Fresheye Magazine. January Edition 2016.

fresh eye

Italian travel l Canon Lens Review l Shopping in Berlin l Bokeh l

Magazine

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Art Culture

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Issue 1. January 2016 Photography Lifestyle Culture

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l Lido di Venezia

Italian travel

l Canon Lens Review

Lens kit

l Fein Und Ripp

Shopping in Berlin l Bokeh

Depth of field l I’m your puppet

Art Culture

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Contents Cover photography: Dennis Sterne Shot with Canon 5D MK1

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Lido di Venezia A barrier island that separates the Venetian Lagoon from the Adriatic Sea.

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y vaporetto or public water bus, it’s only a few minutes from Venice’s historic center, which makes it popular as a dormitory suburb of Venice and a summer resort.

As a visitor, you may find the Lido appealing for several reasons: l Hotels on the Lido tend to be cheaper than hotels in Venice’s centro storico. (At the same time, the Lido is more attractive and convenient to Venice’s tourist sights than the mainland suburb of Mestre.) l In the warmer months (say, from midMay to mid-October), you may prefer the resort ambiance of the Lido to the more crowded urban landscape of Venice’s city center-especially if you’re traveling with children who might appreciate a villa hotel with a large garden or a day at the beach. l If you’re arriving or departing by cruise ship, the Lido can be a convenient place to spend a few days before or after your cruise.

(Alilaguna airport boats run frequently

between Venice’s Marco Polo Airport, the Lido, and the Marittima ship basin.)

Restaurants The island has plenty of restaurants where you can enjoy a pleasant meal-often for less than you’d pay in Venice’s historic center. Menus usually feature Venetian and Italian cuisine and many restaurants also serve individual pizzas.

Shopping You’ll find a reasonable assortment of boutiques (along with a handful of souvenir shops) on the island’s main business street, the Gran Viale Santa Maria Elisabetta.Another shopping street is the Via Lepanto, which starts off as a pedestrian zone to the right of the Gran Viale as you walk inland from the Lido S.M.E. waterbus station.

On Saturdays, vendors set up stalls along the street on the Via Vettor Pisani, across a canal from the Via Lepanto.

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Scene in Lido di Venezia, shot with iphone 4s.

Several shops rent bicycles on the Lido, as do many hotels. Gran Viale Santa Maria Elisabetta, the Lido’s main shopping street.

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Canon Lens Review 1. A quality ultra-wide angle EF lens. The Canon EF 14mm f/2.8L II USM Lens delivering even better image quality.

2. The new Canon EF 35mm f/1.4L II USM Lens has been announced with arrival expected in Oct 2015. Only just out so look out for future review!

3. Ask a bunch of photographers what their favorite lens is and you will likely hear the Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM Lens mentioned. It is sharp, small, light, inexpensive and with an f1.4 aperture, fast.

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Sharp shoot - fresh eye’s focus on Canon lenses

4. Putting numbers to the size and weight ... The 100 f/2 weighs 1.0 lb (460g), measures 3.0” x 2.9” (75.0g x 73.5g)(DxL) and has a relatively small 58mm filter diameter. This is relatively small and light - This is an easy-to-take-with-you lens.

5. The Canon EF 200mm f/2L IS USM Lens is the highlyanticipated replacement for the long-discontinued but legendary Canon EF 200mm f/1.8 L USM Lens. It is an optically, mechanically and physically awesome lens, it will impress you.

6. The Canon EF 800mm f/5.6L IS USM Lens is sharp wide open from corner to corner and slightly sharper stopped down to f/8. The biggest improvement from stopping down is the reduced vignetting, which is somewhat strong at f/5.6. Images at f/8 are simply excellent.

Discover Canon’s latest range of consumer products www.canon.co.uk

www.buckitt.co.uk

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Shopping abroad

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Fein Und Ripp Berlin - a developing mecca for independent fashion

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isit Aljoscha Augustin and his father at their Berlin menswear store Fein Und Ripp, and, aside from the beer they might casually offer customers they get on with, you are likely to see clothing that you will not see anywhere else. This is because the shop specialises in a distinctive 1920s style. Most of Fein Und Ripp’s clothing is deadstock - old but unworn, bought in from, well, secret sources across Europe. It is certainly not for everyone. But the store has become a cult nevertheless.

“I’d have to say we don’t care much for fashion here - we’re appealing more to the individual man, who wants clothing that has to be worn for several years before it looks as good as it can. Fashion will have long moved on by then,” says Augustin. “But then compare us to Darklands - the diversity of menswear here in the city is huge.”

It is testament to how Berlin has, year on year, become a leading European hub for independent menswear stores. It is constantly

changing, and although there is more money in the city than in the past, the fact remains that Berlin is often a testing ground for new stores and concepts. Many of them end up not working, so the quirky reality is that there is a constantly changing list of shops opening and closing - some of them pop-up shops - and amongst them are this core of good, solid shops, that have been around for some time.

More shopping Among them might be considered the likes of Burg & Schild - with its mix of rare denim and workwear making up what has come to be termed ‘heritage’ style; Chelsea Farmer’s Club, with its more dapper, bold suiting and dress shirts; the intelligent dressed-down style of Soto Store - that stands for ‘south of Torstrasse’ - featuring more niche brands the likes of Nanamica, Aspesi and Norse Projects; as well as stores opened by independent German designers the likes of A.D. Deertz, a label established back in 2000.

Growing tourism year on year, good bars and restaurants

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Bokeh Bokeh comes from the Japanese word boke, which means “blur” or “haze”, or boke-aji, the “blur quality.”

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okeh is pronounced Boh-ke or Bohkay. Visit any photography website or forum and you’ll find plenty of folks debating the pleasing bokeh that their favorite fast lenses allow.

Adjectives that describe bokeh include: smooth, incredible, superb, good, beautiful, sweet, silky, and excellent… but what exactly is it?

Bokeh is defined as “the effect of a soft out-of-focus background that you get when shooting a subject, using a fast lens, at the widest aperture, such as f/2.8 or wider.” Simply put, bokeh is the pleasing or aesthetic quality of out-of-focus blur in a photograph.

The lens used determines the shape and size of the visible bokeh. Usually seen more in highlights, bokeh is affected by the shape of the diaphragm blades (the aperture) of the lens. A lens with more circular shaped blades will have rounder, softer orbs of out-of-focus highlights, whereas a lens with an aperture that is more hexagonal in shape will reflect that shape in the highlights.

Fast lenses To achieve bokeh in an image, you need to use a fast lens - the faster the better. You’ll want to use a lens with at least an f/2.8 aperture, with faster apertures of f/2, f/1.8 or f/1.4 being ideal. Many photographers like to use fast prime lenses when shooting photographs that they want visible bokeh in.

Don’t own a very fast lens? By increasing the distance between the background and your subject, you can see bokeh in images that are shot at smaller apertures like f/8.

The effect Nice examples of bokeh can be seen in portraits. Bokeh can add softness to an otherwise brightly lit photograph. Using this technique to separate your subject from the background can also allow you to utilize a not-so-photogenic background in your image, it helps to “highlight” the subject, not detract from it. Macro images of flowers and other objects in nature are popular subjects to photograph that shows off bokeh in the image.

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Using this technique to separate your subject from the background can also allow you to utilize a not-so-photogenic background in your image.

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I’m your puppet You don’t have to choose a puppet, the puppet will choose you.

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grown-up travelling to Prague might well consider bringing back a puppet for their child. What they might be less ready to admit is that they would like one themselves.

“But adults like the puppets too,” says Katerina Ambrusova, marketing manager for Prague-based puppet manufacturer and retailer Pohadka, which also works with nurseries and schools, using puppets as a teaching aid. “For some they offer a strong memory of their own childhood. And the quality of hand-made puppets is so high that they’re as much valued gifts for adults as they are for children too.”

Indeed, while puppetry has a part in the folk arts of many European countries, it is perhaps the Czech Republic that has embraced it the most deeply, in terms of the skills involved in making them, the wit of the characterisation and certainly their place in the nation’s social fabric. Indeed, puppetry has been part of the Czech culture since the middle of the

18th century, when Czech puppeteers led a nomadic existence travelling from village to village to entertain the locals, passing their skills, scripts and marionettes down through generations until puppetry became recognised as an art form crucial to the evolving state’s sense of self. Puppetry was patriotic.

The carvers, who typically worked in lime wood, would often be the same who made sacral church statues, which perhaps explains the baroque features of early puppets. It was the carver’s job to ensure their puppets’ expressions were as neutral as possible, the puppeteer’s job to bring emotion to his highly-strung charge. The best puppeteers of the last 200 years created puppet dynasties and have become nationallyknown names - the likes of Jiri Trnka, Mikolas Ales, Antonin Sucharda, Mikulas Sychrovsky and, perhaps most famously, Jan Kopecky, who started out around 1779 and whose descendants are still involved in puppet theatre today.

Czech puppeteers remain world-leading.

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From the mid 20th century, puppet theatre grew increasingly professional, and would lead to the establishment of a puppet film industry

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iPhone 6 Campaign. Photographer - Paul Octavious, Chicago.