Johannes Leistner

Another perfect party location in Hamburg: the Old Town Hall. The specialty for this location is that you can bring your own catering. I can highly recommend the Party All In catering company (ask for Kay Brock), with its very friendly staff and fair pricing. As the name says it already: all inclusive!

For concert photography the Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 lens is probably one of the best choices! The ultra-large aperture provides a bright viewfinder and used on a full format camera such as the Nikon D3, 85mm is a perfect length for working in front of the stage to take close ups of the musicians.

The low-light capability of f/1.4 combined with the awesome high ISO resolution of Nikon’s D3 is a superb match for shooting in bad light situations which are normal at concerts. I bet the Nikkor 85mm f/1.8 would also do a good job here, but there’s no substitution for a large aperture but a larger one…

From left to right: Boris Simons, band “Simons Lorence” (Hamburg, June 2008); Mikkel Nordsø, band “Mikkel Nordsø Group” (Copenhagen, July 2008); Krister Jonsson, band “Marilyn Mazur Group” (Copenhagen, July 2008); Julia zur Lippe, band “Simons Lorence” (Hamburg, June 2008)

Looking for a location with atmosphere and style for your wedding? Then you might want to take a look at the Literaturhaus Café in Hamburg. It is just two minutes away from the Alter lake, in the heart of the city and definitely will add the last bit of refinement to your wedding party!

Although these two photographs seem to be totally different from each other, they have something in common. They were taken with specialized equipment.
For the one with the tea-tasting cup I used an old, manual focused 50mm lens with the extraordinary fast aperture of f/1.2! This aperture delivers a very small depth of field and creates a pleasant blur as you can see on the cups in the fore- and background.
The other photo was taken with the most modern piece of the latest development in digital photography, the Nikon D3. It is a high-end professional camera with an amazing capability of taking photographs in low light conditions. I used nothing less than an ISO speed of 3200 for this photo! View it large and enjoy the fantastic quality!

The annual China market in Hamburg has been a good possibility to become acquainted with my upcoming holiday in Beijing later this year in October.
For this photograph I used my neutral density filter which allows you to do long exposure shots even at bright daylight. The filter simply reduces the amount of light coming through your lens without manipulating the color. This photo was taken with f/22 and an exposure time of 30 seconds.