Photo shoots. World travel advice. Tips on Munich & environs.
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The snow this winter isn’t that bountiful, so I’ve been quite often to nearby glacier ski resorts. I’ll give a few details later about the charming town of Lanersbach in the Zillertal valley. But first you have to see the temperature at the top of Hintertux Glacier on our first day:
“Heiter” usually means fair, clear, or bright. But in this case the sign was WRONG. Outdoors it was cloudy, snowing lightly, and the wind was blowing at 40-50km/h (up to 30mph). –22C equates to –8F… and the wind chill, well, that was around –38C (–37F). Keep in mind that’s before accounting for the speed we were moving downhill (directly into the wind). I got a bit of frostnip on my ears, so I wore a liner cap under my helmet on the following days. “Gefrorene Wand” was quite accurate on this trip: Frozen Face!
It wasn’t all snow and frostbite. One evening we went to Kleine Tenne in Lanersbach, and found that Captain Morgan Austria was there with the Captain Morgan Twins and their bikinis! Paul was kind enough to pose for a photo with the twins.
Good music, a kicker (foosball) table, and Zillertal Pils made it a great night, although we were a bit too tired from the cold to party like rock stars. We made it back to the Kleine Tenne one more night, when the Bavarian party band Chari Vari was there… although none of our group was a big fan of the folky-rock style with double accordions.
The rest of the trip was all about skiing and snowboarding. Here is a choice view from the quad chairlift above Sommerberg, where you can see the neighboring T-bar:
And, on the last day, this beautiful view of Hintertux greeted us upon arrival. You can just see the moon over the peaks toward the left side of the picture.
Getting to Lanersbach:
- Here’s a Google map of Lanersbach. I highly recommend Lanersbach if you’re going to Hintertux for an extended trip. It’s about 10-15min drive to the mountain base by car or ski bus, and you have a much wider selection of nightlife and restaurants than in Hintertux itself. The town is about 2h drive from Munich, and a little less from Innsbruck.
- There is a Spar grocery store in Lanersbach, but beware, in Austria the stores close very early (6:00pm I believe).
- Restaurants are plentiful, and we went to several on the one-way street (north of the main street). Hermanns Klause restaurant (associated with a bed & breakfast) had tasty food, but was smoky. The restaurant at Hotel Jaeger had a non-smoking area, salad bar, and excellent food. As one of our party was sick at home, they even made a “to-go” entree and gave us a real plate & silverware with it. Of course, one night we went up the hill to Madseit to our favorite: Alte Huette at Hotel Berghaus. I had a fantastic lamb schnitzel, a dish I’d never seen before.
- Kleine Tenne had a good number of people on both Friday and Saturday nights. We were lucky that it wasn’t too smoky, but don’t expect a non-smoking nightclub in Austria. There was another nightclub next door that we didn’t try out, so clearly there is some party potential in Lanersbach if you’re there on the right week/weekend.
- Skiing possibilities abound: you can ski Eggalm right in Lanersbach, try Rastkogel or Finkenburg a few km down the valley, go up the valley to Hintertux, or even drive 20min down to Mayrhofen for a larger-town experience (and Austria’s steepest prepared ski slope “Harakiri” with 78% grade!).
If you give Lanersbach a try, I hope you enjoy the trip, and come back here to tell us about it!
Posted 1 day, 10 hours ago. Add a comment
When you think of a glacier, you probably already think “cold.” But of the many days I’ve spent at glacier ski areas this year, none were colder than this past Sunday and Monday at Stubai. The temperature was about –15 to –20C (that’s 5F to –4F) on Sunday, and in the evening the winds picked up. Monday the wind chill must have been way below –20C, even though the temps warmed up a few degrees. Check out the snow being blown from the peaks:
Now, don’t get the impression it wasn’t FUN! This was one of the best ski weekends I’ve had this year (from 18 days snowboarding so far). The snow was perfect for carving, and off-piste there was about a foot of powder.
For those wishing to travel to Stubai, don’t expect huge nightlife. The nearest big town is Neustift im Stubaital, and it’s nothing like Mayrhofen, St. Anton, or Sölden for nightlife. We stayed in a small Pension in Milders, near Neustift. “The Farm,” the big apres-ski place in Milders, had a total of 3 people at 9:30pm (and they were all smoking). However, BIG PROPS to Restaurant Steinadler, which we found was non-smoking. That’s very rare for Austria. Besides that, the food was fantastic. Here was my Cordon Bleu (which also came with a salad plate and a side of cranberry sauce):
I had a surreal experience there. I dropped my fork, and as I looked around for our server (maybe 7 seconds later), there she came – with a new fork. Apparently she had heard it from the other room, and recognized the difference between fork and knife hitting the ground. Amazing!
Pensions (= Bed & Breakfasts) vary quite a bit throughout Germany and Austria, but in my experience you’re guaranteed a decent bed and a simple breakfast for a bargain price. Our pick in Milders was okay, but a few features might turn off some travelers. Ask yourself: what percentage of today’s Americans would physically be able to sit down on this toilet!?
The next morning we went back out for more adventure on the slopes. It was a windy day, but once we were on the slopes (wind at our backs) it was great. I figured out the settings on my bindings and boots to let me carve like crazy on my Virus Xtremecarver, leaning all the way over so my nose was almost touching the snow on every turn. And the views were fantastic!
Check out this distant mountain formation which looks like a bowl full of clouds:
Getting to Stubai
- See this Google Map for the location of Stubai; you’ll find Neustift im Stubaital along the road leading to it. Note that it’s 16km or so from Neustift (the nearest large town) to Stubai.
- Pensions (= Bed & Breakfasts) are a great place to stay. Usually the proprietors are very friendly and helpful. Often the room is fantastic for the price; although sometimes it’s a bit lacking in one area or another. Occasionally you find “WC im Flur” which means a shared bathroom in the hall, but you’ll often save €5-10 a night for such a room.
- I highly recommend the restaurant Steinadler in Milders. Non-smoking, fantastic food, friendly service, and psychic at bringing replacement forks. From the card I picked up there, I found they also have a Pension with a quite reasonable room rate (€24 per person for double room with breakfast; even cheaper in the summer at €20). Google map here. Milders is a cheap taxi ride from Neustift central, in case you’re there on a weekend and want to try for bigger nightlife than “The Farm” apres-ski in Milders.
Posted 2 weeks, 2 days ago. 4 comments
I had a few questions come up about my video setup… so here it is, in all its simplicity. At first it was side mounted, but this hurt my neck after several hours, so now it’s on top.
Equipment:
- Nvertigo-X Skydiving camera helmet with chin cup
- Canon Vixia HF200
- Kenko KGW-05 wide adapter
- Manfrotto 323 quick-change adapter
- Newton cross ring sight with Schumacher rotating clamp
- Home-made neoprene “camera condom,” from an old wetsuit hood
- Piece of gaffer’s tape over the “mode” switch so it stays on video, can’t be bumped to photo mode (which screws everything up if you don’t notice it)
- Pattex glue for the neoprene (glues neoprene like nothing else, according to some friends who SCUBA)
Photos of the new Neoprene cover with side opening. I left an open area by the lens so the Instant AF sensor can still work.
I made this side opening cover after many pain-in-the-$%# moments on the slope, when I had to completely remove the (old) cover to use the viewscreen.
Settings:
- Highest quality setting, at 1920×1080 Full HD
- Shutter speed (Tv mode) 1/500 or higher (maybe 1/250 but then you get a bit more motion blur in the video)
- Optical stabilizer on, though it doesn’t help much when you are moving
- Virtualdub and Deshaker software used to stabilize clips
- Editing done with Pinnacle Studio 14 Ultimate Collection
Hope this helps some other camera-amateurs like myself! Next on my list (if I find time) is to make one of the home-made steadicams from PVC pipe, like you see in many YouTube tutorials. Not sure I’d put it on the helmet, but for handheld stuff, it might eliminate the need for the (slow, slight-quality-reducing) Deshaker step.
Posted 3 weeks, 3 days ago. 6 comments
If you’ve been reading for a while, you probably saw my post about Hintertux just as this winter began. In past years, I’ve only gone there when the other areas didn’t have enough snow. But this year I went back mid-season and found piles of the stuff, way deeper POW than the other resorts at lower altitudes.
Here are a few scenic shots:
The clouds were quite amazing at times on Sunday, as a storm cleared off.
In my last Hintertux post I mentioned extreme weather. Well, here’s the result when it’s –15C with snow in the air. Oh, let’s not forget, the whole top of the mountain was in a cloud.
After I melted all this ice out of my beard, I gave up and put on my neoprene facemask. Heh.
Pictures are all from my trusty Canon SD1000. That little camera has gone more vertical miles in my pocket than any other piece of electronics I own. And despite my taking the occasional hard spill on an icy slope, it’s still unscathed!
Since I love these shots, and don’t have any particular “favorite photo” (how would one choose?), the frozen beard goes out to Wendy from down under!
Posted 3 weeks, 6 days ago. 4 comments
Alright, it’s finally time for a little taste of what’s possible with my final video setup! I just threw together a couple good carving clips from two trips, one in early Jan and one in early Feb.
Go to YouTube to watch the video in HD!
Thanks to the amazing carvers in the video: Peti, Lowcarver, and Alexey. They ride boards from Oxess, Virus, and Prior. I need to improve my technique to get those nice, laid-over turns, especially on the backside!
The first clip is at Zillertal Arena, the rest are at Hintertux glacier (both in Austria). Next week I’ll post a bit more about my Canon HF200 camera setup, so if you want to read about that, subscribe with the orange buttons on the left sidebar for RSS or email notification. Hope you enjoy the video!
Posted 4 weeks, 1 day ago. Add a comment
Kitzbühel has always had a special meaning for me, because that’s where my Mom learned to ski many years ago. She was studying in Europe, and had the chance to ski in Austria one winter. Now, some ~40 years later, I live about an hour and fifteen minutes’ drive from there!
The mountain is surrounded by several quaint little towns: Jochberg, Kitzbühel, and Kirchberg im Tirol, among others. One of its strengths is the huge amount of open, ungroomed terrain, which is fantastic when there is new snow.
Under the lifts C1 and C2 (which arrive, respectively, at the tops of Steinbergkogel/1973m and Ehrenbachhöhe/1796m), there are a lot of steep inclines with few trees (sorry, no picture). Beware when there’s not enough snow; but normally by mid-winter it’s full of POW and ready for freshies whenever there’s a 6-12” dump.
Here’s a shot near one of the many lifts to Ehrenbachhöhe near the end of the day:
Getting there:
- Google map to my favorite starting lift, Fleckalmbahn (a gondola).
- I found this incredibly geeky website which has a database of lifts. The link takes you to Steinbergkogel, complete with pictures of the slope below the lift. I love it!
- Here’s a picture of the area below Steinbergkogel, where I think the best powder runs are. On the right, and in the bottom of the picture, where you see the shadows – that’s it!
In December, a lot of racing teams head to the glaciers to get in extra practice before the snow starts falling at lower altitudes. I met some lovely raceboarder women at Hintertux, who (if I remember right) were from a Dutch snowboarding team. Here’s the best footage:
Watch the video in HD on YouTube.
This was my second attempt at getting on-slope footage; the camera is now top-mounted to avoid neck strain from side-mounting. You can probably guess I was playing with the camera settings and stabilizing software. From this footage I learned that I need a faster shutter, at least 1/250 but more likely 1/500.
The combo of AviSynth, VirtualDub, and Deshaker to process the raw video is fantastic for the moving-camera scenes! I’m still loving the Canon HF200. You can read more about that in my previous helmetcam post.
The next videos I post will be even better, as I’ve added a ring sight to the camera rig now. However, I only have a minute or so of useable footage so far. Any raceboarders out there who want to volunteer as a film subject?
Posted 1 month, 1 week ago. 4 comments
I shot footage of some friends skiing and snowboarding at Hintertux in November. Finally, I’ve found time to stabilize the video files and edit everything. At some points, it looks almost as good as a steadycam would be. A few shots are not so stable; the first few (when it was cloudy/dark) were harder to stabilize. Here it is:
Watch “Testing the Helmetcam” in HD on YouTube.
A few notes for the videographers out there. Optical stabilization sucks in high-G environments. In skydiving, and apparently snowboarding, it can make your footage even more shaky/unviewable than having no stabilization at all. This is due to the mechanically controlled optical element bouncing around in the lens at high-G.
Also, in these vibration-heavy environments you need a fast shutter speed. Otherwise you get strange moments (like you see in my video) where the scene seems to pop in and out of focus: these are heavy camera shocks blurring the motion!
To make the videos stable, I used Virtualdub (open source) with the Deshaker plugin (open source). It was a huge effort to set up and learn, and I’d only recommend it to fellow computer geeks.
For the next shoots, I’m going to use a shutter speed no less than 1/250th. I also have a skydiving ring sight on the helmet now, so I can keep the subject centered in the frame.
Camera: Canon Vixia HF200. Shot in 1920×1080PF. Editing software: Pinnacle Studio 14. It is a royal pain working with full HD files, even on a 3-core 2.something.GHz system. The high-quality deshaking method I’ve figured out takes 30-45min per minute of video. But the results are pretty!
Posted 2 months, 1 week ago. 6 comments
The helmet camera has been upgraded with insulating Neoprene and a stereo Rode Videomic! The microphone has a “dead kitten” windscreen (no, I’m not making that up) which will hopefully cut out most of the wind noise and give me usable sound while on the slopes.
Yes, I look like a total idiot wearing this thing. It looks like I have a Don King bobble-head stuck on top of the helmet, pointy gray hair aimed forward.
I'm not sure I ever looked more silly. Though hopefully no friends read this and feel the need to comment.
I have to say: Thanks to Mareike for the old wetsuit hoods that I sliced up to get this Neoprene! As she advised, Pattex Classic contact adhesive does an excellent job of bonding Neoprene. I also used it to glue the Velcro to the Neoprene (as the Velcro’s built-in adhesive tape wasn’t strong enough).
Front view of helmet camera setup
I mounted the Videomic (which has a standard flash accessory mount) by chopping up the top of an old camera, which I bought for €2 at Sauter camera shop in Munich. I screwed the flash shoe of the old camera to the helmet, and used Loctite to make sure the screws stay tight. To read more about the camera mounting bracket, please see my previous helmet camera post.
Angled view of helmet camera setup
Now I have to see how the Canon HF200 battery does at low temperatures. Fortunately I did leave room inside the Neoprene sleeve for a hand warmer pack… and I have some! Thanks, Mom… although I doubt this was the use you intended when you gave them to me, hehe.
If all goes well I’ll have a chance to test this at the Hintertuxer Gletscher ski area this weekend. That is, if the snow stops falling for long enough. Stay tuned!
Posted 4 months, 3 weeks ago. 3 comments
Yesterday I talked with a friend about some Strobist stuff. I realized that I’ve hardly used my two off-camera flashes: a Vivitar 383 and a Nikon SB-600. Since I wanted some killer pics of my new Virus snowboard before I try some extreme carving with it, I thought this would be a good chance to play! The same techniques could be used for any shots, including travel photos if you choose to bring a bit of flash gear.
The flashes are to the top left and bottom right of the photo, with shoot-through umbrellas for soft light and less distinct shadows.
Santa Cruz 148, F2 Speedster SL 158, Virus X-Treme Carver Premium 162
For the next photo I just added color gels to the flashes:
Red gel camera left, green gel camera right, shoot through umbrellas
Now some solo photos, with no color gels. I also changed to the more focused reflective umbrellas here to get a better visual effect on the Virus’ nice carbon-fiber finish:
Virus X-Treme Carver Premium 162 - beautiful carbon fiber top for extra torsional stiffness, and super-sexiness!
F2 Speedster SL 158 - what a pretty board!
Finally, here’s a setup shot so you can see where I put the umbrellas for the single-snowboard shots. I had to do a lot of adjusting for the Virus board to avoid that anything from the rear wall reflected in the mirror-like finish. I even closed blinds in another room and took some pictures off the wall! Ah, to have a studio…
Snowboard photo setup for single-board shots
Posted 4 months, 3 weeks ago. Add a comment
