Jon Searles' photos with the keyword: 800 iso

I took this using my old sky filter which I used to hate. This is one of the few situations when it was actually very handy.

I also took this with my sky filter, and was hoping for more shadow detail, but you can't have everything.

This is one of a series of shots I took from the clock tower on the Stare Radnice, or Old Town Hall, in Staromestske Namesti, or Old Town Square, in Prague. As this was one of a series that I shot, expect more soon! :-)

Until this day (which I think was Sunday, the 3rd of December) I didn't know that the general public could go up in the clock tower on the Stare Radnice. It just seemed incredibly unlikely to me, but in reality many of these towers are open to the public in the Czech Republic, and this one is especially famous. This is, of course, a very Christmas season shot, but in reality more attention was being devoted to the upcoming St. Nicholas Day on the 6th. On the day before St. Nicholas Day, for those who come from countries where it's not celebrated, St. Nicholas (you know, Santa Claus) tours cities in the evening accompanied by an entourage of angels and devils, looking for good and bad kids. It's a night of lots of screaming, fireworks, and the kind of anarchy that is normally reserved in the United States for Halloween or in Britain for Guy Fawkes Night. It's a little crazy, of course, but in this shot it was still a few days away, so they had a stage set up to do folk dancing instead.

While I was up in the Stare Radnice clock tower, I also took some sunset shots, as it was dusk. I shot this handheld, as I had my Pentax loaded with 800 ISO film.

This is my second sunset shot from the Stare Radnice shoot, with St. Vitus Cathedral in the background.

Bata is one of the oldest shoe store chains in the Czech Republic, and I think this is their biggest and most important store, on Vaclavske Namesti in Prague (if I'm wrong on these points, someone please let me know). It's getting close to Christmas now, of course, so there are Christmas decorations all up and down Vaclavske Namesti.

One of the busiest Christmas setups is in Staromestske Namesti, the Old Town Square of Prague, where a stage has been set up (out of the picture to the right) for folk dancing and music.

Kotva is a large (supposedly Russian-owned) department store near Namesti Republiky in Prague, and they now have Christmas lights all over the whole store. This Christmas tree, off to one side, is in an odd spot, though.

This is the Mustek end of Vaclavske Namesti, decorated for Christmas of 2006, although Christmas is still more than a week away. The purple lights on the tree are an original touch, I think.

Here's a grainy, but I think good shot of DPP#8016 working tram service #23 (arguably the most historic AND scenic of the regular routes, along with #22) at night. The photo is grainy because I shot it with 800 speed film so that I could shoot handheld at night.

Here's my second-ever shot of the Prague Metro, and my first ever on Flickr!! Hlavni Nadrazi, the main station for Ceske Drahy, or Czech Railways, is served by Metro Line C, which is not only the oldest line (opened in 1972), but oddly the one with the newest trains. Most of these trains are Seimens-built, although some of the earlier ones were built by a consortium of Seimens, Bombardier, and CKD.

The Obecni Dum, or Municipal House, was once an urban residence for the King of Bohemia, but nowadays it's more intended for concerts. I've seen John McLaughlin play here, and various classical and jazz acts play here all the time.

Actually, I'm making it sound much more impressive than it really is, at least as a photo. I saw what looked like just an ordinary Rychlik (express) train coming the other way as I was on a local out of Prague, and then all of a sudden I saw Wagons-Lits blue and cream!!! By the time I got my camera out and set it for day shooting (it had 800 speed film for night shooting in it, and it hadn't been reset yet), it was too late, although I did get the rear end. This train probably was a Eurocity from Wein (Vienna) or some other important city, as Wagons-Lits don't normally provide equipment for minor more trains. I've also wondered a bit if this was not a Wagons-Lits service at all, but perhaps someone's private collection at the rear end of a Rhyklik. It makes an interesting story, anyway.

The Narodni Trida tram stop is actually not on Narodni Trida, but rather on Spalena next to Tesco's. A few meters behind me, the tracks curve west onto Narodni Trida at the corner of Spalena and Narodni Trida. The tram pictured is a CKD-built Tatra T6A5, similar to the T6A4 trams used in Portland, Oregon. They were some of the first new trams built after the fall of Communism, being built mostly in the mid-1990s.

Here's the often-ailing but always-cool Lomo 135BC I've been experimenting with lately, and which is responsible for all of my uploads on Dec. 16, 2006th!! I took the photo with my reliable, but not always exciting, Pentax MZ-10, which appears to have performed flawlessly on this occassion. :-)