Former hotel, Swakopmund

[Manfred M]

Some of the turn of the 20th century architecture in the town of Swakopmund, in Namibia is simply amazing. This former German colony imported the architectural style from Germany and plopped it down in a costal area in the middle of the Namib Desert. The white walls and red roof of this former hotel could be a picture postcard from Bavaria, except perhaps for the palm trees and the intense African summer sun.

[ggt]

Beautiful shot. You were lucky to get the full building without any traffic or people on the sidewalks. Nice that the building has been well maintained. So much architecture has been lost--much because the cost of upkeep is prohibitive. Strange to me, it seems to fit in it's surrounding!

[Manfred M]

I took the picture later on a Saturday afternoon, and downtown Swakop was pretty unihabited after the shops had closed. Apparently it is the place to be during the summer school holidays when the people form Windhoek head to the coast to escape the summer heat. Apparently the population of the town doubles at that time of year, but we were a few weeks early for that.

[ggt]

Often people forget that Germany was also a colonial power in Afrika. So much history . . .

[Sergio M.]

Beautiful shot.

Agreed. It would be nice to see a larger size.

Serge

[Manfred M]

Agreed. It would be nice to see a larger size.

Serge

And a larger size it is...

[Sergio M.]

Thanks, Manfred. Looks even more beautiful.

Serge

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Manfred,

I do like it larger, but wonder whether the CA could be corrected?

Certainly a magnificent building, captured with good exposure in nice light.

[Manfred M]

Hi Manfred,

I do like it larger, but wonder whether the CA could be corrected?

Certainly a magnificent building, captured with good exposure in nice light.

You must have better eyes than I do, as I didn't pick up any CA when I went pixel peeping. The shot was taken with a Nikon f/2.8 24-70mm lens, which is reputedly very clean (although there is some distortion at 24mm). Anyhow, I ran the RAW image through DxO 7 to clean up the image including CA and fringing and then applied the same adjustment layers in my previous post. I exported to a DGN file and manually corrected the perspective.

[Bobobird]

Great shot.

My eyes or is the central door arch buckling inwards at the bottom?

[dan marchant]

Manfred, did you see the wreck of the Zeila just north of Swakopmund and the cape cross seal reserve?

I had lunch at the Lighthouse in Swakopmund (Charlize Theron+Son+Mum sitting at next table) and then two hours up the road I was in the middle of a startlingly barren (yet beautiful) emptiness. What an amazing country.

[Inkanyezi]

Great shot.

My eyes or is the central door arch buckling inwards at the bottom?

Oh no, I cannot see any bulge, but the image is a bit deceiving, as there are two columns in front of the door, in line with the storey above, and a gap between the columns and the wall beside the door. The shadow of the right column gives it away, but there is no separation between the right side of the column and the wall in the image. They have the same tone, so the shadow of the column and the arch is confusing.

I see a "For sale" sign in the upper window, but I fear it is far above my budget.

[darknight]

lovely shot of a beautiful building, well done, maybe if we all chip in we can buy it together?

[Dave Humphries]

lovely shot of a beautiful building, well done, maybe if we all chip in we can buy it together?

Now there's an idea; the first CiC Photography school
(residential, also subsidise with use as hotel?)

[Mike Buckley]

This looks more like a movie set than a hotel. It's just too perfect.

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Manfred,

You must have better eyes than I do, as I didn't pick up any CA when I went pixel peeping. The shot was taken with a Nikon f/2.8 24-70mm lens, which is reputedly very clean (although there is some distortion at 24mm).

Well that is possible, although I would say "better trained" eyes.

Back in the day when cameras and TVs both had tubes (Plumbicon camera tubes and cathode ray tube monitors/TVs) one of my jobs was often "registration"; the task of ensuring that the images from red, green and blue channels were as well overlaid as possible - perfection (like we have with CCD/CMOS sensors and LCD displays), was unachievable in real world usage.

Due to my background, unfortunately, even viewed at 1353 x 885px in Lytebox on my LCD, I can see the CA even without going to 100% to 'pixel peep' at the full 4,215px × 2,764px posted.

The new big version is better, but still worse than I would have expected from such an esteemed lens - I wonder if, and I am guessing wildly here, the the high(?) ambient temperature, together with a black lens body exposed to the african sun, had contributed to this, due to thermal expansion issues within the lens barrel?

I also wondered if opening the NEF in Photoshop and using the default lens profile correction for the Nikon f/2.8 24-70mm lens in ACR, might produce better results than DxO? I was going to offer to do this with my CS5, but looking at the EXIF data, I see you already have CS6 ACR 6.5 and 7.1 at your disposal. This might be worth a try, certainly applying the lens correction is just a couple of mouse clicks - assuming it is not already defaulted on (as mine is).

Sorry to be a pixel peeping monster

[Manfred M]

Hi Manfred,



Well that is possible, although I would say "better trained" eyes.

Back in the day when cameras and TVs both had tubes (Plumbicon camera tubes and cathode ray tube monitors/TVs) one of my jobs was often "registration"; the task of ensuring that the images from red, green and blue channels were as well overlaid as possible - perfection (like we have with CCD/CMOS sensors and LCD displays), was unachievable in real world usage.

Due to my background, unfortunately, even viewed at 1353 x 885px in Lytebox on my LCD, I can see the CA even without going to 100% to 'pixel peep' at the full 4,215px × 2,764px posted.

The new big version is better, but still worse than I would have expected from such an esteemed lens - I wonder if, and I am guessing wildly here, the the high(?) ambient temperature, together with a black lens body exposed to the african sun, had contributed to this, due to thermal expansion issues within the lens barrel?

I also wondered if opening the NEF in Photoshop and using the default lens profile correction for the Nikon f/2.8 24-70mm lens in ACR, might produce better results than DxO? I was going to offer to do this with my CS5, but looking at the EXIF data, I see you already have CS6 ACR 6.5 and 7.1 at your disposal. This might be worth a try, certainly applying the lens correction is just a couple of mouse clicks - assuming it is not already defaulted on (as mine is).

Sorry to be a pixel peeping monster

I did a bit more reading and apparently that lens does show a bit of CA at 24 to 25mm. The ambient temperature was quite nice; Swakopmund is right by the ocean and the cold Bengula current heading north from Antarctica keeps the area pleasantly cool, even in the summer. The shot was taken at 4:30 in the afternoon, so heat from the sun was certainly not a factor.

I did a bit of playing around with the lens correction features in ACR and DxO; from a CA correction standpoint, there isn't a lot of difference betweem them as both seem to do this extremely well. For some of the other features like distortion correction and removing the vignetting, DxO seems to be a bit more sophisticated in how it proceses these. I has CA correction set in 5.5, but it looks like I didn't do it when I switched to CS6, an oversight that has been corrected now.

Thanks for pointing this out Dave.

Manfred

[Manfred M]

Manfred, did you see the wreck of the Zeila just north of Swakopmund and the cape cross seal reserve?

I had lunch at the Lighthouse in Swakopmund (Charlize Theron+Son+Mum sitting at next table) and then two hours up the road I was in the middle of a startlingly barren (yet beautiful) emptiness. What an amazing country.

No we did not see the wreck, we drove straight up to Cape Cross. Unfortunately, you can't see everything a country has to offer in one go, especially a country as large and diverse as Namibia.

[dan marchant]

Indeed, we missed out loads of stuff unfortunately. It was just luck that my G/F spotted the wreck as we were driving, because it is new and wasn't in our guide book. We also saw the wreck of the Winston, which is just north of Cape Cross. That is quite old and most of the ship is now destroyed. There are just a few metal parts stuck in the sand.