Light in the night

On the night of November 9, 1938, the Nazis attacked Jewish homes, shops and synagogues all over Germany, effectively initiating the holocaust. This horrible night has since become known as the Kristallnacht – or Crystal night – because of all the shattered glass in the streets.

The Kristallnacht is commemorated every year in central Copenhagen, as a manifestation for human rights, against racism and fascism. This year there were speakers, among them Hans Goldstein, a surviving eyewitness of the Kristalnacht, music and torches. It was a small, but dignified and moving manifestation.

Here are a few pictures – a few more can be seen on Flickr.

On a photographic note, I used one of my old lenses, the Sigma 28 1.8 aspherical. I like this lens a lot, since it is compact, but with good image quality. The 28 mm translates into the equivalent of 42 mm in FF-terms, a focal length which I find very useful as a “short normal”. And 1.8 is of course quite fast, and even though it was very dark, I was able to get some decent handheld shots at ISO 1600 and 3200.

But the evening also revealed one of the shortcomings of this old lens: it is not coated for digital and therefore it is very prone to flare. Especially at night in the city, when it is dark but with a lot of bright, pointed sources of light. Luckily, when converted to black and white, the flares become less obvious. But for colour, it makes the lens almost unusable at night – despite all of its other qualities.

Maybe it’s time for a replacement……

2 thoughts on “Light in the night”

  1. Hej Lars

    Det er en rigtig fin blog du har. Specielt dine fotoovervejelser er spændende 🙂

    Du skriver at din linse laver en del flare og lysartefakter. Jeg kom til at tænke på, om du har beskyttelsesglas/Uv filter på din optik? Da jeg købte min Sigma 50mm 1.4 fastlinse, købte jeg også et beskyttelsesfilter, men har måttet tage det af, da jeg ikke kan bruge det om aftenen. Det giver rigtig meget flare og underlige lysspor. Efter jeg har fjernet filteret, har jeg ingen problemer med flare om aftenen.

    For at beskytte optikken, har jeg en modlysblænde på, også om aftenen. Den tager af for stød, hvis og såfremt jeg var uheldig og banke imod et eller andet.

    Reply
    • Hej Michael

      Tak for kommentaren. Jo, jeg bruger også min Sigma 28/1.8 uden filter og med modlysblænde. Det fjerner desværre ikke problemet med reflekser. Jeg tror simpelthen problemet skyldes, at det er en relativt gammel optik, hvor coatingen ikke er optimeret til digital-kameraer. Det er en skam, for ellers ville det være en super “normal-optik” til et APS-C kamera til en billig penge. Nu er det bare en god optik i mange situationer – men ikke lige præcis der, hvor jeg ellers gerne ville bruge den. Træerne vokser ikke ind i himmelen…. 😉

      Reply

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