Kandy, Sri Lanka

Hanging out in Kandy, Sri Lanka.

Phu Quoc fishing

Fishing in Phu Quoc, Vietnam. Fringed with white-sand beaches and with large tracts still cloaked in dense, tropical jungle, Phu Quoc rapidly morphed from a sleepy island backwater to a must-visit beach escape for Western expats and sun-seeking tourists. Beyond the resorts lining Long Beach, it’s still largely undeveloped, so there's ample room for exploration and escaping.

Hanoi bikers

Bikers in Hanoi, Vietnam.

Cambodia

Riverfront, Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

Ratchaprasong, Bangkok

Home to Bangkok’s most colourful, high-street shopping and the famous Erawan Shrine, the Ratchaprasong area can be explored with ease, merely by hopping off the Chidlom Skytrain (BTS) station – straight onto the pedestrian-friendly skywalk that rises above the busy streets.

Its central location – close enough to walk to Siam and connected by Skytrain to other prime areas makes Ratchaprasong a highly desirable choice for visitors. With five-star hotels, fine dining and a staggering selection of retail therapy packed into one square mile, you are sure to discover, experience and enjoy some of Bangkok's best offerings.

Hotel Continental Saigon

Hotel Continental Saigon and traffic.

Phnom Penh woman

Street vendor at a market in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

Train people

People on train in Rangoon, Burma.

Train vendor, Burma

Girl selling fruit on train in Rangoon, Burma.

Burma train ride

Yangon Circular Railway is the local commuter rail network that serves the Yangon metropolitan area. Operated by Myanmar Railways, the 45.9-kilometre, 39-station loop system connects satellite towns and suburban areas to the city. The railway has about 200 coaches, runs 20 times and sells 100,000 to 150,000 tickets daily.The loop, which takes about three hours to complete, is a way to see a cross section of life in Yangon. Not to be missed!

Aya Sofya

There are many important monuments in İstanbul, but this venerable structure – commissioned by the great Byzantine emperor Justinian, consecrated as a church in 537, converted to a mosque by Mehmet the Conqueror in 1453 and declared a museum by Atatürk in 1935 – surpasses the rest due to its innovative architectural form, rich history, religious importance and extraordinary beauty.

Reichstag & Dome

After being destroyed in the war, the Reichstag in Berlin was rebuilt between 1961 and 1971 in a simplified form without the dome, which was blown up in 1945, according to plans by Paul Baumgarten.
After German reunification, the German Bundestag decided to use the building as a seat of Parliament again.

Between 1994 and 1999, the Reichstag was redesigned and expanded by the British architect Sir Norman Foster as a modern Parliament building while retaining its extensive, historical dimensions. The accessible glass dome, which initially generated a lot of controversy, has since become one of the landmarks of Berlin. Since 1999, the German Bundestag has been convening in the Reichstag building.
See more photos from Germany.

Dinagyang warrior

The Dinagyang is a religious and cultural festival in Iloilo City, Philippines held on the fourth Sunday of January, or right after the Sinulog In Cebu and the Ati-Atihan in Aklan. It is held both to honor the Santo Niño and to celebrate the arrival on Panay of Malay settlers and the subsequent selling of the island to them by the Atis.

Resor i radio

Den 30 september medverkade jag (Anders Thorsell) i direktsändning för Sveriges radio P4 Västernorrland. Lyssna på inslaget här.

Malé is the capital

Fish market. Malé is the capital and most populous city in the Republic of Maldives. The central island is heavily urbanized, with the built-up area taking up essentially its entire landmass.

Brunei

Brunei regained its independence from the United Kingdom on 1 January 1984. Economic growth during the 1990s and 2000s, averaging 56% from 1999 to 2008, transformed Brunei into an industrialised country. It has developed wealth from extensive petroleum and natural gas fields. Brunei has the second-highest Human Development Index among the South East Asia nations, after Singapore, and is classified as a "developed country". According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Brunei is ranked fifth in the world by gross domestic product per capita at purchasing power parity. The IMF estimated, in 2011, that Brunei was one of two countries (the other being Libya) with a public debt at 0% of the national GDP. Forbes also ranks Brunei as the fifth-richest nation out of 182, based on its petroleum and natural gas fields.

Rush hour at Victory monument

There is always rush hour in Bangkok, Thailand...

Alexanderplatz, Berlin

‘Alex’ to Berliners, a cattle market in the Middle Ages, a military parade square and an exercise ground for nearby barracks until the mid 19th century - Alexanderplatz is the square named to honour Alexander I, Tsar of Russia, on his visit to Berlin in 1805. It was here that Alfred Döblin took the pulse of the cosmopolitan metropolis portrayed in his 1929 novel ‘Berlin Alexanderplatz’ filmed by Fassbinder for a TV series as a portrait of the bustling city in the 1920s before the imminent Nazi takeover. Fast forward to more recent times, one million people congregated here, on 4 November 1989 to demonstrate against the GDR regime shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall. This was the largest anti-government demonstration in its history.

‘This is Burma’

‘This is Burma’, wrote Rudyard Kipling. ‘It is quite unlike any place you know about.’ How right he was: more than a century later Myanmar remains a world apart. To travel here is to encounter men wearing skirt-like longyi, women smothered in thanakha (traditional make-up) and betel-chewing grannies with mouths full of blood-red juice – and that’s just at the airport! One of the most fascinating aspects of travel in Myanmar is the opportunity to experience a corner of Asia that, in many ways, has changed little since British colonial times.

Bishkek street life

Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan, Central Asia, is a city of wide boulevards and marble-faced public buildings combined with numerous Soviet-style apartment blocks surrounding interior courtyards and, especially outside the city centre, thousands of smaller privately built houses. It is laid out on a grid pattern, with most streets flanked on both sides by narrow irrigation channels that water the innumerable trees which provide shade in the hot summers.

Berlin Potsdamer Platz

Berlin Potsdamer Platz is a railway station in Berlin. It is completely underground and situated underneath the Potsdamer Platz in central Berlin. Regional and S-Bahn services call at the station.

Visit the dome of the Reichstag Building, Berlin

The roof terrace and dome of the Reichstag Building in Berlin, can be visited by members of the public, and offer spectacular views of the parliamentary and government district and Berlin’s sights.

Potzdamer Platz, Berlin

After developing within the space of little over a century from an intersection of rural thoroughfares into the most bustling traffic intersection in Europe, Potzdmer Platz in Berlin, Germany was totally laid waste during World War II and then left desolate during the Cold War era when the Berlin Wall bisected its former location. Since German reunification, Potsdamer Platz has been the site of major redevelopment projects.

Texting girl

Texting girl on motorbike in Saigon, Vietnam.

Spectacular Vertigo bar, Bangkok

Always featured in the tourist guides, the Moon Bar was one of the first rooftop places in Bangkok. Located on the 61st floor of the Banyan Tree Hotel on Sathorn road, it offers a stunning 360 degrees view.

High octane

Fasten your seatbelts as Ho Chi Minh City is a metropolis on the move – and we’re not just talking about the motorbikes that throng the streets. Saigon, as it’s known to all but city officials, is Vietnam at its most dizzying: a high-octane city of commerce and culture that has driven the whole country forward with its limitless energy. It is a living organism that breathes life and vitality into all who settle here, and visitors cannot help but be hauled along for the ride.

Kiev, Ukraina

The friendship arch and monuments was opened together with the All-Union Lenin Museum (today, Ukrainian House) on November 7, 1982 to commemorate the 60th Anniversary of the USSR and the celebration of the 1500th Anniversary of the Kiev city. Photo: Anders Thorsell

Bulabog beach

This is the 2.5km long water sports beach of Boracay, and is located on the east side of the island. From November to April, Bulabog Beach is the kite boarding and windsurfing heart of Boracay. From May to October it is the water sports centre of Boracay. It is a 5 minute walk to D'Mall, 10 minutes to White Beach. There are some fantastic resorts and hotels that take advantage of this unique beach community. The beach is protected by an offshore reef. It is less developed and the Boracay hotels here are usually quieter than those on White Beach. Bulabog has earned the title: "Number One kite boarding beach in Asia."

Sathorn, Bangkok

Stretching from Lumpini Park south to the river, Sathorn contains some of Bangkok's trendiest hotels like the Metropolitan, the Sukhothai and Banyan Tree. The area also boasts many upmarket serviced apartments and a variety of fine restaurants serving up excellent local and international cuisine.

Diniwid beach, Boracay

Boracay is a tropical island surrounded by stunning white sand beaches about an hour's flight from Cebu or Manila just off the larger Philippines island of Panay. For beach connoisseurs it competes with the best beaches of more popular destinations such as the Caribbean and the South Pacific as well as neighbouring Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia.

Maldives / Maldiverna

Unrivalled luxury, stunning white-sand beaches and an amazing underwater world make the Maldives an obvious choice for a true holiday of a lifetime. The Maldives is home to perhaps the best beaches in the world; they’re on almost every one of the country’s nearly 1200 islands and are so consistently perfect that it’s hard not to become blasé about them.

Vietnam, wedding

Wedding shoot. Hanoi, Vietnam.

San Miguel beer

San Miguel Brewery Inc. (SMB) is the largest producer of beer in the Philippines, with nine out of ten beer drinkers preferring its brands. San Miguel Beer was first produced by La Fabrica de Cerveza de San Miguel, an upstart brewery in the heart of Manila that began its operations in 1890. It received the Royal Grant from the Spanish king to brew beer in the Philippines, then a colony of Spain. In 1963, the brewery was renamed San Miguel Corp.

View from Vertigo Grill and Moon Bar, Bangkok, Thailand

Reaching for the clouds at Vertigo and Moon Bar on the 61st floor of the Banyan Tree hotel is one of the best ways to end a long day in Bangkok. There is no lack of rooftop bars in town but Vertigo has always been amongst the favourites. With an unusual narrow and elongated shape, the entire top of the building is occupied by both the bar and the restaurant and gives the unusual impression of being aboard a spaceship in the sky.

Taipei 101

Towering above the city like the gigantic bamboo stalk it was designed to resemble, Taipei 101 is impossible to miss. At 508m, Taipei 101 held the title of 'world's tallest building' for a number of years, though it now must be content with the world's tallest green building (as in eco-friendly, not envious).

Sinulog festival, Cebu city

Sinulog festival, Cebu city, Philippines.

Scwedagon Pagoda

Visible from all parts of the city, this pagoda is touted to be one of the most magnificent monuments on earth, housing the relics of the Lord Buddha including eight hairs from his head. It's stupa is covered with 8,000 solid gold plates and its tips set with diamonds, rubies, sapphires and topaz, making it the most prominent landmark around.

Takeoff Aéroport de Luxembourg

Luxembourg Findel Airport is the main airport in Luxembourg. It is Luxembourg's only international airport and is the only airport in the country with a paved runway. The airport is completely international as there are no other commercial airports in the country. In 2013 it handled 2,197,497 passengers. By cargo tonnage, Findel ranked as Europe's 5th busiest and the world's 28th busiest in 2010.

The Dome at Lebua, Bangkok

Located on the 63rd floor of The Dome at Lebua, Sirocco is the world's highest al fresco restaurant and one of Bangkok's most coveted dining choices. It never fails to leave one mesmerized with a breathtaking view of Bangkok and the Chao Phraya river and an amazing Skybar.

Makati - Selfie capital

Makati City, known as the financial center of the Philippines, can now boast another distinction: It is the Selfie Capital of the World. An examination of hundreds of thousands of selfies—the low-fi, self-shot photographs that are intensely popular among younger social media users—suggests that the city, part of metropolitan Manila and home to 500,000 people, produces more selfies per capita than any other city in the world.

Ministry of Defence, Belgrade, Serbia

Yugoslav Ministry of Defence building was severly damaged during the NATO bombings in 1999. Still standing in 2014.

Ho Chi Minh City traffic

Ho Chi Minh City traffic and Hotel Continental.

Vietnam wedding shoot

Bröllopsfoto i Hanoi, Vietnam.

Jumping

Diniwid beach, Boracay, Filippinerna. Foto: Anders Thorsell

National museum of Catalan art

MNAC, the national museum of Catalan art, Barcelona

Lenin statue, Bishkek

Bishkek's huge Lenin statue remains the only major statue of Lenin left in Central Asia, presiding over the ceremonial heart of the capital city. After gaining independence from the Soviet Union, most of the new Central Asian republics demolished their monuments to Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.

The Kyrgyz it seems have decided that he and his legacy are still very much a part of the country's history: although there are occasional debates in the press and parliament, there is a special law on the preservation of the statue.

Klättring i Novi Sad

Spontan klättring i Novi Sad, Serbien. Foto: Anders Thorsell

Chiang Mai Flower Festival

Varje år den första helgen i februari pågår Chiang Mai Flower Festival. Störst och bäst är paraden som startar tidigt på lördag morgon. Deltagarna i paraden ställer upp sig på Charoen Muang Road, från Nawarat Bridge hela vägen till tågstationen.

Sony a7 - del ultimata resekameran?

Du vill ha en lätt kamera på resan men vill inte ge avkall på bildkvaliteten? Då kanske Sony a7, Sony A7R eller Sony a7s är kameran för dig. Här testar vi Sony a7.

Den har full-frame och en vikt på bara 474 gram. Jämför t.ex med Canon Eos 6d (770 gram) eller Nikon D800 (900 gram). Sony a7 är därför väldigt smidig. Monterar du på Sony Sonnar T* FE 35mm f/2.8 ZA som väger ynka 120 gram har du ett smidigt paket på 594 gram. Det är t.ex. mindre än vad bara objektivet Sigma 35mm f/1,4 DG HSM Art väger med sina 665 gram. Knockoutseger i rond 1 till Sony a7 alltså.

Hantering: Menyhanteringen känns lite besvärlig att lära sig i början men det vänjer man sig vid efter ett tag. Mycket smidigt att kunna överföra bilder med hjälp av WIFI. Bildkvaliteten är mycket bra. Eftersom kameran är smidig att bära med sig är det en kamera som verkligen kommer till användning. Som resekamera är den väldigt bra.

Vad som är mindre bra är kort batteritid även om jag oftast klarar mig med ett batteri på en fotodag. Det får man lösa med att ta med extra batterier. Originalbatterier kostar dock en slant: ca 750 kr. Det finns dock billigare (pirat) alternativ.
Minus också för de obegripliga standardvärdena som är programmerade i halvautomatiklägen. Med bländarautomatik vill kameran gärna ha slutartid på 1/60s. Där skulle jag föredra 1/125. Nu kan bilderna lätt bli suddiga om man inte ser upp med inställningarna. När det gäller bländarautomatik vill kameran helst ha bländare 4 fast jag har ett 2.8-objektiv på. Här skulle jag se 2.8 istället med Sony FE 35 för att få en fin bokeh (bakgrundsoskärpa). Förhoppningsvis löser man det med kommande mjukvaru-uppdateringar.

Andra nackdelar är att originaloptik kostar en hel del. FE 35 ligger på 7500 kr. Kitobjektivet 28-70 landar på ca 4500 medan Sony FE 55/1,8 ZA Sonnar T kostar hela 9500.

Finns det inga genvägar på optikfronten? Jovisst. Enklast är om du köper objektiv från Sony E. Du kan t.ex. använda Sony E 20/2,8 som kostar 2800 kr. Personligen föredrar jag Sony E 24/1,8 ZA Sonnar T. Kostar just nu ca 6990 kr (dyker upp då och då på Tradera för ca 4500 kr). Med Sony E-linser kan du dock bara köra i crop-mode. Då får du ut 10 megapixel på en Sony a7. Fördelen är dock att autofokusen är mycket snabbare än för Sonnar T* FE 35mm f/2.8 ZA. Den linsen är jag ganska besviken på i ärlighetens namn. Det kommer säkert objektiv från t.ex. Sigma framöver. Sony FE är fortfarande ett nytt system.

Mitt tips är därför att om du redan äger objektiv till Sony NEX kan du fortsätta använda dessa på din Sony a7, Sony a7r eller Sony a7s.

Film då? Har bara testat sporadiskt ännu men att filma i t.ex. svartvitt läge är underbart kul. Se exempel på film från Sony a7.

Se fler Sony a7 bilder på mitt Flickr-konto. Se särskilt Berlin with Sony a7

//Anders Thorsell, www.resefoto.net


Sony a7 + Sony E 50 mm.

Dubai desert

Sprakande solnedgång i öknen utanför Dubai. Foto: Anders Thorsell