A dining table with a view of Green Point, Sea Point, the new stadium and the Atlantic Ocean

GREEN POINT

I finally had dinner in the revolving restaurant of the Ritz Hotel after an earlier visit of

 Design Indaba Expo 

in the Convention Center

I took all these shots with my new ultra wide angle Canon 10-20mm Lens apart from the last one

SEA POINT

The view is to die for ..

Be prepared though.... the whole place seems to be in a time

warp, the decor, the food, including the music of the lady pianist :)

Still....I enjoyed it , the food was not bad and the staff is friendly
I had Chicken and prawn sate from the grill and
grilled line fish in a piquant papaya sauce
oh ok I do not reallywant to admit this...
 but I also had vanilla ice cream and hot chocolate sauce

The Convention Center against the backdrop of Table Mountain and Devils Peak

Design Indaba Expo is a 100% local-is-lekker celebration of South Africa’s ingrained creativity.
 Advertising, architecture, craft, décor, film, fashion, graphic design, interior design, jewellery, new media, publishing, product design and visual media, are all presented shoulder-to-shoulder

Shot from home, late afternoon

A pool with a view ...

Cape Town's pride and joy ...Our new soccer stadium with the sunset sky reflected in the roof

Mama Mia ! Is she beautiful or not ?

Look what magnificent cumulus clouds I saw this afternoon !
Taken from home

V&A Waterfront

With my new Ultra wide Canon lens

 Focal lenght 16.0mm

Very happy with the result

Old Green Point Stadium remains

Canon Ultra wide lens 10-20mm
Focal lenght 13.0 mm

To my surprise the fencing was gone

Unfortunately I could not include the old stand since it would have

meant shooting into the sun

Some more from 2 nights ago

The sunset sky vividly reflected in the glass roof
It is so gorgeous
 Pity that you have to be really high up to see it

Captured ! Ultra wide (Canon 10-20mm) World Cup Cape Town Stadium + Green Point Urban park aerial updates

So I swapped the Sigma for the Canon lens and as I arrived home it started raining..
 it looked so grey and dismal
by 7 pm there was a storm blowing as well and I thought what the heck
 I just drive up close and take a few shots
I managed to take these 2 and about 6 landscape shots
The landscape shots were duly binned..
but this is what I will improve on in future
I am not happy with the composition of these shots
due to trees being in the way and the strong wind (dust storm)
limiting my access to the stadium but they are sharp
so I am happy now

Extra Large image
South Entrance
Granger Bay Boulevard




An excellent website :

 HOW TO USE ULTRA WIDE LENSES

A MUST read for the owners of the

 EFS Canon 10-22mm ultra wide lens

Three Anchor bay

New Green Point urban park in the making

Full speed ahead ...

Urban Park lake construction

They have been working on this for ages
they had to put in extra drainage since the ground was allot wetter then they anticipated
Not sure what the black stuff is... I will get close soon and find out

The pile of soil in the old stadium never seems to deminish ..

yet they are forever digging in it and moving it around

High Resolution images of the Green Point Stadium in Cape Town, South Africa

 Canon EF 70-300mm
Click on image to see a very big file  

The wind was incredible I would have been blasted everywhere and had no idea where to go

but I found a nice sheltered spot in the lee side of a wall,
 on one of the high roads on Signal Hill and took a nice series of sunset shots
A beautiful sunset and  lightening over Milnerton quite spectacular !

More of these tomorrow ..

It was a stunning sunset

Click images to see large

I bought a new polariser for the Sigma 10-20 lens and took it once more out to see if I could improve on the images

Well this is the last one you will see from me

it was the only usable one of 12 images taken with the Sigma lens

They are very soft on the left side of the image and ok-ish on the right

 although sharp in the middle

Tomorrow I am going to change it for the

Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM

I hope this will be more to my liking

I found this on the web today its amazing !

The Green Point Stadium will host the 2010 FIFA World Cup, starting in June and ending in July. The stadium is located in Green Point, between Signal Hill and the Atlantic Ocean, near the Cape Town city center.
With a capacity of 68,000, the stadium will host first round, second round, quarter, and semi-final matches. GeoEye-1 .50-meter resolution collected 11 September 2009.CLICK ON IMAGE   to download)

Cape Town Stadium iced up

Or so it seems ..

Last one  from yesterday evening its a big file ..

The wind was insane today

that is why all the tourist boats are moored in harbour

I had a Haagen Dasz ice cream in the V&A Waterfront

Life is good !

Quite pleased with the sharpness here

just a slight softness at the edges

I do not have my polariser for the Sigma lens 10-20mm yet

so the skies are a little washed out

Aerial view over Green Point, new soccer Stadium, V&A Waterfront, Cape Town CBD

click image to see large

I took a whole load of shots from Signal Hill with my new Sigma lens 10-20 mm

 but was mostly disappointed with the results

I know it must be me..

I stil don't know how to get the best out of it

It was exceptional warm these last 2 days

this evening was tropical and i had never seen it as busy on Signal Hill

It was mayhem with all the cars on that narrow road getting stuck and no where to park..

You hear all sorts of languages

and people are very friendly chatting

There are people bringing picnic's you can see lovers arm in arm or kissing , families ,

lots of foreigners, South African tourists from other parts of SA

I like it and feel very safe there at night

Canon 450D and Sigma lens 10-20mm F4-5.6 EX DC HSM trial shots of the Cape Town Stadium

And so I bought my new Sigma lens 10-20mm F4-5.6 EX DC HSM

in addition to my now broken Canon Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM wide angle lens

 (see previous post)

which will hopefully be returned in full working order in 2 weeks 

Its under warranty so doesn't cost me anything Thank God  

Very excited and having read up on it as much as possible I jumped in my car and headed for the golf course

I learned that there are a number of known and possible  issues with this lens, not an easy lens, it needs getting used to and it was advised to operate the lens manual

 and that was what I did

Gave this one the Lomo treatment

mainly to disguise the soft edges

Un edited image straight from the camera

 focal lenght 10.0 mm

 aperture f/9.0

 ISO 100

exposure time 0.017s (1/60)

My wide angle Canon lens could never get all of this in + I would have to walk much further away just to capture the stadium in one shot

but my Canon wide angle lens

Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM

 would produce a sharper image

Also UN-EDITED

Focal lenght 10.0mm

Aperture f/11

 ISO 100

I deeply regret buying the Canon EF-S 17-85MM F/4-5.6 IS USM Lens The zoom ring is already stuck and its a known mechanical fault !

I was in the middle of shooting the stadium this evening when suddenly the zoom ring of my Canon EF-S 17-85MM F/4-5.6 IS USM Lens hardly moved and after another 3 shots it was totally stuck !!!

I am absolutely disgusted :(

Its an expensive lens bought it August 2009 its now Febr 2010 and already broken !

Apparently its all cheap plastic inside

 Shame on Canon !

From the Fixya website :

"It seems like this is a common problem with these lenses, the zoom gets stuck at 17mm with about 2mm of play (zoom movement). This problem is all due to a loose single screw on the inner lens assembly"

And so I spend the best part of the evening looking for a solution After coming across a Sigma 10-20 Flickr group

I decided to purchase the Sigma 10-20mm F4-5.6 EX Lens tomorrow while waiting for the repair of my broken lens GRRR !!!

Century City Canal Walk: Largest mall in Southern Hemisphere This place is huge !

I used to live here and have quite a few shots on my old flickr account

This HERE was taken from my aparment at the time
It was also one of my very first nightshots I had ever taken
I have not really walked around here since then ...

While I was shooting  late this afternoon

A guy stopped by and asked if I was a professional photographer

and for once I did not even have my tripod with me ! :)

I often find that people start chatting with me when I am taking photos

I love it and so it happend this afternoon

Was great to meet you Ash !

I used to sit along the waterside here with a book

on the rare occasions that I wasn't blasted by the wind

The building at the far end is called KnightsBridge they were still building it 2 years ago

 but its finnished now

The bird on the pole has a dart in his head !

Poor thing

 

Protea Hotel Island Club

Someone waving at me ? :)

The ones which got away last time ...Cape Town Stadium as seen from Golfcourse

Ain't it gorgeous ?

I love these lakes ..they attract allot of birds too

 See here the website of the Metropolitan Golf course and here the new lay out

which will be

I saw that I had missed posting this one on Monday

A bridge in the making

View over one of the new lakes on the golf course which is scheduled to re open April 2010

My beloved hill I live on

What a view !

On the left you can see Devils Peak Then Signal Hill and on the right Lions Head

I got an old post card given to me by a friend its amazing

it must be at least 100 years old

It is partly this view

and from the time the Green Point Common used to flood

I will post it as soon as I have found the similar angle to photograph

 to show you the difference

Cape Town Stadium Mist Rain Fog and another facade strip is being replaced

Weird and wonderful

Three Anchor Bay

It looked spooky

Note the green lights on the right

they had not switched those on for ages

I drove by today

and was surprised to see another strip of the facade has been taken off

I got out of my car to take these shots and when I turned on my heels ...

this is what I saw

Not spectacular but beautiful nevertheless

This morning I woke up to mist and drizzle

Click images to see large

Splendid views from the new Metropolitan golf course towards the new Soccer Stadium, Devils peak and Table Mountain

Upper Green point clinging to the hill and Devils Peak in the background