Venice
Last time we were in Venice with my wife, we also went up the campanile on the first day of our trip, which, in fact, was our first-ever day in Italy. It was the middle of a summer, the air was brutally hot and humid, and there was not a cloud in the sky. That is how I remember it now – I should revisit my pictures, because they tend to help me keep, if not form, better memories of past events.
Today, my expectations of the photo opportunities were low. In fact, a sign at the entrance to the campanile warned, in several languages, that the conditions were foggy, rainy, windy, and the visibility was poor. So, we basically went up there to wait over the rain.
But it tuned out that the weather and the lighting conditions were changing every minutes. The wind scattered the clouds, the rain stopped, and we even saw a beautiful rainbow on the background of the lively sky with tremendous clouds. I couldn’t wish for a better lighting and scenery. Unexpectedly, it turned out that the timing of our visit to the campanile was perfect.
And of course this time I had a much more capable camera – a Sony a7RII, which has a sensor that blows my old Canon 5D Mark II out of the water both in terms of resolution and dynamic range – perfect for the contrasty cityscape. I still carry the very same two lenses that I brought to the campanile nearly eight years ago – Canon’s 70-200 f/2.8L IS and 16-35 f/2.8L. They are still doing a good job, although the wide lens is showing its limitations in terms of sharpness on the Sony’s high-resolution sensor. This shows that optics doesn’t age nearly fast as electronics. Sadly, this also shows that we age pretty fast – just to think of it: eight years have past since I was shooting the very same scenery, and it seems just like yesterday!
