made every effort to learn how to pronounce words in German (I was unable to master the difference between "u" and "ü", though I did learn that the "ß" character sounds nothing like a "B").

At any rate, the region lent itself to some beautiful photography opportunities. Here are my favorites from the trip:

All photos were taken on my Olympus OMD EM5; RAW files were processed in Lightroom.

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I recently had the opportunity to visit Holland/The Netherlands ("…then who are the Dutch?"). I wasn't too keen on lugging around my big heavy camera gear, so I borrowed a just-right-sized Fuji X100 for the trip. The lens has a fixed effective focal length of ~35mm, and you can choose from several shooting modes from full-auto to aperture-priority to full-manual. Most of the time I used aperture-priority with varying levels of EV compensation (-2 to +2). Another big win for the X100… it shoots in RAW (uncompressed) format and performs very well in low-light conditions.

I had just a couple minor gripes about the X100 ("OK/Menu" button size, menu navigation a bit clumsy, auto-focus unpredictable), but I understand the new X100S addresses most, if not all, of my concerns. At any rate, I got used to the camera pretty quickly, and by the end of my very brief adventure I felt like we were getting along pretty well.

Alright, enough text… time for photos. As you can see, the camera handles full sun and crazy fog very well. All the photos have been processed in Lightroom 4 (no Photoshop).

Afternoon and evening in Amsterdam - beautiful city!

A few days later I journeyed to Keukenhof, recognized as the world's largest flower garden. Problem was, the tulips were blooming late this year, so I got to tour a park filled with not-quite-bloomed tulips and a TON of fog. Oh, well... I still had a good time. I got some cool (if not kinda creepy) photos of the park that was, for all intents and purposes, devoid of tourists:

I don't really know how to conclude a gear review... maybe a score? 8/10, would recommend.

See ya!

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Germany | TRAVEL

Exploring The Netherlands with the Fuji X100