Venice old and new

[artington]

Try buying a beer in the West End or City of London and see how much it costs you!

[David Kilpatrick]

Not £8, for certain. I think we were into £4 per bottle lager at the Royal Albert Hall last year but that was a very exclusive bar - the restaurants and bars/hotel in Kensington were not over the top. The restaurant-cafe at the Natural History Museum was excellent value.

That is another point, of course - places like the NHM don't ban cameras. We don't patronise places which ban cameras (no problem with those that ban tripods or flash) or those which ask you to hand over your bags on entry. Thus - we bought some glass from a workshop which had no camera ban, and a mask from a shop which (unlike 90 percent of them) did not display rude NO PHOTO signs in the window along with the masks. As if it made any difference! Some of the street stalls even have the NO PHOTO stuff written on their stands.

We did spend some money on the day ticket for the Venice Biennale primary art venues; some country exhibits banned photography and video for understandable reasons, in sensitive art installations where even talking would have spoiled the experience for others (the British exhibit, a twin-screen film by Steve McQueen of a type ideally suited to DSLR HD video capture, was one). For the most part, photography was freely allowed throughout the art exhibits in the Giardini and the Arsenale. We can't do much with the pix, they show other people's copyright works, but at least we have a record. There was also an expensive art glass exhibition at the Science Institute, again no restrictions on camera use.

Had the Biennale not been showing, we would have done two less days in Venice and gone to Padua and Verona. There was some exceptional photography, even more exceptional art and installations, and it was not to be missed.

David

[bossel]

So after countless whiskey threads we finally have our beer thread My most recent experience is Bodrum/Turkey (many english there, btw). For 2.5 Euro you get a pint, sitting on the beach and enjoying the coolness of the night.

Our Hotel prices where different (we try to avoid buying from the hotels). A small can of beer would be 3.25E or 6E (!!) for a glass of wine. So we went back to the beach for a beer at nigh

[bakubo]

If you want value go to Tokyo, where I was a couple of weeks ago, and where you can get an excellent seated restaurant lunch for around 1,500 yen (say USD 15) or a bit more if you want a beer. Immensely photogenic too although, being a business trip, I had little time for that and in any case took my Panasonic LX3 rather than any Sony camera. I had forgotten how much of a true 21st Century city Tokyo is - fabulous, colourful and vibrant.

Yeah, Tokyo is my favorite city in the world. Great for photography too. I have a bunch of Tokyo photos in my Japan gallery:

http://www.bakubo.com

I have lived there a few times and go back about every other year to visit.

[artington]

Even so, we are still getting over £4,500 a year from the Alamy images or roughly £0.50 per image per year. It pays for the travel.

Out of interest, have you checked whether your sales are biased towards your earlier submissions, which is what I suspect?

[artington]

Yeah, Tokyo is my favorite city in the world. Great for photography too. I have a bunch of Tokyo photos in my Japan gallery:
http://www.bakubo.com

Henry, great shots - I love Japan 1/17

[David Kilpatrick]

Even so, we are still getting over £4,500 a year from the Alamy images or roughly £0.50 per image per year. It pays for the travel.

Out of interest, have you checked whether your sales are biased towards your earlier submissions, which is what I suspect?

No, they are not. Some earlier shots were consistent regular sellers and no longer are. Some recent shots having begun to sell. The sales are actually biased towards the type of subject and image. Example - Alicante one week trip was one year ago. Sales $741.01 to date, but half of that from UK immigration queue at the airport. I took a picture in the zone where photography is not allowed, and the UK Government paid $400 to use it on an annual report.

David

[bakubo]

Henry, great shots - I love Japan 1/17

I took this photo on a train platform in Tokyo at night. From the looks of it I think it was at Takadanobaba. If I checked the surrounding shots I could be sure though.

I love to just wonder around for hours in Tokyo with my camera.

[harvey]

... I have been thinking of buying a small Netbook to act as a backup for the memory cards but with the small processors they use I have been wondering what the file transfer speed is like from card/camera to Netbook. I have struggled to find out from searches on the internet. I use an A700 and cRAW or cRAW+JPG. I was not intending to do any editing except perhaps very basic work on JPG's e.g. levels. What has been your experience?

Ossie

Here are some numbers.

Sansung NC10 1.6GHz N270 extra 1GB ram bringing it to 2GB.

Copy 175 cRAW files (4.2GB) from A900 (USB) to NC10: 3m26.5s
Scan through all images with Irfanview (hit arrow when image loads): 2m6s
Load one image into Sony Data Converter SR: 14s

I really got my NC10 for email/web access when away. It is useful that you can copy images to it for extra backup but the small screen limits what you might do. For my Canon G9 I can use the SD card slot.

Harvey

[Ossie]

Here are some numbers.

Harvey. Thanks for the information particularly on data transfer. I took the plunge and purchased the Samsung N110 that replaces the NC10. So far it has met all my expectations for it. Even with just 1gb RAM it seems to cope very well with the very basic editing in PSE6 of JPG's, levels, cropping and straightening, which I was hoping for. I was very surprised at how well it handled a slide show running in PSE6. Transferring of files by cable between the N110 and my Desktop also works a treat.

I don't find the small screen size to be a major problem. At least the image is signifcantly larger than the screen on the back of the camera.

I am spending next week in France (Provence) and will be able to give it a serious workout.