”Goodbye To Budapest”

”Goodbye To Budapest”
©David A. Ziser

Today we bid our goodbye to the beautiful city of Budapest.  It has been a wonderful 12 days beginning with our Master Class almost two weeks ago and spending the last several days exploring this energetic, fun-filled, rich-in-history, beautiful city – most of it on foot.  LaDawn and I figure we have walked over 75 miles since we arrived here 12 days ago.

This is the view of our home away from home these last two weeks, the Gellert Hotel from the Pest side of the Danube, as we crossed the Liberty Bridge for the final time last evening.  The view is just as beautiful as the first time we cross it so many days ago. Even when we returned from dinner with our friends Roland and his wife Ilde late yesterday evening, the river was full of activity.  I had to wait several minutes for long boats, ferries, and tour boats to pass before making my exposure.

This image is an in-camera HDR photograph with my Canon 5D Mark III set to Auto HDR – I’m so lazy ;~) but it does give me a great result almost every time. The point about Auto HDR is the fact that the camera makes 3 exposures, the first at what is considered the best exposure, the second exposure is 3 stops under and the third exposure is 3 stops over. The camera then automatically combines all 3 exposures maintaining the mid-tones of the correct exposure,  the hi-lights of the underexposed, the shadows of the over exposed for the final HDR exposure.  I simply need to anticipate the slowest exposure as I’m hand-holding the camera for these images. In this case, the exposure ranged from 1/8 to 1/500 second to get to the final result.  I’m pretty good hand-holding my camera at the 1/8 second but still I needed the high ISO, as posted below, to capture the final image.

Camera specs: Canon 5D Mark III fitted with my Canon 24-105mm IS lens at 55mm, 1/60 second at F4.0, ISO 12,800. Camera on Auto HDR setting.

p.s.  I’ll plan a more thorough wrap up sometime next week once we get settled into our new surrounds at the Abbazia Country Club down in Nemesnep, Hungary.  We’re about a three hour drive and hope to arrive around 2 p.m. this afternoon. Here is a map to give you an idea where we will be staying. 

It’s a small village of only 146 people nestled among the borders of Croatia, Austria, Slovenia, and Hungary.  The adventure continues ;~)

David and LaDawn