New post - Traveling in Germany with HL

Hello, and happy 2011 to all!

In this past year, I've discovered my ability to overcome a number of self-imposed boundaries and to visit some places which I once found challenging.  It's been healthier to write about what I've come to enjoy and love, even if the daily challenge remains to struggle with the confusing, the illogical, and the idiotic.

With the new year now upon us, this post is about a few details about some of the tools I use in my trips to Germany, and about what I use presently for photography.

TRAVEL

Germany is a country with diverse topography, great scenery, and varied urban settings.  The country is also where I would like to photograph some more, from the beaches of the North Sea coast to the twist and turns of the Rhein river to the gentle hills in the Harz, from the hustle and art-bustle in the capital city of Berlin to the party hardy in Köln to the majestic castles near the Bavarian Alps.

Typically, I have to cover a decent amount of distance across Germany on any given "tour" to visit and catch up with friends and/or to take in photographic opportunities.  Instead of taking intranational flights, I'm a big fan of the train, and I use RailEurope's German rail-pass, if I have multiple cities to visit on multiple dates.  I often go with the 4- or 5-day pass, and if you do your own pricing on the bahn.de website, you'll see that "biting the bullet" with a pass is much cheaper than buying point-to-point fares within the country.

To help with traveling out and about the country, here are some of the applications I use on my 3rd-generation iPodTouch (iPT):

* Tripit - an excellent trip organizer.  You can enter all of your trip information with as much detail as you like, and retrieving the details are a real breeze to examine on your mobile device.

* HRS - a hotel-search website, whose extensive interface I like using.  You can order your search by "number of stars", average nightly rate, or proximity to city centre, airport, or nearest train stations.  In the last few years, I've noticed that the parent company has been more aggressive in their marketing campaigns throughout Europe.

* Currency Converter - USD to EUR, for example, but you can also input an arbitrary amount (say, 50 US dollars) to determine what that amount corresponds 

(37.30 Euros).  Recently I've been tracking simultaneously the US dollar, Euro, Chilean peso, UK pound, Canadian dollar, Australian dollar, and the Czech koruna (crown).

* DB Navigator (German) - Deutsche Bahn's application in English provides train schedules, as well as point-to-point planning. Knowing the words "Hauptbahnhof" ("Hbf", central train station) and "Flughafen" (airport) helps.

* berlin.de - native city-guide application based on the city's tourism webpage

* Fahrinfo Berlin - transit information in Berlin (English, too) for details about bus, tram, U-Bahn, and S-Bahn throughout the metropolitan capital region.  Please keep in mind that native applications also exist for Frankfurt am Main's RMV transit authority and Munich's MVV transit authority here and here.  As always, your kilometrage may vary with usage.

* LEO - native German-to-English, English-to-German dictionary, when I'm constantly confused by "separable verbs" ... which are reflexive ... come with prepositions ... and you have to know the correct case to go along with the (in)direct object (e.g., sich anpassen an, accusative).

* Nelso Prague - native application which provides place- and detailed-information about all sorts of places in Prague, including tourist attractions, accommodation, and restaurants

* GoodReader - I copied my travel documents in pdf to native storage on the iPT, and used GoodReader as the native PDF reader 

* Evernote - available on my Mac and my iPT, I can edit notes on any of the two, and sync changes automatically (with wireless access).

* Facebook - to get my daily dose of quick-hit news-items, photography websites, and the shenanigans my friends are wreaking upon the world.

* to help with planning shoots at potential sites, I use Apple's Weather app to get up-to-the-minute updates and forecasts, as well as Magic Hour world-clock application for sunrise, sunset, astronomical, civil, nautical dusk/dawn times, moon phases, moonrise, moonset.  If the places you require are not included, you can add your own by latitude and longitude.  In short, I admit Magic Hour satisfies my astro-geek.

* Foursquare - this actually helps me to keep track of some of the places I've visited, even though its use is more limited to finding free wireless access; see also below.

I'd like an Apple portable-internet device with both wireless *and* mobile-access capabilities, with pay-as-you-go domestic mobile-access packages without the need for a long-term contract and international roaming charges.  However, I can also see that there may be a limited market for this capability, and Apple does not want to cannibalize its popular and successful iPhone product-line.

CAMERA

I've a Canon EOS450D (or "Rebel XSi" in North America) which at the time of purchase was packaged with their EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS lens.  This "kit lens" is light, versatile, and is a great walk-around lens with which to travel.  I have learned a great deal about my camera and general photography by shooting with my kit lens - I cannot emphasize this enough.  I've also bought a Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM lens, which provides some beautiful photos.  

In the last few weeks, I've added the Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM.

On this present "Weihnachtstour", I decided to just use the 50mm prime.  Although the 50mm is "effectively" 80mm on Canon's cropped-sensor, the wide-aperture in low-light settings has been a joy to use, as you can see in evidence, for example, with photos at the Christmas market in Prague's Old Town Square.

These three lenses all have the same filter-thread size (58mm), which means I need only one set of filters.  I now have a 2-stop (4x) polarizing filter, a 3-stop (8x) neutral-density filter, and an 8-point star-filter.  You all may have noticed that I've been using the latter quite liberally in many of my recent night-time shots.  I'm still on the lookout for a 2-stop graduated neutral-density filter ...

To contain my camera, two lenses ("short" and "long"), and my growing collection of SD-cards, I use a Tamrac 5768 Velocity 8x sling-pak pouch, which is easy to open, as the top-cover opens from the body out.  As well, I can bring out or take away elements (e.g., lens, filter) without removing the pouch or putting the pouch on the ground.  Other members of the Velocity series are described here.

This has been a much longer article with a great deal more details, but these have accumulated very rapidly in the last year or two.  Now, they're all pretty much second nature to have and to use.

I hope you all have a safe, happy, healthy, and successful new year!

- HL, 1925h GMT - 3 Jan 2011

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