Central Europe, as a black and white tourist

[Julio1fer]

In my last wedding anniversary, I made a promise to my wife that we would tour Central Europe. The time came to deliver. As we had very little time and needed to be economical, we settled for a standard tourist-bus tour that covered Germany, Czech Republic and Austria (in fact, just Vienna).

We had a great time, drank several different types of beer, and were awed by the weight of the history and the magnificent cities. It is hard to travel to this area without being reminded all the time of the World Wars and the Cold War era.

After much doubt, I took along two cameras. The main one was a Canon G-12. The second was a Pentax ME with the widest lens I own, a no-name zoom (Camron 18-28mm). The idea was to have something for those tight spaces in the cities, and of course to keep the film addiction going. Weight and volumen were key considerations.

There is no longer good quality C-41 processing in my city, therefore all of the film had to be black and white. I used FP4+, bulk loaded, processed in Beutler. In the end I burned five rolls of FP4+ and took about 1800 digital images, which I am still sorting out. Not bad for about 10 days.

In this post I would like to share some of the B&W pictures from the trip; hope it does not get too boring. I know that many people in this forum have been in Central Europe, so comments are most welcome!

Hofbrau beer house, Munich, Germany


Christmas Museum, Rothenburg, Germany


Eltz Castle, near the Mosel river, Germany


River boat in Berlin, Germany


Church in Dresden, Germany


Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic


Praha, Czech Republic . historic center


Praha, Charles Bridge.


Schoenbrunn Palace, Vienna


Thanks for looking! I hope to post a selection of the digital results later on, when I have sorted and filtered them. Right now I feel a bit overwhelmed!

[PFMcFarland]

Photographs taken by someone who knows what they are doing never get boring to look at, Julio.

PF

[Martolod]

lovely.
i lived not far from Eltz Castle. it was one of the few that survived being burned by Napoleon.looks like you got there at the right time of year.
( useless trivia alert: Burg Eltz was the silhouette used in the Lightning and Storm scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade)

[minoly]

These are fine photos-- well thought out and executed: not so easy to do while travelling! I hope you'll post from the digital collection as you work through them.

Bill D.

[OpenWater]

These are great and I really like them in black and white.

[melek]

Julio - nice work with those wide-angle lenses! Love that interior of the church with the rays of light stream down.

[titrisol]

LOVELY!!! those skies in the Praag picture are amazing

[Julio1fer]

Thanks for the kind comments! I was lucky with the skies, either overcast or good clouds, excellent for B&W. The ultrawide helped when shooting interiors; I believe that the church image was taken at 1/8 or 1/4. Equipment wise, I missed the Autocord, although I have learned that you cannot carry everything and enjoy a trip at the same time.

The historic center of Prague is a photographic heaven, if you like cityscapes and street pictures. I never saw so many tourists in one place. It looked like the crowd going out of a large sports event, only that everybody had a cell phone or DSLR ready and they were shooting like there was no tomorrow. Sometimes the crowd got more interesting than the architecture.

There were a few people around with Nikon film cameras, and there was color film in some souvenir stores. But the typical tourist was using a medium-to-amateur DSLR. I also saw many 4/3 systems. On the other hand, cell phones have completely displaced P&S models. BTW, do people really need so many selfies?

Martolod, so you were close to Eltz! Must have been hard with the Mosel close by and all that excellent wine around.

[Martolod]

Martolod, so you were close to Eltz! Must have been hard with the Mosel close by and all that excellent wine around.

....it was......belive me it was.......

[titrisol]

Last time I was in Prague, FOMA was still being made in there and there was a shop close to the center in which you could buy film and paper and they developed BW film.
Smartphones were not yet the rage, however thousand of PS cameras around