Another gorgeous morning in Budapest on Saturday… I visited City Park to continue testing the Lensbaby Burnside 35 lens.
The first shot of the day turned out wonderful. I tried a silhouette picture of the Heroes’ Square statues, and this is what I got. I LOVE the birds in the image. Although there is a distortion on the left side, since it is a silhouette, it works for me.
​My next stop was a closer image of the statues of the Seven chiefs of the Magyars. I experimented with the different vignette settings, and I’ll let you decide if you prefer this picture with a little or with a lot of vignette.

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The weather finally cooperated and I visited the Buda Castle District to try out the Burnside 35 on my second favorite subject: architecture.
I walked around Matthias Church, Fisherman’s Bastion and the Maria Magdalena Tower. As I had mentioned it in a previous post, I prefer to visit the Castle District in the early hours, before the tourist groups show up. It feels like a very different place when it’s quiet, peaceful, and only a few people (who live there) walk on the streets.

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I checked the bus schedules last night. I put my camera gear together and gathered my clothes as well. I wanted to leave early for the city. (I stay in a suburb of Budapest, where I grew up. I need to travel 45-60 minutes to reach downtown Budapest.)
At 3 am it started raining, and my plans fell through. I am very spoiled by the weather where I live, in Southern California. It barely rains there (not good for the nature, of course), and I can plan photo walks for basically any time. But not in Hungary.
Mid-morning the rain finally stopped, but it stayed cloudy and with a chance of further rain. Instead of going to downtown I stayed and photographed my dad’s flowers. This time I am posting my edited photos only – my photo artistry includes post processing.
All of the below images were taken with the Burnside 35, at F2.8 or F4. Post processing was done in Lightroom, Nik Efex and On1 Effects.
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 Well, it didn’t really work. I couldn’t focus fast enough with the manual lens. I am very used to the autofocus, in fact, I use the back-focus on my camera, which is even more efficient. This short video is of my friend and her adorable doggy, Fuge. While they played catch, I took a few photos of Fuge. (I used the Burnside lens for the video as well.)
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Two years ago I discovered a field with hay bales just a few minutes from my parents’ house. Last year I had huge plans of taking pictures of them right after I arrived to Hungary. I walked to the field on my first day, and found nothing. They had already collected the bales. This year I got lucky; they were still at the field, and I was able to take a few comparison shots. I took the Lensbaby Burnside 35 and the Nikon 35mm lenses with me.
The following two images are out of the camera, no editing. They were taken almost from the same spot, a few minutes apart, both at F5.6 aperture.
Burnside 35
Nikon 35
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