Travelling in the Netherlands

 

We have visited the Netherlands before for biking, sight-seeing, museums, city walks, hiking and more. Last time we were near Groningen in the North-East. This time we stayed near Amsterdam in a beautiful resort near Nieuwveen with the bikes on our car. The weather was the usually mixed bag of clouds, sun and very occasionally rain. The wind, however, is always on. Gladly, we have e-bikes now. We also wear helmets which none of the locals do to mark ourselves as tourists.

There are some interesting details to report on my choice of camera equipment for this trip which I delay to the end of this posting.

There is so much to say about this country. The first thing that comes to my mind is how much the Netherlands support biking. Each and every street is designed to be accessible for biking, with bikers often getting preference over cars. There are almost everywhere paved connections with two lines for bikes only. If not, the streets are speed restricted for cars, the bike lanes broad, and clearly marked on both sides so that cars can use them, but bikers can feel safe.

The country also feels very modern in infrastructure, technology, life quality and housing. Germany is one or two decades behind in comparison. The data also speak for themselves. E.g., the Netherland have a higher GPI and much more universities per capita than Germany.

The pictures on this page aim to tell a story about the things a tourist can do in this country. The first one above shows a windmill in the countryside near Noorden. Due to the nice bike infrastructure, very pleasant rides can be made along the countless channels. The second picture is from a nature park in the dunes near Haarlem with paved bike lanes and huge areas forbidden for bikes to protect the nature. The picture above is from the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, one of the many world renowned museums in that area. 

The following is another one taken along one of the channels.

Of course, the towns themselves are worth strolling through. Some places are very touristic, especially in Amsterdam. But many smaller villages just have a charm worth living in. All of them are very busy. Note, that the Netherland are densely populated, and the Dutch like social events and gathering. We found them to be very friendly to strangers too. We often got a small chat, especially when using public transport, which is another highlight of the modern Netherlands.

The beaches are also there with long and broad stretches of sand and an extensive support for visitors, maybe even a bit too much. Some villages along the coast feature now huge and expensive hotels. The charm of the old times is gone. It is, however, not even half as bad as in other areas like Spain or Southern France.

The weather was not inviting to walk along the beach anyway with a wind of 20 knots blowing constantly and temperatures below 20°C.

Finally some short remarks about the camera and the lenses I used, and the processing. I trust my Z30 now so much as to use it as my sole camera for such a trip and leave me full frame at home. The car was overcrowded with bike equipment anyway. 

Most of the time, I used the 12-28 f/3.5-6.3 VR. This is a slow lens. But I do not believe in small DOF for wide angles anyway. And I start to love the wide options this lens provides starting at 18mm equivalent, and that it includes the 42mm equivalent standard focal length. Besides the trees at the beach above and the museum picture, all were taken with that lens, mostly at the wide end.

I also had a 24-70 f/4 equivalent lens with me, the 16-50 f/2.8, also with VR. In a museum, the 12-28 simply is not fast enough, although I would have loved to have the wider end. I have the 12-30 f/4 for full frame, but 30mm is too short.

In my bag for biking, I have the 70-180 f/2.8 full frame which now works as a 105-270 equivalent telephoto lens. It can also be used for flowers or peoples to smooth out background. But it does not have VR. The expensive 70-200 f/2.8 has and I might try to get a used one to replace the 70-180. The shot of the two trees along the beach is taken with this lens. But in fact, it could also work with the long end of the 12-28 if I had moved closer. The one below can only be done with a telephoto lens.

In all honesty, I do not think that I really needed a telephoto lens at all. There will be missed shots, yes, but they are not the best in my collection anyway.

The post-processing during the trip gave some troubles to me. I used Lightroom on a Pixel Tablet. It turns out that it very difficult to accurately judge the brightness on this device. You want to use the histogram more than your eyes. The Z30 could also benefit from a display with more dynamic range. Again, the histogram is your tool of choice. While observing, the OK button can be configured to show a very big and easy to judge histogram. It might be based on the JPEG preview, however. I set the picture mode to Neutral to make this preview as useful as possible. 

The light I had was often with shadows on the ground and bright clouds. It is not easy to find a balance and you will have decrease the highlights and increase the shadows a lot for a useable output. A full frame camera has one stop more dynamic range in theory. But during my tests at home, I did not find a really convincing difference.

To get the developed photos into Lightroom at home, you can synchronize through the Adobe cloud and your storage there. But I found it easier and faster to export the DNG versions to an SD card, connected to the pixel table via USB-C, and import those on my computer. I also backed up the content of the SD card in my camera on the tablet to compensate for the missing second card slot in the Z30.

So much about our trip to this wonderful country. Stay safe!