Färdder Kärwa

Färdder Kärwa – a difficult term for my English speaking readers. It is the local name of the Michaeliskirchweih in Nuremberg’s neighboring city of Fürth, a city fair that annually starts on the Saturday following the name day of Archangel Michael, typically at the end of September. A great opportunity to head over to Fürth and take my 17 and 25mm F/1.2 prime lenses for a nightly spin….

On Saturday night, The Significant Other, her mother any myself headed over to neighboring Fürth for a stroll over one of Germany’s oldest city fairs, taking place annually since about 900 year ago. Situated right in the city center, it features rides and plenty stalls selling food, beer and other culinary treats.

I took my two fastest primes, the 17mm and the 25mm F/1.2 from Olympus, together with the Olympus OM-D E-M1X. Originally I only wanted to take the 25mm for a spin, but wisely decided to take also the wider 17mm. Which was good, otherwise I would not have been able to fit the two carousels in the image above as well as the ferris wheel below into the frame, as in both cases I was leaning with my back against the wall of a house. So I really needed those extra 8 (16 in full frame equivalent) mm focal length.

There is no chance to set up a tripod in the midst of the crowd. So I needed to take the pictures handheld using slow shutter speeds longer than two seconds in order to achieve the desired results, blurring the colorful lights on the ferris wheel and the carousels. But as mentioned before on this blog, the M1X allows handheld shots of 5 seconds with sharp results.

Once more, the two fast primes proved their value, and I’m super happy with the results from my newly acquired used 25mm “Nifty Fifty”, which is extremely sharp across the frame.

Today was also a good day in a sense that I did install MacOS 10.15 Catalina on both my MacBook 2017 (for travel) and my main workhorse MacBook Pro 2015, and it works flawlessly. Photoshop CC and Lightroom Classic CC perform just fine, with all plug-ins working properly. I totally love the feature to use my iPad as second screen (and tablet for painting with the Apple pencil) for the MacBooks.

In the past I always waited a few weeks prior to installing a new OS version, because I was afraid of programs not working. But this time I took the plunge on the second day as I wanted to use that extra screen feature.

Taking the rest of the week off, The Significant Other and myself will head to the mountains tomorrow. We want to enjoy a few days of hiking (and photographing). I will limit myself to the 17mm prime, taking a documentary approach. It feels liberating not having to think much which gear to take. Will I regret it? Probably, but I don’t care 😉

Wish you a great Wednesday!

Marcus

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