Happy new year!

One great thing in Nikon V1 is that is has built in interval timer. So shooting fireworks is just putting the camera on a tripod and setting the camera to shoot with 5 seconds interval. It's a little bit boring, but effective. I used here 3 seconds shutter speed.

Gothenburg, Skansen kronan, Liseberg

This second part is a little bit late. I will promise the third part will come still in this year. So here are shots from the first 24 hours of the trip to Gothenburg.

City screnery shots are from Skansen kronan hill. There are also shots from Liseberg carnival and its ferris wheel.
Mostly temperature was freezing -15C, but the V1 worked like a charm. Battery didn't also have any affect from cold. I shot over 500 shots with one battery and 98 percent of those outside in the cold.

Weekend trip to Gothenburg, part one

I made a small trip to Gothenburg last week. Main goal was not in photography, but of course I brought my V1 set along with me. I took also my Manfrotto MY series tripod with me and used it couple of times ( as you can see from the pics ).

We were supposed to leave to Sweden on Wednesday evening but Stockholms Arlanda airport had snow difficulties the whole day ( maybe they should learn from the Finns http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-12042213 ). Our flight to Sweden was cancelled and we were forced to stay for the night in a crappy hotel which our airline provided.
We got our new flight for the next day and because we didn't want to stay in a hotel we made a small trip around the old Helsinki. Here are couple shots from there.

 This Pine Grosbeak (Pinicola enucleator) was sitting in a tree when we came back to our car from lunch. I "quickly" changed the 30-110mm tele on V1 and had almost half a minute to shoot this little fellow before it flew away. Shooting with slow shutter speeds with V1 is amazing. Electronic shutter and really efective vibration reduction makes a difference. This pic was shot with shutter speed of 1/50 sec and full frame equivalent focal length was 300mm.

In the next part, we finally get to Gothenburg..

Winter came, again!

Last week winter came and with freezing cold. This morning I went the last time this year to that same swamp from where my previous blog post was.
It was -23C and I was laying in the snow covered swamp for over an hour, waiting for nothing. Only one woodpecker came and couple smaller birds. Even the sunrise wasn't that beautiful. Anyway even though I had my D800 with big tele with me, I also had V1 of course. Here is couple pictures from the morning. For the record, there wasn't any problems in shooting with V1 in a quite cold weather.
 

Searching for Black Grouses

No clouds and sunrise. It's a match that doesn't work well. Even with couple clouds the sky would be so much more intresting.
We found birds but this time they were too far away. For the next time we know where to go. With D800 I didn't get anything publishable, but this is from V1 with 30-110.

Click for bigger image.

Night photography from the cemetery

Even though I have a D800 with quite expensive lenses to shoot when the light is low, I like to take with me the V1 and a small Manfrotto tripod. I miss only one thing: good manual focus. At least I haven't yet learned to use V1 MF-function well enough to use it daily when shooting landscape like I use it with bigger cameras.

That's why the second image is little bit out of focus. I used AF-A and I think it missed the focus and I just didn't bother to check it.

Bad weather panorama

A week ago I was watching one of the best finnish panorama photographer's show on a big screen while he was telling about the pictures.
Here is a one quick four image panorama stiched together from todays scenery trip with a car. Hand held V1 + 30-110 with manual settings.

Click the image for bigger version.

I bet this won't be my last panorama with this kit :)