kondensat a never ending stream of pixels…

Tokyo on Film March 26, 2025

These photos are from three rolls of film I shot on my trip to Tokyo last year. Thus this is a bit of a follow up to my recent (by the standards of this blog 😅) post from that trip. The first roll (Kodak T-Max 3200) was in my Bessa R2a for about 3 years before I took the camera on my trip but seems to have held up well. The second roll was some fresh Fuji Pro 400h that I got on my trip and put in the same camera to try the Leitz Summaron 35. Finally I shot a roll of long-expired Agfa CT Precisa and had it cross-processed. I think all three films gave me nice results in their own way, the colors from the crossed Agfa are still very much up my ally.

These photos where taken in Shinjuku, Nakameguro, Kuramae and on Enoshima.

Sunset at Tempelhofer Feld March 26, 2025

I took this photo late last summer at Tempelhofer Feld (like the title says). You can see the airport building and the old radio dome on the horizon line. This was from my first roll with the new-to-me Summaron 35mm. That lens is in remarkable condition given it is about 70 years old now. About 30 years older than the defunct radio tower in the picture.

Rotes Rathaus during Festival of Lights December 7, 2024

In october a few friends and me visited the last day of the festival of lights. It’s a yearly event in Berlin where a number of buildings are projected with light art. Next to the city mall there was an installation with light beams, artificial fog and a mirror ball. When we walked by the city hall some of that fog was drifting from the installation and gave the building a bit of an eerie look.

Tokyo June 17, 2024

At the beginning of the month went to Tokyo on a bit of a whim. I had quite a fun time visiting friends, shopping for cameras and old video games. I was there for just 8 days but it turned out to be a rather productive visit when it comes to photography! So, here are a few photos from my time there:

Berlin from Teufelsberg May 19, 2024

I’ve recently gotten ahold of a Fuji GFX100S to play with. I have to say the dynamic range and resolution of the sensor are very nice, especially for post-processing images. So, what to do with 102MP files? Stitch 9 of them to make a giant panorama of course!

I did exactly that after a recent trip up to Teufelsberg with a friend who was visiting Berlin. Funny side note: the resulting image is only slightly higher resolution than a normal 4:3 image from the GFX because I cropped quite heavily into the stitched image. But the panorama is very wide with a final resolution of 49761 × 2160. Enjoy scrolling around and looking for buildings you might recognize!

Kiev 4 / Berlin Summer April 24, 2024

Another “I acquired a camera and took some photos in Berlin”-post! This time I’d like to share a few frames from my first roll with my new-to-me Kiev 4 taken in July and August of last year. Getting this camera was basically a rabbit hole gone too far after watching Astroid City and wondering what camera they used as the prop for the main character.

With a linage to the pre World War 2 Contax rangefinder cameras the Kiev 4 is a bit of an effort to use. Focusing is done with the small gear on top and the rangefinder is a bit small. But the Jupiter-8 lens it came with is quite good and the camera works smoothly. (Quite the feat for something built in the late 50s.)

I like how moody these pictures turned out and I think using the Kiev for these did lead me down the path to capturing that mood.

Fall in Neukölln March 16, 2024

Last summer I acquired a Seagull 4A because I was curious how it would feel compared to the Rolleiflex 3.5A that I had been shooting recently. While it’s a bit clunkier to use I think the camera actually holds up pretty well. The photos are reasonably sharp and it’s easy to use on the go. The one issue I did encounter is a bit of a reflection on the upper part of the frame (visible in the first photo here). Oh and the ever ready case is a bit stiff, I think I’ll be using the camera on it’s own since the strap is actually nice. As you can see I shot the photos in this post in fall, Ektar 100 is a very nice film for that since it has particularly vibrant colors, especially reds.

Lower Austria Dreams of Oil December 29, 2023

In late October (with incredibly nice weather for the season) I went on a Geocaching and photography walk with Eva at the Hochleithenwald. The area would be a rather unremarkable (if nice) forest in lower Austria where it not for the oilfields underneath. The forest is easily spotted on maps or satellite images because a (rather uncommon for Austria) grid of paths has been built to support the pumpjacks built in the 1980s by OMV. Oil production in the wider area has been around quite a bit longer, starting with an exploration boom in the 1930 and peaking in 1955. Currently extraction is expected to continue for another 20 years.

As you might gleam from the images I found the contrast between 1980 oil extraction equipment and the rather peaceful landscape with vineyards, small villages and moss covered shacks quite interesting.

Shipping Packages in Venice October 10, 2023

I recently had the privilege to spend a few days in Venice. Despite being a veritable tourist hot-spot I think the city is well worth a visit. Since Venice is built on a lagoon almost everything that might involve cars in other places here takes place on boats, including mail. I got a bit lucky and saw a stack of boxes waiting ant took a photo of them only to see the same boxes on a FedEx boat a few hours later. I hope the two photos amuse you as well!

Game Boy Camera July 29, 2023

Many years ago at a retro games exchange I bought an old Game Boy Camera. I had some fun with the thing back then but found it a bit sad that there was no way to get the photos off the cartridge. (Other than printing them on the fun but very low quality Game Boy Printer). Then about two years ago I got a Joey Jr cartridge dumper to backup some games and their save states. Turns out that the thing can also extract the photos from the Game Boy Camera. Since I like a good old tech / new tech mashup here are some of the photos I took with it!

Now the pictures that this thing takes are black and white and 128x112 pixels. That makes them very low resolution. (Though some people have used color filters and multiple exposures to get color images!) While this can be a fun challenge it is also incredibly limiting. This mainly shows in anything that resembles landscape photos such as the picture of the TV tower at Alexanderplatz and the picture I took in the woods. Anyway, it’s a fun retro toy and I’ve had some fun taking some party photos with it!