Paris – La Tour Eiffel, Eiffel Tower

La Tour Eiffel – Eiffel Tower. Paris. 2018-May-11. Photoessay.
Ricoh GR II, GR Lens f=18.3 mm 1:2.8, Samsung Galaxy A5 (2016) with YASHICA Lens, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom.

We decided to take the stairs. Stair A – to be accurate – just because of the form of the ‘A’ – it is quite similar to the Eiffel Tower.

(click to enlarge to full resolution)

Oh man … thousands and thousands of people queuing in front of the Eiffel Tower … do we really want to queue with them? It must take hours! Yes. We did. And it was worth it.

More than two hours queuing

We had to pass two security checkpoints, the first one to enter the Eiffel Tower site – dear me – I wouldn’t have expected the Eiffel Tower to be that huge – it is giant! – and the second one right at the bottom of stair A. They wanted to see my pocket tripod – but finally let me pass. Ough …

Queuing more than two hours gave me plenty of time to calm down, to go with the flow, sneaking accross all the site in slow motion to the right spots, to get the perfect perspective and play with the beautiful tones – and finally to get exactly those images I had in my mind … for years by the way! – I had a clear vision of the images I wanted to get of the Eiffel Tower – and today I finally got them.

What a fantastic dream came true.

Taking the stairs to floor 1 and then climbing up to floor 2.

 
Finally reached floor 2. View to the top of the Eiffel Tower.

 
A rather complex construction, it’s quite a bit of steel … just imagine you would have to free all the Eiffel Tower from rust … 😉

And enjoying some – no, to be true – plenty of the famous Macaroons at the Macaroon Bar on the second floor was a delightful pleasure.

monochrome and wide angle

It was a fantastic experience to compose exactly those images I always wanted. I wanted to achieve a rather monochromatic look with just two colors – the Eiffel Tower should tend to dark but warm black – with a touch of brown. The blue sky – thanks God for the perfect weather! – should be desaturated in order to get bluish grey. The perspective of the fixed lens of my Ricoh GR II (f=18.3 mm corresponds to 28 mm focal length in 35 mm full frame) was perfect for me – and by the way: The Ricoh GR II’s image quality is superb! In all my photographic career I have never had another lens giving that great image quality – and this includes even my trusted old  Pentax 6×7, my Hasselblad 500c and my Mamiya 7 ii (which means quite a lot!) – for me the Ricoh GR II is the small Leica M System – perfect. I should have bought it much earlier!

View down from floor 1 to the queue.

YASHICA Lens

Two of my favourite images were taken with the YASHICA Lens on my Samsung Galaxy A5 (2016) smartphone – I love this lightweight combo.

The YASHICA lens converts any smartphone camera to a camera with an ultra wide angle lens. Just attach it to the smartphone camera and center it (be careful, it’s a loose fit, otherwise the image corners will be rather soft and blurry – see my example – but – do you really care about that?) – and here you go. I love the unique wide angle look and the really good image quality of the YASHICA Lens.

YASHICA Lens and Samsung Galaxy A5 (2016). HDR for better contrast control. Maybe a little too much?

… and again and again

Once we left the Eiffel Tower site I always had to turn back, making images of the Eiffel Tower again and again – yes: Today one of my long time dreams had come true.

 
Color: Original .JPG file, developed from the .DNG file. High Contrast Black & White: SOOC (straight out of the camera). Which one do you like more?

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