The toast of the town, Venice style.

Well, Venice is now a memory: a very pleasant memory of course, but our visit is behind us and we are now on the train to Verona (I hope).
Just kidding, so far the train experience has been a breeze.

Not like navigating Venice, yikes! If there was a way to wander right off of the island, we would have done it! I can't blame our predicament on Rose either, she dutifully followed me,  innocently trusting in my famously storied sense of direction.

After we trudged past the same group of excited kids being herded into classes for about the third time, I began to hear tired, exasperated sighs emanating from the rear. (Wait a second, that didn't come out right.)

Beautiful colours of exposed. weathered bricks

But eventually we emerged on the far side of the island in a district almost devoid of other tourists and asked at a vaporetto stop where we were. "Oh, of course, right where I expected to be, was my automatic response, but too tired to keep up the pretense, I asked humbly for directions, (and a map!)

Part of the problem I think was that we had ordered our breakfast for 8:30 am and Rose was anticipating some kind of authentic Venetian breakfast feast and didn't want to miss it. Boy, was she wrong!

When we finally made it back at 9:30 breakfast was sitting on our little table looking kind of forlorn and pathetic. Nope, not a feast at all, some prepackaged crackery things and prepackaged croissants and prepackaged everything, even the toast was hard as a rock and had obviously been baked sometime around the time mount Vesuvius got cranky.

The Italians do a lot of things right, but toast is NOT one of them!
Luckily, the cappuccino was still warm and Rose bounced back pretty well. (After her nap)

We've had all kinds of weather since we got to Italy: rain, clouds, sun and more rain. The strange thing is how little it matters what the weather is like and in fact, the rain made for some great photography. Glistening pavement, lots of colourful umbrellas and soft, diffuse lighting to go along with the brief periods of bright sunshine and the stark bright colours that it brings out.

Umbrellas and wet pavement, we saw lots of both!

I've been up and out every morning as early as I can manage, (Rose isn't quite the dawn lover as I first thought) but that's OK.
Saturday we made our way to St. Marks Basilica nice and early to beat the line and Rose took one look and just about mutinied!
Fifteen minutes before opening time there were about 1,000 people waiting in line but we decided to tough it out and actually met a delightful couple from Manchester in the queue.

St. Marks Basilica from the upper gallery.

The line moved pretty quickly as soon as the doors opened and the multitudes were soon swallowed by the massive building. It was quite breathtaking inside with all sorts of famous art work, the glittering gold leaf ceilings and of course the famous bronze horses.

Those horses have quite a story, originally thought to be made in ancient Greece around 400 B.C. and taken to Rome by Nero. Constantine brought them to Constantinople/Istanbul and they were swiped from there by the Venetian crusaders who lost them to Napoleon until he was defeated and eventually they ended up, back at their "rightful home", in Venice.

We loved Murano Island of course with the incredible glass that they make, and Burano with all of the lace and the tiny little canal running through the middle and the colourful houses. This place was amazingly colourful, so colourful in fact, that sunglasses are barely adequate to protect your corneas from overloading, but somehow the overall effect is still pretty. (Rose didn't like the fact that I used the word colourful twice in the last sentence so I used the word colourful again, just to show her that colourful can be a very effective word, even if used twice, or thrice!)

The colourful houses of Burano Island.

Our last night in Venice I realized that I had been a bit lazy and hadn't taken any night shots and had only used my tripod once! So around 10:30 on a drizzly night in Venice I strapped on my gear and headed for Piazza San Marco. I told Rose I would probably only be an hour but it was so gorgeous and so much fun that it took more like two to get what I wanted.

Looking at St. Maria Saluta Church lit up at night

The next day we didn't have to check out until 11:00 so we walked the 5 minutes to the Rialto market and picked up some fruit. Rose had decided early on that she definitely wanted to visit the market so this fulfilled her dream of buying fruit in Venice I guess, go figure.

After we checked out we dragged our bags the few blocks to the vaporetto stop and caught the #1 vaporetto (water bus) to the train station. What a ride, I have never been so packed in like sardines before. I spent the whole time clutching my wallet and trying to stay out of every ones way.

This crazy boat zig-zags back and forth across the grand canal swallowing up and disgorging hordes of people at each stop and it seems like there is no limit to the number of people that it will take on.

At each stop I thought for sure that he was going to leave some behind but  nope, he would just keep shouting "AVANTI, AVANTI" and that seemed to mean "keep moving, go to the back, get out of the way, hurry up," and more. It was a very Venice experience and even though it was unpleasant, I wouldn't have missed it.

A nearly empty vaporetto.

You may be wondering how the bathroom pass worked out? Well it turns out that it is good only for the bathroom that is far away from wherever you happen to be. Every time we tried to use it, it still cost extra euros, so we are not fans of the Venice bathroom pass. The wi-fi pass didn't work out so well either, that was pretty much useless for us, mainly because of our phone problems, but that's another story......

P.S. if you're following on Facebook you'll notice the blog is about 2 days behind the actual events, keeping up with the writing and photography is much tougher than I imagined!

All Contents Copyrighted by the author, Doug Petry

Lost in San Marco On a Foggy Venice Morning

Well here we are in Venice, finally, after months of planning, waiting, anticipating and stressing about being ready and prepared for the trip, we're finally here!

The trip was pretty uneventful as far as international travel goes, except for experiencing one of the longest nights of my life. Has anyone ever slept on a plane? I imagined that since it was an overnight flight from Montreal to Munich that we would naturally sleep on the plane, wrong!

Canal action near Piazza San Marco

Did I say very long? Because it seemed to go on forever! First my seat kept getting kicked and pushed so every time I would almost get to sleep, bam once again. And just to make it more fun, the woman behind us left her reading light on all night, it was about the only light in the whole plane left on, right over our heads, thank you very much.

The continuously crying, wailing kid a few rows away didn't help matters either, (not sure what the problem was but he was just fine the next morning) and after that oh so pleasant night, I was pretty much living in dread anticipation of how the jet lag combined with no sleep for 2 days would affect my lovely wife, because she is a lady who needs her sleep!

Sunrise at Riva Degli Schiavoni 

But now........it was all worth it, hands down, bar none, living with a semi-comatose cave bear wife, whatever the pain, worth it big time.
This morning, we narrowly averted disaster, yes you who know me have already figured it out, haven't you? I almost slept in and missed magic hour!!!!!!!

After the seat kicking old lady and the crying boy and all the rest of the factors that contributed to no sleep, I was almost led astray, almost.

Rose said, "yes I definitely want to come with you in the morning, I know it's early but I want to come." So I set the alarm, got everything ready, (just in case) and went to bed. 

But 5:45 came very soon, too soon for the cave bear anyway and about all I got out of her when the alarm went off was a dangerous sounding growl.
So I chickened out and closed my eyes for 20 minutes that somehow turned into an hour and before I knew it, it was 6:45 am, rats, no sunrise for me today!

But, as luck would have it, because of the rain yesterday and a bunch of other factors that I don't know a thing about, instead of a typical, boring sunrise we got fog.

It was perfect, I was like a kid in a candy shop, oohing and awing and running around in a very random unfocused way, making incomprehensible noises of pleasure as each new vista magically appeared through the mist.

First the famous Rialto bridge, just amazing to be there at that time with NO TOURISTS (except 2, Rose and I) and all of the locals going about their work, getting ready for the hordes to come.

The Grand Canal from Rialto Bridge

As we savoured the scene together, I began to sense in Rose, some of the same excitement that I was experiencing. It was wonderful to see it together, and she soon got into it and began excitedly pointing out good shooting angles and details that she wanted me to capture.

We decided to head towards Piazza San Marco because you just never know what you're going to find and something like mist comes and goes and has a mind of it's own.

So if you're like me and you get a chance to photograph a misty morning in Venice on a 4 day visit, you keep shooting till the mist is gone, or your card is full or you or your battery are dead!

We found the square and it was amazing, a few more people were around and the mist was a little thinner, but it was just beautiful and a great way to experience our first morning in Venice.

Looking up at St. Mark's Basilica in the fog

During the course of the morning I had seen my lovely wife Rose go from "Clan of the Cave Bear' to "Lover of the Dawn" and hopefully the transformation is permanent!

I did get a little bit of a scare on the way back to the hotel though as her new persona cracked slightly. You see, I am a man with a good sense of direction, you know the type, "I don't need no stinkin map" and for sure "I don't need no stinkin directions."
And that's usually true, except in the maze that is Venice, but that's another story....

Moored Gondolas near Piazza San Marco

All Contents Copyrighted by the author, Doug Petry

Irregular activities in Venice

Well we're only a few weeks away now and I've booked our toilet pass in Venice, yup we're all set if nature calls in the island city of canals and water and buses that are boats. The older you get, it seems the more conscious you are of the possible need to visit "the water closet" at any time of the day or night.

So we're all set, just don't tell Rose (my wife) that we're sharing our 7 day, 10 visit, public toilet pass for Venice. I'm not sure what that will look like just yet, maybe they're like those stainless steel capsule biffies that we experienced in Paris many years ago. Those were pretty weird, like a shower stall, all modular and ultra modern and after you leave them they close themselves up and shake and shimmy and moan as they go through their self clean routine, then it's green light and ready for the next needy customer with a couple of euro (or something else) to deposit.

Ah, that brings back many fond memories, Paris September 1988, Rose and I on our grand European holiday, what a wonderful time. It was September and we were pre-kids but trying to get pregnant, that'll put a spring in a young man's step, let me tell you! Jumping over picket fences, that's for old guys. Tall buildings in a single bound, that's how I remember it anyway.

That was a great holiday, how we managed before the Internet though is a bit of a mystery. I remember booking a hotel room in Paris at Hotel St. Merry on the Left Bank. We saw a picture of a particular room in a food and travel magazine and just fell in love with it. There was a phone number so we called them up and booked "chamber #4" for 2 nights, we were in Paris for 4 but couldn't afford to spend all 4 days there.

What a beautiful room, it was housed in the former presbytery of the St. Merry church and had the most amazing flying buttresses right over the bed, just beautiful.

Hotel St. Merry, Paris.

This is the room we stayed in, so gorgeous!

It was in Paris that I met the most charming lady bathroom attendant in the public washrooms under the plaza in front of the Notre Dame Cathedral. Nice lady, I still remember what she said to me, "pissiere Monsieur", "huh?" was my clever response. I suppose she had met more than her share of naive tourists, unused to this unusual situation.

She quickly made herself clear with some further questions, "for the toilet, Monsieur, you stanna hup, or you seet doon?" "Oh!" You could almost hear the gears clicking into place in my far from home, Canadian brain. "I stanna hup....I mean, yes I stand up."

"Okay, 10 franks" Business gratefully concluded!

Fun times, but whatever the case may be with these public bathrooms in Venice, when you need one, you need one!

We got a few other things figured out also. I am now a registered user of the Trenitalia website that allows travelers to purchase and reserve seats on most of the intercity and high speed trains within Italy. We've already booked our seats from Venice to Verona, from Verona to Milan and then from Milan to Cinque Terra and after a week there, on to Naples and the south.

I was surprised at how easy it was to book on-line, actually. The only problem I experienced was that one of the tickets didn't come through to my email so I'll have to find a way to chase that down and re-print it.

I even booked the exact seats on the trains and got  an amazing deal on some of the fares. It seems that there is a spring sale on in Italy and pre-booked seats for Saturday travel are 2 for 1, wahoo! It ended up saving us something like $200 Euro, excellent because we're going to need to save as much as we can if we have to pay for toilet time wherever we go.

We looked into train passes and with this sale going on, it is way cheaper to book seats individually, and it's pretty easy, so if you happen to be going any time soon, do some research first, you might be surprised.

It's interesting to read about all of the scams that enterprising local scoundrels come up with to rip off unsuspecting tourists. Rick Steves is a guide book writer who specializes in Italy and he warns people to clip their belongings to the overhead racks on trains because when trains go through tunnels as they often do, pffftt, like magic, your bag is gone!

It might be fun to bring a flashlight also and if we hear rustling around when the train goes dark, click, turn it on, flash it around and see what mischief is going on. I can see it now, some perp frozen in place, like a hapless "plucky comic relief" in a Jurassic park movie who heard somewhere that, "they can't see you if you don't move." Priceless!

There are lots of warnings about pick pockets of course and scooter riding villains who try to grab purses and other bags, and creeps who snatch the change or tickets from the dispensers in train stations and any number of other scams to victimize tourists, oh well, we'll sleep when we get home.

I also booked our transit passes for Venice and it is so important to check that out also because from what I understand the vaporetto (water bus) tickets are $7 each and a week long pass with unlimited transport including a special tourist boat that stops at special art and culture locations is only $60, so that gives a lot of freedom from counting pennies if you plan to really explore the city as we do.

I also bucked out for the wi-fi pass for $15 because I have become totally dependent on this tablet and I think it will be incredibly useful if the coverage is good. The one thing that I can't decide yet is the Venice card but I will probably end up picking them up when we arrive. So many amazing churches and buildings bursting with incredible art!

Of course since it's our 30th anniversary we'll most likely spring for a gondola ride and something makes me think Rose won't settle for the $2, stand up, 5 minute ride across the canal. I imagine she has in mind the $60, side by side, cuddling up, sunset version complete with serenade. Come to think of it, that's what she deserves for putting up with me for 30 years!

All Contents Copyrighted by the author, Doug Petry

The Countdown Has Begun!

It might seem like a strange analogy but it seems to fit for me in this situation and that is, that these days I'm acting very much like the middle aged guy's equivalent of an excited bride-to-be, totally caught up in planning a wedding, except in my case it's a trip to Italy I'm planning.

It's getting harder and harder to concentrate on anything else other than ITALY.......we're counting down the days now and there isn't a lot of time left to get all of our ducks in a row. We're slowly getting there though, and some of the things that I've been thinking about over the last few weeks are coming together nicely.

Thinking about the trip, I thought the best (and lightest) way to stay in touch and write blog posts and edit pictures on the fly would of course be a tablet computer with a little keyboard attached and that's what I'm writing this post on.

Google Nexus 7 with Keyboard

But, of course the great tablet that I bought and believe me I did lot's of research, has one small hitch, it does not recognize any external flash drives, memory cards etc. so it's practically useless because you can't upload pictures to it from a camera in the field. I can't believe these silly tablets can have such a silly flaw! What's with that, goofy Google people?

The good news is that the Internet is full of hackers and clever people who can find a work-around for the mistakes and flaws built into technology and with their help I downloaded a Nexus 7 toolbox and a disc mount software program and unlocked the bootloader and "rooted" my Nexus 7.

Now with a cheap little adapter from china and a memory card reader attached I can upload pictures directly from memory cards to my tablet and from there I can edit them and upload them to Facebook or my blog or website, or whatever. Thanks to the manufacturers screw-up I am now a seriously clandestine hacker type and I have voided my warranty, bought a skateboard and am moving into a downtown loft with a bunch of other geeks. But seriously....thank you anonymous developer, programmer types, for helping me get this done, I love you!

Another of my tasks was to figure out what to do about telephones while we're over  there. Do you just wing it and try to pick up a couple of throwaway Italian phones when you get there? Or set it up from this end with the local cell phone companies? Or is there another way to go? That's what I was struggling with over the last few weeks because Rose and I will most likely be doing very different things some of the time and we definitely need a way to keep in touch.

With kids back home, (adult kids) and some rental properties and the possibility of work needing to get a hold of me, this is a really important question that I researched quite a bit. I found the best solution for us seems to be a company called cellular abroad that has all kinds of different options to choose from and we did a little mix and match deal with them.

I went to the bell web-site and got an unlock code for my cell phone and from these other guys I rented a sim card for 28 days that comes with some minutes built in and a local Italian number. For my lovely, technology averse wife I ordered a new (very simple) cell phone, also with some extra time and a local number. That way we can give out our numbers to people who might need them and any calls we make in Italy will be local ones, problem solved, I hope!

Since I will likely be up and out very early, catching sunrises and walking all over the place while Rose is still sawing logs, It's important that we can contact each other. I expect she will spend a fair amount of time sitting at little cafes people watching and reading a book while I am running around trying to capture some of the beauty, culture and architecture of Italy.

Another big question that I have been wrestling with is camera gear of course.
I think I've got it all figured out now. I bought a new backpack camera bag  for traveling that holds all of my gear and fits 2 smaller portable bags inside that I can take out for the days when I don't need all of my gear.

My new jacket and camera bag-backpack

                                                 
Of  course a photographer wants to have a tripod (but a very light one) and a backup camera and the right lens selection and what about filters? Maybe a graduated neutral density and a circular polarizer are enough? And memory cards! How much is enough storage for a month of serious photography in one of the most photogenic, beautiful countries in the world? Who knows? Ask me when I get back, then I'll have a better idea, but for now, I have around 170 gigabytes spread among all of my various storage devices.

Here is a list of what I'm taking as far as photographic equipment goes.
Sony A77 body with 16-50mm F2.8 lens
Sony 70-300mm G Zoom lens
Sony NEX5n body with 18-55 mm lens
Rokinon 8mm fisheye for NEX
Holga pinhole lens for NEX
Spare battery for A77
Portable-wireless battery charger
Light weight tripod
Carryspeed Pro strap
Cokin graduated neutral density filters
And - ????????

And what about power adapters, they use 220 volt power in Italy with a weird little 2 prong round plug so you need adapters that allow you to plug dual voltage devices in.
Most modern electronic devices have dual voltage capability, but of course Rose wants to bring a hair appliance of some sort so I had to buy a voltage step-down transformer to convert it to 120 volts, no problem.

And have you seen those cool little spinner carry-on suitcases that have 4 little wheels on the bottom? Well I had to have one of those and maybe a small backpack for day trips and in case we buy some souvenirs and outgrow our suitcases (we're just taking  carry-on bags). And of course there are a lot of pick-pockets over there so we need a money belt and the flights are long so we need a good little travel pillow filled with those little bead things and on and on and on it goes!

But our plan is to not eat for the month that we're there so we'll save lot's of money on food. And as long as I've got memory cards and enough money to get into all of the sights, I figure we'll be okay, we'll just survive on the atmosphere and culture of Italy.
And love of course!
(We'll be spending our 30th anniversary in Verona)

From Russia With Love

I think everyone goes through a few "paradigm shifts" during their lives and careers and probably for a few other reasons and at a few other times over the years. I've gone through a few over the 39 years I've been around.......since I turned 14.

I remember when I picked up my first camera that was anything more than a box with a hole in it. I went to Hardisty Junior High, here in Edmonton and I think it was what we called "shop" class that I got a chance to use a real camera, a 35mm SLR for the first time.

At least, that's how I remembered it, as a sophisticated, professional model, highly technical camera. Wow was I surprised when I started writing this post and I thought to myself, "hey, I remember seeing those pictures around here sometime recently, now where could they be" and there they were! Right on top of the computer cabinet was a little envelope containing pictures that I took in 1974

When I took a look at them I went, "aha, now I understand my current fascination for old rangefinder cameras." The camera that I remember using as a sophisticated young  stud was actually a very basic model and even though it served to capture my chiseled good looks and amazing BLONDE! center part fairly well, it wasn't an SLR, it was a rangefinder!

Doug circa 1974

For those who don't know, an SLR is a more sophisticated, expensive type of camera that has a moving mirror and usually a pentaprism that lets you view the subject as it is and then when you press the shutter, the mirror jumps out of the way and the shutter opens letting light pass to the film.

A rangefinder doesn't have a pentaprism or a mirror, but rather a viewfinder that brings two separate images together into one to indicate the focusing distance or in rangefinder cameras that lack even this mechanism, the photographer guestimates the distance and sets it on the lens and hopes and prays! 

The awesome thing about this old technology is that people paid attention to what they were doingggg! It cost them money when they screwed up and so they spent a little time learning about composition and exposure and focusing and when they pressed the shutter, they had a reasonable chance of capturing something meaningful!

Caution: there is a slight chance that my critical attitude towards people who batch-post out-of-focus photographs on facebook may surface during this article.

I simply don't get the attitude of so many people these days who spend thousands or even hundreds of dollars on camera equipment and barely skim the surface of what their cameras are capable of. I am tempted to think that every person should be required to learn photography on a 40 year old Russian rangefinder film camera.

That may be why I seem to be obsessed with this type of camera right now. And maybe that is why I bought some for gifts to give to a few budding young photographers that I know. It's like this, if you learn the hard way, when you move on to the new technology that is so much more easy and convenient and effortless and intuitive and basically requires almost no effort or thought beyond, "point and shoot" YOU WILL TAKE BETTER PHOTOGRAPHS!

I must give a little disclaimer here for those people who push the boundaries of the technology and somehow make art using the same run of the mill equipment as the great unwashed masses who can't seem to get beyond, CLICK-SHARE. My hat is off, I salute you! 

Anyway....if you want to learn photography, get yourself an old German or Russian or whatever vintage camera and read about it and study how it works and use it and think about what you are doing and make some art worth sharing, they are dirt cheap right now. After I bought these cameras, it occurred to me that they had no exposure meter, something I have taken for granted lately, but guess what, there is an app for your phone, yup, and they work with a little tweaking to calibrate them, I used my digital camera, taking a similar photo and comparing the exposure, isn't technology wonderful? 

BeeCam Light Meter App.

Here is a website with lot's of information about these cameras. http://www.sovietcams.com/

And here are some of my recent camera purchases.

Fed 3 Russian Rangefinder, Manufactured in Mid seventies - Modified for Western, Capitalist tastes, to look "pretty"

Zorki 4 Russian Rangefinder from 1963 - Unmodified

Last summer I picked up at an antique store a Zeiss-Ikon Contaflex 35mm, early version of an SLR for $60!
What a steal and I love German engineering, this thing will likely work forever! 
http://www.cameraquest.com/conrf.htm

1953 Contaflex 2 German SLR

It is heavy, yes, but a camera like this is well worth it, the optics are great, it has a light meter and everything that you could want and it has no battery! If "the machines" from the Matrix were attacking and you were forced to detonate an EMP bomb, no worries, it's not electronic at all, it's entirely mechanical and it works great.

Below are some different shots of some of the film cameras currently in my possession (2 of them are for gifts) I shot these with some different filters, just for fun.

B&W polarize filter

Toy Camera (Vertical Center)

HDR Painting - High (High Dynamic Range)

Here are some pics from a roll I took at the Ukrainian Heritage Village last fall with the Contaflex 2, with an outdated roll of film, the first one I had ever shot with this camera, without instructions for the camera, using skills I hadn't practiced for years with a film camera.

There is something magical to me about photographs taken the old fashioned way, with vintage cameras that have a history and a "soul" and even though it's not really fair to compare them with modern photographs that look so much better from a purely technical aspect, without the degradation that comes from transferring them to digital form. Still, if done well, no-one cares!

It is soooooo much fun to blend-marry-integrate this old technology with modern state-of-the-art technology that I can't even begin to explain. And guess which part of these old cameras are still very much in demand?

Nope....nope.....nope.....YES, it's the lens! Recently I bought a used Sony NEX5n on ebay and right away I started researching which lenses could be adapted to work on this modern camera. 

Guess what I found out? For a few bucks I ordered a Contax/Yashica adapter that allows me to use two vintage Zeiss lenses that I have kept from my old film days when I shot with a Contax RTS2 film camera. These are great lenses and my new camera works perfectly with them. When I received the Zorki 4, I looked into it and found out that YES, I can get an adapter to use the Russian "Jupiter 8" 50 mm F2 lens with this Sony camera,  this must be what heaven is like! I can't wait to get the adapter and try it out, sure these old lenses are manual focus but that's all I need for the sort of photography I do.

 I think the world would benefit from a little more appreciation of history, of heritage, the blending of old and new, past and future, science and art. Today is wonderful, but let's not discount what the past has shown us, slow and mechanical is not necessarily second rate or obsolete. And that makes me feel better about myself!

Fun With Fisheyes - Getting Ready for Italy

Oh what fun it is to plan a trip! Going to Italy for a month is a big thrill for just about anyone I would imagine, but for an extremely avid (obsessed) photographer it is even more exiting. Here's a chance to pick up some more gear and justify spending the money, "I may never get back there, think of all that history!"

Well I must say I did go a little crazy on ebay over the last few weeks but I'm sure it's going to pay off big. My first purchase was a new camera to act as a backup to my main DSLT (digital, single lens translucent) Sony A77 camera that I've had for almost a year now. I wanted something small and light that would complement my existing camera.

My A77 is a great camera in a lot of ways but it has a couple of problems, it's big and heavy (magnesium alloy) when combined with the excellent F2.8 16-50 zoom and it is not that good in low light, high ISO situations.
The camera that I got as a supplementary  camera is also a Sony, an NEX 5n with a 18-55mm kit lens.
I bought them separately and still haven't received the lens, but I did receive one lens and it is so much fun! (Update- I've now received the 18-55mm kit lens and it's very good, complete with optical "steadyshot")

Since we are going to Italy in the spring and Italy has so many marvelous churches and historical buildings and incredible scenic vistas and narrow streets and wonderful piazzas and fountains and statues, I asked myself, "what is the best way, or at least a different and fun way to capture those Italian scenes?"

I need a fisheye lens of course!

And of course ebay has them really quite cheap and I couldn't resist picking one up and today I took it to the Royal Alberta Museum to try it out in an architectural setting and I love it.

What I ended up getting is a Rokinon 8mm F3.5 fisheye manual focus lens with the NEX mount  and it was brand new in the box. These lenses are made in Korea and they get very good reviews and I am very pleased with the results I got and I have posted some of the pictures below. These are all straight from the camera, jpeg files with no processing done. Let me know what you think and if you have any tips or tricks for getting good results with this sort of lens, I would love to hear them.