Sololaki

olli

Super Moderator Emeritus
Location
Guangzhou
Name
olli
Decided it was time to go take some pictures so I headed into the old Tbilisi neighbourhood of Sololaki. Unfortunately, it was an icy cold day and after a couple of hours my fingers were frozen. I did manage a few shots though, all taken with the NEX-5 and a borrowed SEL16mm lens which I still can't decide if I want to get or not - it might all come down to how good the forthcoming Sigma 19mm is. I also pumped up both contrast and clarity on these in LR.

Sololaki is one of the older parts of the city which has been largely untouched by attempts to modernise or restore which have been going on elsewhere. On the one hand that's a good thing because I get to see and feel the atmosphere of those neighbourhoods; on the other hand the more time passes the more the buildings crumble and decay to the point where they are beyond restoration. The first shot is a great example of one of these buildings.

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DSC02477 by ...olli..., on Flickr

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DSC02458 by ...olli..., on Flickr

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DSC02467 by ...olli..., on Flickr​
 
Gosh, Olli, the decay is so beautiful and photogenic. The colors, though pumped up you say, still remind me of water colors... To my eyes, your colors and clarity are right where they should be - all three are a feast for the eyes. The first looks as though it could be a scene from an opera - maybe La Boheme comes to Sololaki... I like all three for different reasons and am so glad you've posted them here. Can't say enough how much I like the color processing, as well as the scenes.
 
I'm with BB and Karen. A slice of life in a genuine lived-in town....without pretensions. Love no #2. Now that's a General Store. Good to see the paternalism with smoking hasn't hit that village. Ours are locked away behind a non-descript black cabinet
 
I'm often torn when seeing old decaying buildings. I enjoy seeing old things, but it saddens me to see them falling apart.

Great photos though. Olli, hope your fingers didn't get stuck on the camera!

BTW, I think the 16mm is a vastly underrated lens. I gifted my NEX3 to a friend, but kept the 16mm. Just in case I get a 7 ...
 
Interesting what you say about 16mm from Sony, Armanius. I'm just the opposite, I hate mine. Distortion, softness, irregular corners...
The only thing going for it (or at least my copy) is it's size.
On the other side, when I mount a Vivitar 28mm via M42 adapter, my Nex3 seems much better, but I miss too much shots due to my poor manual focusing skills:-(
 
Thanks all. Glad you like the look BB. It's not really my style generally. For the most part I prefer more a more muted softer look but it's nice to go for a change every once in a while.

Not sure what that is behind the window - to be honest I didn't even notice it at the time.

Regarding the 16, I do quite like it. I've been using it for a couple of weeks now and have the lend of it for another couple of weeks. It's certainly much better than many of its critics have claimed. I'm still trying to work out the distortion thing. On the one hand a number of the images I took on this walk looked slightly 'odd', but I couldn't tell whether it was down to lens or the fact that a lot of buildings in Tbilisi have neither a flat surface nor a square angle in sight. I suppose I could try to shoot a few modern brick walls.

I did notice how obvious it is with this lens when you don't have the plane of the sensor aligned with the subject, especially on these kind of side on shots. Even a few degrees off translates into visible distortion on screen. I had to tweak quite a number of shots using the horizontal slider in LR's Lens Correction to straighten things up.

If it was available anywhere I might just buy it anyway but it seems to be hard to find at the moment. If the 19mm comes out before or close to when the 16 becomes available I might wait and see how the two compare.
 
These shots are squared off very nicely to the horizontal and vertical planes. This is something I am always quite anal about. You either need to be dead straight or significantly out; anything in between just looks like you got it slightly wrong :)
 
This is something I am always quite anal about.:)

Thanks. Me too. I can do the basic processing in 5 minutes, then spend 20 minutes in the Lens Correction panel; should it be +3 or +4? should it be 02 degrees or 0.1. I usually end up utterly incapable of making a decision. The LR grid in Lens Correction is very handy - except when you have these kind of buildings.
 
Brick walls are the worst, totally unforgiving! This one I did recently had everything; vertical distortion, horizontal distortion, rotate, skew...

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Of course, it's not always completely the photographer's fault. Some older buildings just aren't perfectly square to begin with!
 
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