Rain bow over Hudson yards high rise observation deck.

As a photographer living in Chelsea I have been following the Hudson yards project raising. On evenings in the Spring I look for beautiful sunsets. This after noon I saw for the first time the glass walls over the up coming observation deck acting a prism that breaks the the sunset light into full spectrum.

At first I thought it was a new LED lights that were add on but after looking with my Nikon p-1000 zoom I figured out it was all natural. Wondering if the architects ever thought about this intentionally. In any way it is a beautiful intention or mistake.

Eran Bendheim a day time laps

Emmanuelle Bendheim Book review - I

book title:  Thea sisters and the secret city by Thea Stilton published by Scholastic

so the book is about one of the sisters. One of them is visiting her very close sister, Maria, and their is the king's son Ganzolio, who is missing and they go on a trip to find this place called the secret city.

I really  liked this book because they were committed to working together. And in one part of the book they caught 3 criminals! The end is surprising and very good. The book is a series, related to the series of Thea's brother Geromeno who also has a lot of adventures but the complete  opposite of her.

Sony SEL18200 Zoom lens - 18 mm - 200 mm - F/3.5-6.3 - Sony E-mount Review

After long time contemplating rather to buy and invest in this expensive option I have purchased the Sony SEL e mount zoom 18-200 mm. This review is less mechanical and more of my impressions on this lens. I have moved to Sony Nex-5 after years of using both Canon and Nikon bodies, because of size and it was the first camera enable me to shoot Panoramic sweep in digital. After having a long zoom lens in canon the 24-300 I missed the option to walk with a full zoom in the street and capture moments further away from me. Had to adopt the saying if the photo is interesting your not close enough that meant getting closer  with the 16mm was not always an option.

The zoom is lighter and smaller then I imagined, It is the same size of any normal 30 mm zoom maybe a bit thicker but nothing to trouble me while walking around. It has a lock option knob to lock it on the wider zoom, after walking a while I found the reason for it. if the camera hang on the strap the lens zoom eventually fully open. No big deal but that almost triple the length of the lens and if you are not aware you may easily hit it with something. It is missing any external marking of manual focusing which make it more versatile I guess for turning endlessly on either side for working with auto focus, but would be a nice touch for a street shorter from the chest level  to choose his distance. A big help is build in the hardware to jump x14 to help with focusing. I change the focusing area to a spot area and use a lot a point half click, adjust the frame and full click.

Another strange flow is some time the lens f is not recognizable giving a -- instead of numbers to solve it either I turn off and on the camera or unlock and re lock the lens to the body. Not sure if it a problem in my lens or the body. Might be a problem specifically with my equipment. Will be happy to hear from you if you have the same issues. That was also the problems of causing the lens to unfocused. Once I figured that out the lens works perfectly fine.

Lots of people complained about the time it takes to focus I find only on the full zoom some problems focusing and if I widen the zoom sharp image appearing and then zoom in again. I like the wide option of the lens and with the option of setting my speed to a fixed speed and letting the camera choose aperture and iso I find it extremely helpful in street photos.


zoom test from maximum wide to full zoom.


A zoom test with stops in the middle.

The lens is not balance if you are holding the body only, but once you hold the lens with your left hand and holding the camera grip just to snap or to adjust while your zooming it is well balance and the grip is great. I found this very helpful when I shot video with it and manually focusing.


Video shot in Central park. fixed zoom and manual focusing.

Evening and indoor I have seen it working fine. grain is not an issue for me in a snap photos I am doing in the street or at home. Usualy in door I shot with the wider option so I have a better aperture options. Raw photography always work well for me.



As a pamoramic freak I had to see if I need to carry my 16mm or could use my zoom. For most of my panoramic it is working fine, and was able to even produce 3D panoramic as well as regular once.





The depth of field is getting shorter by the zoom and I find this very appealing in head shots and some creative perspective of shooting. this lens did not trouble me much with darker corners or a shifting to red. I am sure is there on some value like every compromise of zoom. but with raw shooting I can fix most of the troubling issues if I need to. I had worse lenses that I have made great results. With this lens I was not trouble much by those issues. I know that for this price range people expect more. But I have paid in the past triple then this to get the same results on a full frame camera. so I am not sure it is such a bad investment for your money. With my experience when you resell the lens you can get about two third of the investment back and that make it worth much more then renting or dreaming of buying but never full fill you need.

In genral a great option for me. I am looking forward to use it a lot.

SONY α NEX-5 sweep Panorama

Horizon +1 Optical filter, Kodak Tri-X

At last a quick option to make panorama on the fly with decent resolution. Two years ago I have stopped taking panoramic photos after 10 years of shooting in the streets, with an old Horizon Russian camera and Tri_X film Kodak film. The hassle to develop, scan the negative in compare to the quick results of the digital camera brought me to decide to move to digital cameras. Used the camera to stitch photos mostly of classic landscape but always missed the intuitive quick panoramic street photography, not to mention the time to stitch and wait in front of Photoshop.

Sony α NEX-5 16mm,  regular Panorama length. Eran Bendheim

The new Sony α NEX-5 with the sweep photography is compact to carry around (the 16mm pancake lens) in my pocket, with a 16 gig card has over 1400 images to be shot (The battery will surly be drained before that). it give the option of making two length of panorama pictures classic and wider. I am usually shoot from the heap with out looking at the screen and get used to the rhythm of the shot and rotation speed I need to apply, the camera fail the photo if you are turning too quickly. The sweep is very good at stitching non moving objects, cars walking people is facing a fate of being narrowed, duped or sliced in the process. In the old film camera you would get and smear effect in this case since the it is a multiple exposure and not a long scan exposure you get those cut out. I hope that Sony will enable a smart logic similar to face recognition or smile they have now to apply on the sweep option. A quick option might have been to write also the separate images in the card so I would have the option to edit later on if I want, but there is no option like that yet.

I have also tried a wider filter on the 16mm lens not sure how wide it translate to mm ( the wide angle x0.79 I guess it some were around 12.5 mm, with sensor size effective of around 16mm). The panoramic could be wide almost as 360 degree, photos closer to objects with less problems of duplicated in the stitching of moving objects, maybe the overlap is not that narrow as a bigger lens.

Sony α NEX-5 16mm,  wider Panorama length. Eran Bendheim

The way I photograph I take the camera errors for now and adopt them if they match the visual and the content, great! Part of the way I view my process is to let the camera process be part of the dynamic in creating the shot, all my photos are in a constantly in a changing environment. The street is always changing and the automatic sweep stitching the camera create is part of the process. The editing at the end will decide in the process if an image is erased or being saved and presented in a series like any regular process I have.

Hope this blog made you more interested in panoramic photography and you are welcome to see my site www.eran.com with is panoramic classic photos and check out mu flicker account with new panoramas and more

Thanks Eran Bendheim

The SONY α NEX-5.

Canon EF 28-300 mm f/3.5-5.6L IS USM

Lenses are changing and evolve so quickly, I am pretty used to look and observe in the mm of my focal lens. Luckily I have accesses to a Canon s mark III that convinced me to invest in lenses, since the body is there for me to use. I have bought two legacy canon lenses. the Canon 50 mm f/1.0 which I will find the time to write in the future, and the Canon zoom EF 28-300 mm f/3.5-5.6.

I am usually photograph street scenery on my way to work, or on a short trips around my apartment. I like to travel and look for stuff that capture my interest and edit it at home. looking for and ideal lens that will cover large range and will let me choose quickly my cropping and setting on the shoot brought me to the zoom world. Up until now I have either used a fixed wide lense usually around the 28 mm or my old Horison panoramic camera. I looked for a bright clear and the widest range possible. THis was a very pricy investment, after watching talks of a celebrities photographers over youtube, they need quick and fast soultions, I decided to get it.

It is like all the review post a very heavy lens. On the other hand you do walk with one lens that will give a huge range. As you can see from the sample at the white house shot covering the full max. and min. of the focal zoom.


The canon 28-300 zoom is pretty bright compare to the other zoom lenses and the big saver in a digital age is the use of ISO as a variable that you can change just aperture or shutter speed. Night shoots in the sample made on a tripod show the full zoom or the wide option (this wide is cropped to feel like panoramic photography). Those shots were taken with a low ASA and a long exposure.





an extreme ISO push and photoshop enhanced night shot in a night street scenery



On other hours of the day like sunset I had found it quick clean and very simple to use





There were lots of complains on places I searched about the zoom that move forward and backward, I find it very intuitive and quick to use. Some wrote that it brings lots of dust and particles into the camera. I am traveling to dusty place at lease once a year desert and see shores with sand. I did not get any unusual dust and and problems then the regular lens use I have don prior to this lens.

The great versatile of the zoom is the fact is also has macro option which does a very nice work when you do encounter a need for a close up option. It is a sharp enough to be use as is or with a little help of photoshop bring a very nice shot.



In general it is a match for me now when I can still carry it around, I guess in the future I will tolerate less the wight and will be happy to find some lighter options but for now it is a great street hunter lens.