Downsizing

We're about ready to kickoff the 2015 travel season this weekend with a field trip to Prague.  Thanks to my husband's limited vacation days (his American contract gives him only 10 compared to his European co-workers' 30) we rely on state holiday weekends for the majority of our travel times.  May is a month full of state holidays so we end up being gone almost as many days as we are home.  The suitcases stay in the hall, and the rest of the house remains in a state of chaos.

This year, now that we live close to a major transportation hub, we have several train trips planned.  A weird caveat in our situation is that we don't own our car, it is owned by The Company.  That is a pretty sweet deal, one for which we are ever grateful.  However, because it's The Company's car we have to follow their rules on where we can drive it.  One of the rules is that we can't take the car into certain countries in Europe, basically any of the old Eastern Bloc nations.  Why?  Mostly it has to do with road surface conditions (which is funny to me since Northeast Ohio probably has the same quality roads in comparison).  Another reason is that some of those nations have a high rate of auto theft.  If you think the company is being a little harsh, many car rental agencies in Germany have the same policy.  Anyway, for those travel destinations we choose the train.  Unlike flying, we love rail travel.  If it's not too expensive or time consuming, we'd rather take a train than drive anyway.

My favorite travel bag. We've been through
a lot together.  The compartmentalized base has plenty
of room for photo equipment, and the rest of the bag has space
for a change of clothes and other stuff.

While rail travel is easier and usually more enjoyable than taking a car, the one downside is that luggage space is greatly reduced.  That's just fine with us since lugging big bags all over a city isn't comfortable or useful.  We've become pretty good at living out of one backpack.  But, that gets a little complicated when we head somewhere specifically for photography purposes.  This Prague trip is one of those times.  My standard kit for the past year has been a Canon 600D with the 10-22mm wide-angle lens and the Fujifilm X-E2 with the 18-55mm lens.  Plus, I'll usually toss in the Fujinon 35mm for shooting candid street scenes or maybe a Canon 55-200mm instead if I know I want to shoot tight on stuff I can't physically get closer to.  Add to that a tripod, filters, batteries, cards, remote triggers, etc. and I usually end up having to carry a full-sized photo bag, plus a suitcase.  The biggest hang up has always been the Canon.  It's a fatty.  Even my Three Legged Thing tripod can be collapsed down tight to fit in a pack if need be.  But, wow, that Canon with its wide-angle lens really eats up bag space.

Different bag here, but it has the same base volume as my canvas one.
There are four lenses, a body, battery charger, neck strap, and remote
trigger in this space, with padded dividers between each lens.

Well, no more!  I'm officially at the place now that I can shoot entirely DSLR free!  I recently switched out the Canon 55-200mm for a Fujinon 55-200mm and last weekend our local MediaMarkt was running a sale on the Fujinon 10-24mm f/4.0 R OIS lens!  Between the sale and a gift certificate I was able to purchase the lens for significantly less than it is on Amazon.de.  So, finally, I can now shoot super wide-angle (my typical M.O.) with my X-E2!  You know what that means?  I can fit everything- the X-E2 body, the 18-55mm lens, the 35mm lens, the 55-200mm lens, and the 10-24mm lens (along with any accessories like chargers, filters, straps, etc.) in just the bottom of my photo backpack!  The rest of the bag is completely free for other stuff like clothes and toiletries.  Now, normally I don't need to carry all those lenses at once, but the fact that I can is pretty freaking awesome.  Ah, the glory of mirrorless technology!  It's truly the traveling photographer's dream.

My current Fujifilm line-up.  Everything I want to shoot can be done with these lenses- 
landscapes, cityscapes, architecture, and candid street portraits.

I've been planning to go completely mirrorless since I fell in love with my X-E2 last year.  I'm just as much in love with it as the day I opened the box, maybe even more so.  With this latest lens acquisition I'm pretty much where I want to be with my kit, especially with glass.  I definitely plan to add a second body soon, probably the X-T1 (though I'm carefully watching the developments concerning the rumored X-Pro2 before I make a final decision) to balance out the larger lenses and have the weather sealing (not to mention the rest of its awesomeness).  And, I could see picking up the newly released Fujinon 16-55mm f/2.8 R LM WR to have a nasty weather setup so I can't say, "Oh well, it's too wet to shoot so let's go to the pub."  However, for now I'm really pleased that I can do everything I want to do all out of the bottom of a standard backpack or out of my shoulder bag!

For a city trip like this one, I prefer to shoot from a shoulder bag instead of a backpack.  I don't use a camera specific messenger bag, although I do like the look of Think Tank's Retrospective line.  Instead, I purchased a cheap foam insert that can fit in any of my messenger bags.  My favorite bag to use is a Vaho Gingko.  It's spacious and comfortable to carry with the added bonus of being made of bike tubes (so it's weather resistant).  There's plenty of room inside, even with the camera insert.  Since it is just a regular messenger bag and doesn't say LowePro or CaseLogic, it's a more clandestine setup.  Using a shoulder bag like this is much more user friendly than a backpack.  I can easily retrieve or stow items while on the move without drawing much attention.  Plus, when it's time to duck into a pub or restaurant, there isn't a giant bag on my back whacking people or getting caught in tight spaces.  Lastly, few things (besides bum bags, wrinkle free shirts, Nikon/Canon camera straps, and packable travel hats) scream, "I'm a tourist ripe for the picking!" more loudly than a big 'ol backpack.  The only downside, obviously, is that there isn't a way to carry a tripod (a real one, not those wee table top ones) from a shoulder bag.  A tripod is a necessity for taking sweeping daylight city scape scenes like the one's from the Ghent session.  So, if I'm not inclined to carry a full-sized bag with a tripod storage system I'm left with carrying it separately.  Thankfully, Three Legged Things all come with their own cases and can be carried all day very comfortably.  Since there's two of us it's very convenient for one to carry the "camera bag" while the other carries the tripod.

So, after much thought, agonizing, and second guessing I've come up with my kit for a weekend in Prague:

Fujifilm X-E2
Fujinon XF 10-24mm
Fujinon XF 18-55mm
Fujinon XF 55-200mm

Normally I don't carry a long lens on a trip like this because even the smaller Fujinon lens is a big lens.  However, in this case I know there are things I will want to shoot which are physically out of reach.  So, it's coming along this time.  This will be the first test of the new 10-24mm lens and I'm really looking forward to seeing how it performs in comparison with my Canon setup, which I've probably shot with more than any other over the last three years.  And, of course, I can't leave the kit lens at home.  I know people tend to overlook or avoid the kit lens of any system or brand.  But, I've found the Fujinon to be the perfect all rounder for travel.  It's wide, but not too wide and its optics and speed are top notch.  It works quite nicely for candid street in a pinch too.  This all fits well in the bag insert so I will be able to go backpack free this weekend.  TLT Brian is coming along for the tripod work and I've thrown some filters in the bag as well.

I'm really looking forward to this trip for a few reasons.  Number one, neither of us have been to Prague before so this is the first brand new place we're visiting in 2015.  Also, this is our first visit into Eastern Europe and I'm really excited to explore a part of the continent that is noticeably different from where we've been traveling and living thus far.  Finally, this is the first photo excursion that will be completely DSLR free and I can't wait to solely experiment and create with Fujifilm.  The forecast has been all over the place, so I'm hoping the weather will surprise us and be cooperative.  I've thrown a rain cover in just in case. So, with that, I have just a bit more packing to do then it'll be time to catch the midnight train to Praha.

At De Ronde

So, last week I mentioned that we were up in Ghent in order to catch De Ronde van Vlaanderen cycling race.  When we lived in Luxembourg we tried to catch as many weekend single day races as we could, Omloop, Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne, Liege-Bastogne-Liege, Paris-Roubaix, Amstel Gold, etc.  "The Classics" are my favorite races of the season.  The big grand tours are great and all, but the luster has worn off a little over the years.  With the never ending doping sagas and the monotonous and predictable tactics, they no longer grab my attention as they once did.  The action of a single day race, however, is still magic.  While I adore LBL and Paris-Roubaix, in my opinion, the best race to be there for is De Ronde.  There's nothing like being on one of the Flemish hills with a big screen TV, a cone of frites, a plastic cup of beer, and a bunch of Belgian cycling fans.  Nothing.

We were on the Paterberg in 2013 before the sun came up and I took a ton of photos all day of the action on the hill.

The rest of that set is up on my Flickr page, if you want to see some rider photos and shots from some of the other races.

This year on the Paterberg was about the same.  We still got there before sunrise and watched a hill in the middle of nowhere turn into one of the biggest parties Flanders probably sees all year. The medic ambulance got stuck in the mud again.  The burgers and frites were still hot, good, and messy.  The beer was flowing, but improved with Kwaremont being served instead of Jupiler.  The big screen was there so we didn't miss a moment of the action of the men's race (they still refuse to broadcast the women's race).  There were a few differences, though.  I don't know if this was a new thing for the 2015 edition or not, but there was a huge VIP pavilion at the top of the climb which created a weird dynamic early in the day with folks tramping up and down the hill in formal attire, while the rest of us were in jeans and waterproofs.  The organizers also have added free stools at the TV which were eagerly snatched up and carried off.  I spent most of the morning shooting time lapse, so I didn't take very many spectator shots.  I'm still working on the time lapse stuff (very laborious business, time lapse is).

The moon was incredible this year

Free stools

VIP area

The crowd was a little more rowdy than in 2013.  The beer flowed a bit more freely, there was some pot smoking going on, a few little brawls, and, alas, some unfortunate behavior from some of the fans.  A word of wisdom to all my fellow English speakers, please be careful what you say.  Pretty much everyone in Flanders understands English.

Anyway, the races themselves were awesome.  I would have loved live footage of the women's race before they arrived at the Paterberg, but I gotta tell ya, we were all really surprised when Elisa Longo Borgihini showed up totally on her own.  I was completely unprepared with my equipment so here is a really out of focus shot.

I'm not into sports photography, and there are so many amazing and talented people out there shooting cycling I don't really feel the need to be.  Of course, when the riders come through I can't not pull out the camera.  The intense crowd jostling this year really made it a challenge to get any race shots and the spot down by the TV is the wrong place to be if you want a good angle anyway.  Be that as is may, here are a handful of shots from down in the thick of things.

Alexander Kristoff and Niki Terpstra on the last pass of the Paterberg

De Ronde is a really special event, and I highly recommend it to any cycling fan or for anyone wanting a unique cultural experience.  The great thing about De Ronde is its huge local importance.  This is the biggest sporting event of the year in this part of Flanders.  If you sit at one of the major climbs, the men pass by a couple of times, the race is up on a TV, there's food, toilets, drinks, pretty much everything you could need.  Plus, there's the women's race, so you can actually see some of that action.  Now that going up to Belgium for a weekend is no longer so easy since we moved to Bavaria, we can really only make it up there for one race.  We'd be hard pressed to choose a race besides De Ronde.

Back in Ghent

Last week we went back to one of our favorite cities to hang out in, Ghent.  The main reason was to catch De Ronde van Vlaanderen cycle race.  We've been to a lot of cycle races in the past couple of years, but The Ronde is definitely our favorite to go to.  However, we don't really need an excuse to go to Ghent.  The Belgian cities of Leuven, Bruges, and even Brussels have some fantastic city centers, but Ghent just has a little extra something special that has earned it the "Best City in Belgium" award for us.  It's a great mix of old and new, traditional and eclectic.  Plus, most of the time (except Easter and Ronde weekend), it's pretty chill while the tour buses pass the place by on their way to Bruges.

Being April, the weather is rather fickle in Belgium this time of year, but we were blessed to have a dry race day and mostly dry weekend overall.  But, it was pretty overcast for most of it.  We happened to catch a break on Saturday with an afternoon clear up so we did a lot of shooting along the Leie in the old center.  It was really nice to finally have some good skies to work with to warrant lugging the tripod and ND filters around.

A couple of these are now up on the website in the Belgian city gallery.  Ghent is such a wonderful and photogenic city with plenty of drink and food spots to warm up in when the wind gets to be too much.  The really nice thing about Belgium is that its cities haven't been overshot, especially the smaller ones like Ghent.  So, it gives me the chance to come up with my own views without being overly influenced by other work.

Another cool thing about the weekend was that I got to try out a new lens that showed up out of the blue.  I've been short a good long lens forever, which in a place like Ghent with all its wonderful little details is a real frustration.  But, that problem has been solved.  I now have the Fujinon XF 55-200mm f/3.5-4.8 R LM OIS in my bag!  Granted, it definitely makes the X-E2 a little unbalanced, but it was still less awkward than walking around with a DSLR and a long lens.  And, of course, the best part is that this lens performs.

I should mention that those last two were shot handheld in a cathedral.  It was fantastic to capture the details of Ghent.  I'm really pleased with the 55-200mm.  It's a big 'un, but it's fast, stable, and clear.  Another Canon lens is now on the retirement shelf.

Of course, thanks to the overcast sky I ended up shooting a lot of street.  The pubs, the old buildings, the university scene, the canals.  Wow.  It's an incredible place for mono street scenes.  BUT, alas, I can't show you what I came home with as, publicly showing candid street photos (with recognizable people) taken in Belgium isn't legal.  Sorry.

So, I took away two things from the week.  Ghent is an incredible city.  We've been visiting it since 2012, and every year we love it more.  There's always something new to find and the old stuff isn't too shabby either.  Secondly, I'm really, really happy with my new long lens .  While I know that the lens is best set up to match with the X-T1, it does operate with the smaller body of the X-E2 too.  It's not discreet, certainly, but long lenses never are.  But, there are times when I can't get physically closer to a subject, and it is really nice to have a long lens to get me there that doesn't let me down.

There's no doubt we'll go back to Ghent.  There's always another cycle race to watch and I doubt I'll ever get tired of walking that city's streets with a camera.