Came back from the trip on Sunday afternoon… tired but satisfied…

A few notes, before a (I hope) future travel diary…

Bolivia has some breathtaking landscapes; the three days on 4WD on the Salt Flats and the desert were marvellous, albeit long, very tiring and very cold (outside, in the night, it went down to -20°C!!!). The cities (La Paz and Sucre) didn’t strike me as much, but they can be fascinating in their own way and deserve a visit. I’d have been quite curious to visit Potosì and the silver mines, as we were supposed to do according to our itinerary, but unfortunately we ran into strikes in the whole Potosì region, so the city was actually locked down for two or three weeks, with miners throwing dynamite and tourists stuck in the city… Luckily our guide Alex managed to avoid all that, even though the unplanned trip was quite intense: 4WD for 8 hours in the night, than 3 hours and a damned bus without heating, at 4.30 in the morning, and finally a 40 minutes flight (which is quite ironic…) from La Paz to Sucre…
Santa Cruz, still in Bolivia, was instead just a “stop” towards Brazil: the city itself has very little to offer to tourists, although it was interesting to see the difference in the population, mostly of Spanish descendence, if compared for example to La Paz, with a lot of Aymara descendents…

All the stops in Brazil were a pleasant surprise… the Pantanal, where observing animals and birds is really very easy, Bonito, where I tried snorkelling in a river that I had no idea could be so crystal clear, and where I tried some underwater photography thanks to a special plastic bag… and Iguazu Falls, the highlight of the trip for me, a wonder of nature that I believe is really unique (by the way: if you want to vote for the New 7 Wonders of Nature, you MUST vote for Iguazu…). And then Paraty, a colonial village on the coast, the beautiful Ilha Grande with the amazing Lopez Mendez beach…
Rio, instead, didn’t strike me that much… the statue of Christ the Redeemer is way overrated, the Sambodromo is a mass of cement which it’s pointless to visit if it’s not the Carnival, while the Sugarloaf at sunset was probably the best attraction of the city for me; Copacabana and Ipanema are iconic, but not so special… anyway I appreciated the atmosphere, even if in some parts of the city you didn’t really feel very safe…

Anyway it was a beautiful trip, which certainly leaves me with the desire to visit also the North of huge Brazil, besides the taste of South I got…

At the end of the holiday, the count of photos and videos that I took with my two cameras got to 3694… well, many are “safety shots”, and in some occasions I shot long sequences to create panoramic pictures, so the number of “good” pictures will certainly drop significantly… I’ll try to be selective!
In the meantime I made a first round of selection, about 1000 pics and movies that I’ve already put on Flickr here… enjoy…

P.S. I must specify that I believe that no picture or movie will ever be able to do justice to what Iguazu is…

And finally it’s time for holidays again! And finally they’re quite generous, a whole month! And finally it’s time to travel again!

As usual, no typical destinations for me, otherwise you’d get bored… 25 days from La Paz (Bolivia) to Rio de Janeiro (Brazil)! And then two extra days in Rio… and two days of travel… and that’s how to spend 29 days of August!

I have to say the GAP website seems to always pull out the right trip at the right moment… Only two weeks to use, starting from Chicago? Here’s Peru for you… I have to book at the last minute for a week around New Year’s Eve? Cuba! No holidays until October? No problem, China! Another New Year’s Eve without much advance notice? Let’s say Egypt…
And this year the choice fell upon this tour, which seems really amazing (and I think it will be tiring in the same measure… that’s what the two days in Rio are for, and I see myself lying on Ipanema’s beach all day long…).

Well, I’m leaving tomorrow at 8 am, Milan-Madrid-Sao Paulo, then I’ll have to change airline and take my last flight to La Paz, where I’ll land at… 4000 metres above sea level… damn it… good thing they have mate de coca

See you in September…

P.S. it’s really weird having to pack both snow hat/gloves and swimsuit/beach towel in my bag…
P.P.S. I also had to “recycle” my bag, emptying it and filling it again with a bit less stuff! I’m going to trust the laundry services of our hotels, otherwise I don’t think I could have made it…

On Saturday, July 24th, I went to Arezzo. What for? To satisfy one of my teenager dreams… seeing Litfiba play live!
Unfortunately they broke up when I was almost starting to go to my first concerts… a big letdown… and after I missed the first dates of their reunion like a jerk, I looked for a concert from their summer tour that I could easily get to, and there Arezzo came up. Three hours by train, then everything can be reached just by walking… And the nice things of these small concerts is how easy it is to get to the front…
The concert was supposed to begin around 9.30 pm, with no bands playing before them, so I showed up around 7.30 pm and there’s a little bunch of fans, waiting at the barriers. At 7.45 they let us in, so we ran in, to sit down on the grass, and there you go, I was in the third row (well, some pogo-ing at the beginning of the concert helped a bit…)!

Awesome! Ghigo is 57 and Piero 48… but they played so hard! The setlist was great, with some pearls like “Cuore di Vetro”, and of course the usual hits (”Fata Morgana”, “El Diablo”, “Lacio Drom” etc. etc.), even if starting from a song-base of 150 tracks it was obvious they were going to leave some behind…
The new “Sole Nero” is also worth mentioning, as I really love it… I think it’s one of the best Italian songs of the last years, and it’s one of those rare songs that I can’t stop listening and that I feel I could loop for hours, even after just a few times I’ve listened to it…

Did they reunite for money? Well, I’m sure that was one of the factors… but after seeing how much fun they had, and the chemistry going on between them, I don’t find it hard to believe that the desire to get back on the track was very sincere…

I uploaded some pictures and videos of the concert here. In this other set, instead, are some pics I took while going around Arezzo; a really nice town. Also, I found out they shot a part of “Life is Beautiful” by Benigni there, and in some places you can find signs telling about the main scenes that were shot there (for example, the key that was thrown from the balcony ).

“Faccio a botte coi miei sogni…”

promotion NOUN

1 a move to a higher level in a company, institution, or sport
We try to fill our executive positions by promotion from within.
get/win/gain promotion: His number one objective is to get a promotion.
promotion to: his promotion to a position of leadership
2 the activity of encouraging or supporting something
A key element of his economic program is the promotion of free trade and investment.
The campaign is concerned with the promotion of health.
3 the process of attracting people’s attention to a product or event, for example by advertising
a ban on the promotion of tobacco products
the budget for advertising and promotions

See definition number 1…

Nosing around on the Flickr Blog I ran into a particular story… Matt Green decided to walk the USA, coast to coast (reminiscence of Forrest Gump?), telling about his journey on this blog. On foot, from Rockaway Beach (New York) to Rockaway Beach (Oregon), carrying what he needs in a cart, camping in farms, or in the woods if needed.
In this page he tells about the reason he decided to do it… a reason which actually isn’t there…

The nice thing is that his blog posts are not a travel diary; they’re impressions, flashes, observations about little or weird things you can only see if you slow down, at the speed of your feet. Most of the times his posts are only made up of a picture (which is uploaded on Flickr, of course) and a line of text (or even just a word). They’re nice to browse through… I started from the beginning and got as far as the beginning of May. It seems Matt has actually walked quite a lot, judging by the map on his blog homepage… I’m curious to keep reading.

In the meantime, I’ll link down here my favourite posts so far:

Day 14: “hibernated” signs
Day 15: conspiracies…
Day 21: tracks
Day 23: doesn’t look that comfy to me…
Day 25: interesting
Day 27: Randy and Curt
Day 28: fragment of a letter
Day 32: what a story…
Day 34: genius…
Day 39: hot!
Day 39: nice

(last pictures!)

After leaving Banff, we had a whole day of travel ahead of us, with not a lot of things to see after the “indigestion” of the previous days… The destination for the day was Vernon, a pleasant city in British Columbia, renowned for… well, not much I think… for us, it was merely a night stop, no point in lying. But we had to get back to Vernon somehow, right?

Along the way we stopped first to visit some anonymous waterfalls (I honestly can’t remember the name), then at the observation point for Big Hill Spiral Tunnels, two tunnels in an 8-shape that allow trains to climb a remarkable height without an excessively steep slope… nice, but unfortunately if there’s no train going through there’s not much to see… The main highlights of the following two stops were a nice squirrel, peeking from a hole in the asphalt of the stop area, and a nice ice-cream in a local farm / ice-cream shop. Then we got to Vernon and the day was over!

Ok, not quite, in Vernon we had an included Chinese dinner, not so great honestly (and please tell me: if I’m visiting Canada, why are the included dinners spaghetti, pizza, Chinese… which have nothing to do with Canada?!). Then we set up our own party in one of the hotel rooms, high-school trip style, with a bit of booze from the supermarket in front of the hotel, as we didn’t have many other options… fun things were Franck with an open umbrella, neck massage lessons and a few laughs together…

But let’s go on to the much more interesting day that followed, July 29th 2007, another day of… travel. Indeed we got to Vancouver maybe around 4 pm… During the trip we tried to spend some time with a couple of movies, if I remember correctly “40-year-old Virgin” and… hmm, maybe “Road Trip“? Not sure…
Anyway, the optional for the last night (and I think almost everyone took it) was the dinner cruise, around Vancouver harbour… and despite a few clouds, finally even Vancouver greeted us with a nice sun at sunset, and the dinner was really pleasant. The boat was relatively small, so it was all for us; the food was not bad and then we spent the rest of the two or so hours taking silly pictures, laughing and enjoying the really beatiful view… Definitely a worthy conclusion of a fantastic tour…

After dinner Ron took us to a nightclub (I think it was the Roxy even if I’m not so sure) where we spent the last part of the evening… It was great when they played “Home for a Rest” by Spirit of the West, another song we heard often during the trip, and in order to start dancing all together in a circle I accidentally hit Louis, whose beer ended up on the floor… “My drink man!”…

After some goodbyes to the people who were leaving town early, we headed back to the hotel, and those who stayed another day, like me, decided to meet for lunch. So in the morning I went for a nice walk in Vancouver downtown and harobur, very nice, and also got on the Harbour Tower to get a decent view.

After lunch and the last goodbyes, Mike and I were the only ones interested in visiting Grouse Mountain (other people stayed in Vancouver longer, so they would visit it later on), so we headed that way and after crossing the Vancouver Harbour with the efficient SeaBus, after a bus drive and a cable car climb, we finally got there… If during the winter Grouse Mountain is a ski resort, during the summer it’s a nice place for a walk, to look closely at the Grizzlies of the reserve, to see a cool exhibition of trained raptors and the great lumberjacks show. The show was really fun and spectacular, unfortunately my camcorder battery ran out right at the end of it…

On the way back I say goodbye to Mike, who had to catch his plane in the evening, and stopped by the Capilano Suspension Bridge, a 137-metre-long suspended bridge; it’s not bad, but it’s not as impressive as you’d expect, and everything is handled in a super-touristy way. The park which includes the bridge has some other attractions, but nothing exceptional. Ron told us it wouldn’t be that good, and that there was another similar bridge (but totally free) in another area of vancouver, but this one was right along the way, so I went for it. Anyways, it was nice enough.

The last objective of my day was going back up the Harbour Tower (the ticket allowed two entrances, one in the day and one in the evening), to enjoy the view at sunset and at night… and this time my camera ran out of juice, although only after I managed to take many shots…
And on the following day, airport… for three flights to get back, a day of pause and a new destination, Ireland… but that’s another story…

And so I came to the end of this “travel diary”, unfortunately after a good 3 years… This was my first experience with a tour of this kind, which works for “lone” travellers, and I was very satisfied. You get all the comfort of not having to worry about transportations and lodging, but still you get a decent flexibility (free days or half days, optional excursions etc.). Furthermore, Contiki is targeted at the 18-35, so finding someone to have fun with together is a given, and the “international” component is certainly a big plus. Franck, Sabrina, Luciana, Louis, Andrea, Carina, Mike, Bear, Jeff, Scott and all the others were fantastic travel mates…

Actually, so far that is still my only Contiki tour, both because of a bit of bad luck (booking at the last minute, when you are forced to go through a CTS booking office, doesn’t always pay off…) and because with the exception of a few recently added trips in Asia, all of the Contiki tours are in “western” countries: Canada, USA, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. Having visited Canada, I’ve already seen a good deal of the US, quite a lot of Europe, while for Australia and New Zealand it’s not easy to have the right amount of time in the right time of the year… So in the last 3 years I used GAP Adventures, that organizes tours of all kinds in all the continents, and that in comparison with Contiki has the advantage of the reduced size of the group (15-16 people max), but the “disadvantage” (although it never was that for my trips) of not having an age limit.

And I’d really like to “recover” my travel diaries, as I’m also trying to do with my pictures… Peru, Cuba, China, Egypt… let’s try. Although actually, before that I’d have to start with Ireland…

I’ve never been a big fan of black and white. After all, the world is in color… I like colors. Indeed, when I’m touching up my pictures I usually push on saturation and contrast, sometimes even a bit too much, so that the blues, oranges and reds pop out…
Still, I have to admit that some pictures can look good even in black and white; furthermore, I’ve always been intrigued by the technique that leaves some colored elements on black and white pictures or movies (as in Schindler’s List or Sin City).
So, even if I’m still a fan of color pictures, I decided to make some attempts of black and white conversions, mostly to practice a bit with the various techniques. Here’s the small (so far) photo set.

First of all, when using digital cameras you’re better off shooting in color rather than using the dedicated “black and white” settings. That’s because when using those settings, the camera is simply doing what you’d be doing later on Photoshop, but without giving us any kind of control on it (or at least, with a much reduced control and without the chance to “undo” and try a different setting).
The two methods I used in Photoshop, which offer a different kind of control but good results in both cases, are the Channel Mixer and the Image Calculations, following the tips found in this article.

As regards the touches of color on black and white, this post shows the two main methods; a third way I’d like to point out is the simple use of the Quick Selection Tool or the Magic Wand, if the object you want to keep colored is good for that kind of selections. You can also use the History Brush, which is more immediate to use but IMHO harder to correct in case of mistakes; anyway, conceptually it’s the same thing as the standard brush usage described in the first post.
In any case, the basic concept is simple: once you have the black and white image, put it in a layer on top of the color one, and with the chosen method (brush, color range, selection) create a mask to “filter” the color so it gets visible. That’s it!

UPDATE: looking around a bit more, I found this post which lists 12 different ways to go black and white… the most interesting are the first one (probably the most complete but also the most time-consuming) and the dedicated Black and White Adjustment in Photoshop CS3.

(photo set here)

After getting to Banff in the afternoon, we went on to take possession of our rooms, some very nice 4-people chalets; but Mike and I got like and had one all for us… They’re just out of town, but in a few minutes by taxi or 20 minutes on foot you can get there easily.

After a shower we headed to the Bow River Falls, for the traditional group photo… with a little accident… good ol’ Bear, next to me in the pic, lost his balance and fell from the little wall we were standing on… trying to keep up, he hanged on to me, literally ripping off a part of my polo shirt, under the right arm! We had no time to get back to the hotel, but fortunately the temperature was quite cool, so I could cover up the problem by wearing a cardigan…

The dinner was included, honestly I can’t remember the place… maybe it was Melissa’s Restaurant? Could be… dinner was not bad, even if there wasn’t any really nifty food; we stayed in the bar are for a while, playing pool and foosball, before Ron led us to Wild Bill’s Saloon (dedicated to the Bill Peyto whose name was given to the omonimous lake…) for a cocktail and some country music, before getting a taxi back to the hotel.

The following morning we went to the bottom of Suplhur Mountain, where we caught the gondola up, for a really good view. After some pictures and a sandwich for lunch, some brave people (me, Mike, Kylie, maybe also Emily, but I don’t remember exactly who else…) decided to go down on foot and not on the gondola again, walking on the trail along the side of the mountain… we managed that in one and a half hour or so, passed by the hot springs, then onto a trail again and payed a visit to the imposing Fairmont Banff Springs, twin hotel of the Château Frontenac we had already seen in Québec City.

Quite tired, we hailed a taxi to get to the hotel, where we only have half an hour to rest, as we’re leaving again for the afternoon excursion… horseback riding with barbecue! It was my first ride, but it went well (even if the usual discharge of responsibility signature before leaving had us a bit upset)… the horses were very calm, with “american training” (reins to the left or right to turn, reins pulled to slow down or go reverse, heel kick on the belly to go forward or accelerate), and as we were all moving in a column, with the guides escorting us, there were no problems. My horse was called Adair and it carried me around for 45 minutes of walking, through classic Canadian landscapes, until we reached the barbecue place. It was quite enjoyable, evne if the position you’re sitting in isn’t very comfortable, and the day after many of us had various pains in muscles whose existence we had ignored untile then… Also, at the few times the horses decided to trot a bit, my family jewels were seriously endangered…

The barbecue was not bad, a nice steak just how like them, unfortunately the place was full of mosquitoes, although they weren’t very aggressive. We also practiced with the lasso a bit… but with very lame results

We then got on the saddle again, heading back on a different route, going uphill in the woods, and got back to the ranch; I wasn’t expecting it, but it was a really nice experience, although I don’t think I’ll ever be a skilled horseman…

For the evening, a great touch by Ron… Thursday night at the Hoodoo Lounge it was ONE DOLLAR DRINK NIGHT! Until 11 pm, all the cocktails (mostly vodka and orange or rhum and coke…) were 1 dollar, and you could take up to two at a time (but if you wanted all “here and now” you only had to get back in the queue). Well, such awesome scenes! Pyramids of empty glasses, people coming back with 4 drinks in their hands… And before 11 they even had a countdown on the monitors around the place! I got to 7 cocktails, slightly dizzy but not drunk… instead poor Kelly ended up bending in half and puking on the floor… well, nothing too bad, just some hangover the day after, and ready to go
On a cultural note: the Hoodoo giving the name to the venue is not the folk magic, but one of the geologic formations that are typical in the area

The morning after was a free one; waking up with no rush, Mike and I went for a nice walk from the hotel to downtown Banff, which unfortunately wasn’t at its best because of many road renovation works going on. A very frequent joke among Canadians is that Canada only has two seasons: “winter” and “construction”… indeed because of the very rigid temperatures, it’s not possible to work in winter on roads or contruction yards, so these works end up concentrating around summer.

As we strolled throught the town we decided to get to the Bow River Falls, where we had taken our group picture, walking along the river; then we came back and had a healthy carnivorous lunch at the awesome Grizzly House, where without hesitation I went for a 45 dollars Hunter’s Fondue: buffalo, wild board and venison, to be cooked at the moment on a hot stone, with various sauces to go with… magnificent, especially the boar was great! And to close off with a bang, a nice Chocolate Fondue… yum…

Back to the hotel we met Ron and Dave, who took the people who signed up for it to the heliport, for a 30 minutes fly over the glaciers.
We got there a bit early, so we had to wait a while, but it was not a problem. Before getting on, Bear and I played rock-paper-scissors to determine who was taking the front row seat, next to the pilot: I don’t think I had ever tied so many games in a row… 6 of them! But in the end… I won! And the flight in the front seat was absolutely cool, both for the magnificent view (even the underside of the cockpit, where I had my feet, was transparent!) and because I was 20 cm away from all the flight controls, which always fascinated me… I had never been on a helicopter before, and it was great… lifting lightly in the air, without shakes… I think the flight was the “Mt. Assiniboine Glacier Helicopter Tour” described on this site; we spaced from panoramic high-altitude flying to a few dozens of metres, or maybe less, right over the glaciers… simply wonderful!

Back to the hotel, for the last evening in Banff we ordered some pizzas, which we ate all together outisde the hotel, played some poker (Mike is a big fan) and spent the evening in a bar nearby, playing foosball (and Mike is an expert of this, too) and trying some karaoke… Actually the bar was quite crowded (and veeeery hot), so everyone had to wait a lot for their turn to sing… Mike and I sang together, “Born to Be Wild” by Steppenwolf… definitely a not-to-be-missed exhibition!

Unfortunately the following morning we left Banff, ready to go back to British Columbia… Vancouver again, for the last dinner together!

Here’s the photo set…

So far, western Canada had almost only given us rain… and rain… and more rain… Well, we were repayed on July 25th with the clearest and sunniest day since we had landed in Vancouver… just when we had to travel along the scenic route called “Icefields Parkway“! Priceless!

We left at 8 o’ clock sharp, and Ron had told us he woudln’t have any qualm leaving behind anyone who was late, as the day was packed with things to see… I tried to get there way before 8, so I could get the front row seats, but I was beaten by Kylie by a few minutes, so I had to make do with the second row…

The Icefields Parkway runs between Jasper and Banff, parallel to the Continental Divide of north-western America (the so-called “Great Divide”), that is the mountain range separating the rivers flowing into the Pacific Ocean from the rivers flowing into the Arctic or Atlantic Ocean. What is peculiar of this highway is the beautiful sight on the many glaciers of the Greati Divide, with waterfalls, lakes and rivers nearby.

And indeed, just travelling along the road is a show in itself, and on that day we really saw lots of “rocks and trees”!

The first stop is by the Athabasca Falls, a powerful and really scenic waterfall, especially with the rainbow in the middle. There was an unsettling plaque nearby, commemorating a boy (Roger Raymond Wilgenbusch) who in 2002 jumped over the fences, slipped and fell into the falls… Soon after that we visited other waterfalls, the Sunwapta Falls, less impressive but still worth the trip, and good for some pictures. By the way, I had a chance to try Andrea’s Canon, getting my hands on a digital reflex for the first time… after a couple of years, I ended up buying my own Nikon…
Again back on the bus, which was never appreciated as much as it was today for its wide panoramic windows, we headed back to the Icefields Parkway.

The following stop is the visit to the Athabasca Glacier. We left from the visitor centre (which is peculiar in that it has the largest number of toilet stalls for women in North America [64!], to fight the well-known queues at the ladies’ restrooms…), then we boarded a standard bus first, to get closer to the glacier, and a big “snow coach” later, some beasts with wheels of over a metre in diameter, who can go up 45° slopes or close… I took a few pictures from inside the coach, trying to keep the horizon levelled, to show how steep the slope was…

While on the glacier we only walked on a small area, which had been “packed” to make it safe, so we didn’t spend much time there, but the feeling of being on top of all that ice was very nice. The Athabasca Glacier is one of the 6 “tips” of the Columbia Icefield, a vast ice reserve amidst the Rocky Mountains, which creates 6 main glaciers, as I said. Unfortunately, like glaciers all over the world, the Athabasca and the others are retreating, too, and having visited the glacier in summer we were able to see the area where ice gives way to earth and rocks.

After a few snowballs and a taste of glacier water (I had never drunk such a pure water before!), we boarded the snow coach, then the bus and we got back to our bus, where good ol’ Dave was waiting for us. Onwards to lunch!
Djuring the drive, at one point we see a stopped car in the middle of the road… for bear crossing! Two black bears, probably quite young, were croassing the road! I couldn’t get a picture at that time, I only managed to take some shots where you can somehow figure out the bears among the trees, on the right side of the road…
“Roadkills” are a problem that is held in high account in Canada, and it must be said that Canadians do their best to reduce them to a minimum and to try to avoid them. For example, along most of the roads that go through a forest, the trees on both sides of the road are cut down for a few metres, both to allow the drivers to see the animals beforehand and to encourage the animals to keep to the forest. On the largest roads, like the Highway 1 (the Trans-Canada Highway), the whole road is actually fenced off for kilometres and kilometres! But, you’ll say, that way you’re cutting off the forest into separate parts! And what about the animals who tend to move periodically? The Canadians thought about everything… by building wildlife overpasses! The ones we saw near Banff are actual bridges over the road, covered in grass and vegetation, which allow the animals to move safely through the forest… well, that’s genius!

Anyway, after we passed the bears, soon after that we stopped in a nice picnic area by a river, to have lunch and rest a bit, between some squirrels and some frisbee playing.
The next stop, IMHO, was the highlight of the day… Peyto Lake, seen from the Bow Summit. Do you remember the explanation about “rock flour”, in the post about Jasper? Ok, full-throttle rock flour! I had never seen a colour like that… and I ca swear, the photos aren’t heavily photoshopped… it was a really breathtaking view, in front of which we can’t help taking tons of pictures…

Ron took the chance to explain how Canadians classify the natural beauties of their country… At the first level is “awesome!”, followed by… “awesomer!”. The top level is… awesomest? No way, it’s: “awesome, eh?” (that’s taking fun of the Canadian “eh” usage… ). But in front of Peyto Lake Ron reveals to us that there’s an even greater level of “awesomeness”, to be used in these cases… “fucking awesome, eh?!”

Still driving along the road, we stop by the observation point to the Crowfoot Glacier; this glacier, too, has retreated a lot, and lost one of the “talons” to which it owed its name.
So we got to the end of our journey, on the shores of Lake Louise, another glacial lake which, despite being less impressive than Peyto Lake, was still incredibly fascinating. We strolled along the shores, in front of the Chateaux Lake Louise, and then we headed back to the bus, to close off an amazing day, certainly one of the best of the whole tour, with all that nature and beautiful scenery…
After a short trip we finally get to Banff… the topic of the next post!

Last Sunday, during the morning, I went outside for a walk to the “usual” landmarks of Milan, to test my new Nikkor 10-24 lens…
But I think I need to take a step back, as I haven’t yet dedicated a post on the blog to my Nikon D90 reflex, which I bought around a year ago…

Before digital cameras came around, I didn’t use cameras much… and come on, with films and their limited shots, and the time it took to develop the film and realize which photos came out nice and which didn’t (when it was too late already), they weren’t very friendly…
Moving to the digital era, I became a user of Casio’s Exilm cameras, from the simple zoomless S3 (but it was very small and thin for those times), to the excellent Z-750, on to the curious EX-V7 (7x internal zoom, at the expense of image quality, which was a bit lower than the 750). What I always loved about Exilims, which for other aspects were actually worse than their competitors, was the possibility to use them in full manual mode. After taking a few shots I was indeed getting intrigued about techniques like long exposures for night shots, or playing around with depth of field, so manual control was needed.

Still, what those little cameras could do was still limited, and after seeing some travel companions with their DSLRs (in Canada, Peru, Cuba…), after some careful researching, as I desired a greater control on pictures and a better quality especially for night shots, I went for the buy, in time for a field test in China.
At first I was interested in the Canon 500D, but I ended up going on the Nikon D90, which I preferred mainly because of the better quality in high ISO pictures (ironically, that’s due to the fact that the 500D has more megapixels than the D90, which is probably too much for the size of the sensor…), and because the D90 is a little step up in terms of functionalities.

My biggest worries where weight, the need to carry a dedicated bag and the nuisance of changing lenses. The weight is tolerable, though, and I got an over-the-shoulder bag which isn’t too cumbersome, carrying just the camera, with which I’m more comfortable than I expected. My “travelling” lens of choice ended up being the Nikkor 18-200, of which I’m very satisfied. It’s good for basically every kind of situation, from a moderate wide angle to a quite good tele; the comfort of not having to change lens greatly outbalances some defects like complex distorsions (easily removed with a clic thanks to PTLens) or the alleged lack of sharpness (probably I’m still too much of an amateur to believe it important).

Well, betraying my requirement to only carry one lens, a couple of weeks ago I decided to buy an ultra-wide angle, the Nikkor 10-24, inspired by this article by the crazy Ken Rockwell, that really intrigued me a lot on the whole ultra-wide thing.
The choice was not very easy, with several alternatives: Nikon 12-24, better built and with a slightly better quality, but not wide enough and more expensive; or even the new Sigma 8-16, which enticed me a lot with those 8 millimetres, but which didn’t give me enough flexibility with those 16 millimetres… Witha 10-24 I can still shoot “normal” pictures without switching lens! So my choice was Nikon, and in this case, too, I didn’t care much about the claims of low sharpness at wide apertures.

Around here I’m showing some pictures from the set on Flickr, with some shots from Sunday morning. I’m quite satisfied; the ultra-wide opens up another bit of creativity, as long as you get really close (as Ken says) and find a good subject to put in front, to avoid shooting an “empty” picture.

To sum it up, with the 10-24 I can enjoy:

• Creative, ultra-wide pictures
• Wide or normal landscapes
• Group pictures, or pictures of people in front a landscape
• A little bit of “creative” macro, thanks to the low focusing distance of 24 centimetres

The 18-200 is still the choice for:

• Portraits and close-ups
• Sort-of-macro (with the tele extended)
• Tele, of course
• Pictures of animals or moving subjects
• Handheld night shots, thanks to the Vibration Reduction the 10-24 doesn’t have
• In general, every “normal” picture

Overall I think the 18-200 will still be the lens I’ll use the most, but under some circumstances (in cities or in wide landscapes) I think switching to the 10-24 will give me something more…

Down here I tried to run a comparison:

The pic on the left is an 18 mm (as I could have taken it with my other lens), the one on the right is 10mm… the difference in perspective and in the perception of depth is quite evident, right?