At the zoo

Ok, it's been already three weeks now that I attended a foto-class at the zoo in Zurich. But I just focused on other things these three weeks. I don't want to let the cat out of the bag right now, since things are still in the making.

The course was actually really interesting, though my camera didn't play along. The teacher, a well-known animal-photographer in Switzerland, lent me one of his lenses, a 70-200mm F2.8 VR. But my camera wasn't able to focus correctly with that lens, and so all pictures I did with this one got blurred. Nonetheless I'm convinced that this is probably one of the next lenses I'll get for my camera - if I get to save enough money, since it costs about as much as the D300 itself... But next will definitely be a decent macro-lens. :)

But here you go: One of Masoala's giant turtles, taken with my own 70-300mm F4.5-5.6 VRII. The limited aperture-setting leads to slight motion-blur even though VRII is doing a very good job. You may not see it: That thing is about 1m long, far more than 150kg and close to 100 year old! I like the mirror-effect on the water pretty much... :)

10 years after: Bullet train hits bridge

Bullet trains got their name from their look. The first bullet train, the Japanese Shikansen Express, really looked like the bullet of a gun. Today those trains can go faster than 300 km/h, and in France they actually do. What can happen if something goes wrong was brought to our mind exactly 10 years ago at the small town of Eschede in Germany:

The wheel of the first passenger car of an ICE train lost its rim, which got stuck within the passenger cabin. Instead of engaging the emergency brake, the passenger sitting next to the site called a conductor. Meanwhile the rim grabbed a piece of a track switch, also slamming it through the passenger compartment, and then changed the setting of another switch – while the train crossing it. So now the train was rolling on two tracks. Just a few hundred meters ahead was a road bridge across the tracks, with a pier placed exactly between the two tracks the train was rolling on, still with 200 km/h. The pier got more or less pulverized; the bridge collapsed and buried car no. 5 underneath itself. The other 7 cars and the rear motor car jack-knifed like a folding ruler into the pile of the collapsed bridge and the completely flattened car underneath.

101 people died, more than 80 were injured, some of them so severely that they still can’t live without medical help. Those responsible for the accident have never been called to account. The Deutsche Bahn payed 30’000 Deutsch Mark for every lost soul – a cold comfort.
Let’s hope those lost souls rest in peace now.

Read the story here.