STi-Frenchie

Following on from the various Nikon related threads, I thought I'd share some thoughts about my holiday in Corsica this month. Yes, it is Nikon related as all pictures were shot with Nikon gear...but that's as far as it goes All pics have been reduced in size to try not to make this post too long to load so apologies for lack of quality in some places.

First, if you haven't been to Corsica believe me, it's well worth the effort. There are Italians (lots), Brits, Spaniards, French (of course) but the first thing I noticed was a distinct lack of German visitors. In fact, for the first three days, I didn't see any ! I thought I was in the new twilight zone. During the whole two weeks, we must have spotted a total of a dozen of our Germanic neighbours so if you want to get to one of the last great unspoiled holiday destinations in the Mediterranean, you now know where it is.

The ferry boat taking you over (we left from Nice) is *HUGE* and holds 550 cars and lorries.


The crossing took 5 hours but that was okay after the drive down. A bit of kip was in order.

I had been warned about the state of the roads in Corsica but the main N roads (National) are fantasticlly smooth blacktops with cracking bends which you can really slingshot out of - even in Mrs Sti-Frenchie's RAV4 so doing it in a scoob would be even better. Thing to watch out for is our old friends, the Gendarmerie. On the approach to, and in and around Bastia, I noticed they were very fond of the old American "hide-behind-the-billboard" approach to catching speeding motorists. In fact, I saw more Gendarmerie in the two weeks I was there than I normally would at home...probably because it's a smaller place.

Once you get off the main roads and onto the D roads (Departmental) well, it's a completely different story. We were staying near Corte in a village called Erbajalo. It's a 15 minute, 60 km/h drive up the mountain on a very twisty, rough road. No barriers to stop you going over the edge and at 10pm on the night we arrived, pucker factor was reaching 8.5 ! In the daylight, it's a lot easier (and much more fun) to go up and down the road. I reckon in a scoob, you'd have a broken back with all the bouncing around so the comfort of the Toyota made it a lot more fun.




Of course, on these roads, there is little need for the Gendarmes to set up speed traps - the local livestock doubles as Corsican speed bumps:



On the one day we decided to stay "at home" and replenish the stocks we got hit by the most amazing storm. At the top of the mountain it was seriously close, loud and scary. I didn't take any shots of the lightning which raged all around us for most of the afternoon as I needed a neutral density filter but hadn't packed one with me.

Before the storm kicked off - them clouds are a-gathering:


We got a bit of a break for 15 minutes as it swirled around us - this is a shot of a village on the mountain next to us:


Once the storm had blown itself out we were treated to a rather impressive light show:


So, whilst hell was breaking loose all around us, what did we do? Well, we indulged in an unselfish bout of "help the local economy". Having discovered this wonderful stuff which has a lovely chestnut flavour:



We proceeded to empty our stocks of it, thereby helping to keep the Pietra brewery's business a healthy state of affairs. Seriously, if you get a chance to check this beer out, it is REALLY good and only 6% volume. In fact, we liked it so much, we went to see where they make it !



Apart from that one day with the huge storm, the rest of the two weeks was spent in glorious sunshine with temperatures around the 30-32 degree mark which is quite comfortable. On one of the last days I noticed the clouds had went strange. This is an untouched (other than sharpened) pic of one of the cloud formations:



Strange eh? Like great big ***** of cotton wool in the sky.

What can I say about the beaches. We stayed mostly in the Northern part of Corsica (the beaches in the south are reputed to be better) and had no trouble at all finding a different beach every day. The furthest south we made it was to Solenzara and a beach just a bit further on at Canella.



The beaches are uncrowded (no Germans) the waters are turquoise blue in many of them, there is usually a beer and pizza seller nearby, the water is warm, and there's enough eye-candy to keep any man happy (or woman for that matter):



The snorkelling is fantastic on those beaches which have any sort of rocks beside them. I counted over 15 different species of fish on one snorkelling outing - all in the same area. It's a great feeling swimming in a whole shoal !

We tried to get to a rather celebrated beach at Salecchia, in the Desert des Agriates. This beach is one of Corsica's finest and was used in the filming of "The Longest Day". It's only accessible by the sea or down a 12 kilometre dirt track - and track is not the right word. We took the RAV4 on it's ultimate test to see if it would go down the track which had potholes in the potholes, many of which were easily 15 inches deep. This was shot on one of the very few flat places on the dirt track:


Scratches head: "There's a beach around here somewhere"

After an hour going down this track, we found the beach and set up for a picnic. The beach was long and looked fantastic with pure white sands...then the clouds rolled over and that was it...pack up and head off to another beach further up the coast

Visiting the towns was also interesting, Calvi was good as was Bastia, Corte, Ile Rousse and many others...but we weren't too impressed with Ajaccio...just didn't seem to be our kind of city for some reason. Wandering around plugged into my iPod and listening to HIM, I came over all gothic:




What else? Oh, I suppose I should include the cliché sunset shot. Wouldn't be a holiday tale without one would it?


And just before the sun went down on another day but didn't go all red and orange, I grabbed this silhoutte:


The return trip back was okay, except for a kick off time of 5am (we had to be at the port by 7am). To break up the trip we decided to book into a Novotel at Aix-en-Provence and spend the night there before the 5 hour drive back home. Aix is a great place with lots to do, lots to photograph and generally spend some time. A few shots I took:





Strangest thing about the Novotel is that I found Charles Manson lurking in the toilet of our room. Can you see him?



To summarise, Corsica is a cracking place to have a holiday. We managed to do the north part of the island and (funds-willing) we'll be back again next year to do the south part.

Definitely one to consider.

Nevetas

Quality pictures

Mossman

Wonderful piccies - I'm impressed!!

Mossman

chiark

Excellent pics, and an excellent read. Any clues as to what settings you were using there?

lpski1

Great pics, especially like the silhoutte

106rallye

Shh don't tell everyone how great Corsica is or everyone will go there! I really like Corsica - only been south as I worked in Sardinia but Bonifacio and Porto Vecchio have some great beaches Palombaggia and Santa Giulia to name a couple. Cheaper than Sardinia and although they are only about 10 miles apart the landscape is completley different. The storms are something else as well! Diving is Crystal clear in the tyrrinihan if a little void of fish! but there are some good plane and ship wrecks and the Windsurfing in these islands is great!

Andy

angrynorth

Some great shots there. Love the opening one of the Ferry.

IanWatson

I thought we'd agreed in a previous thread to keep quiet about the place - then you go and post a bleedin' brochure..

It really is a superb place, I'm going back in a couple of weeks..

Pigs and cows roam wild all over the place - heard a great story about a German biking couple.. They saw a cute little piggy wig in the middle of the road, got off their bike to say 'Hi' and the rest of the herd piled out from behind a tree - knocked the bike over, ripped into the panniers looking for food and one gave the fraulein a nasty bite on the hand before disappearing quickly into the forest.
The thought of the little pig saying 'wait a sec guys... hold on... just a little longer... GO FOR IT" just cracks me up

STi-Frenchie

Thanks for the replies and the kind words folks, we really had a terrific time and look forward to going back next year if we can. I liked the story about the pigs reminded me of when I was confronted with a roadfull of them...kinda makes you slow down. I was amazed at how quick the locals go up and down the mountain roads, at 60km/h I wasn't hanging around but it's almost like the Corsicans have a death-wish! Talking about cars, I forgot to mention the number of Peugeot 206's and Renault Clio's there are on the roads - it's almost like the island has some kind of infection as nearly every other car is a 206 or Clio. I can imagine the talk in the bistro's "Ah oui, Jean-Pierre had a touch of the 206's last week and I heard Rene has come down with a bad dose of the Clio"...and the one car that seemed to be responsible for those (small) tailbacks was the Berlingo. Hmm...maybe the old fellas driving them were undercover speed cops

I've just spent the best part of the afternoon washing the RAV4 and giving it a good going over with Scratch-X which actually did a pretty good job. I think next time we plan on a 12km off road session to find a beach, I'll just take the boat trip option instead !

Chiark - here are the exposure settings I used for the pics if there are any other details you want let me know and I'll dig them out of the original files for you. I only took two lenses with me, a 17-35 and a 80-200 zoom. Both had skylight filters on them. I replaced them with a circular polariser on some of the pics so I've noted that too. All pics taken with a D2H shooting in RAW format at ISO 200, tone compensation:normal, no sharpening, no hue adjustment. Colour mode II (Adobe RGB), Noise reduction off. The flash I used was the SB-800.

Ferry pic: 17-35 at 17mm, aperture priority, matrix metered, 1/125 at f/8, 0 EV comp, polarizing filter, WB: Auto

Road pic: 17-35 at 17mm, aperture priority, matrix metered, 1/80 at f/10, 0 EV comp, WB: Auto

Mountain pic: 17-35 at 24mm, aperture priority, matrix metered, 1/40 at f/10, 0 EV comp, polarizing filter, WB:Auto

Cows: 17-35 at 35mm, Program mode, matrix metered, 1/100 at f/10, 0 EV comp, WB:direct sunlight

Before storm: 17-35 at 17mm, aperture priority, centre-weighted, 1/90 at f/13, -0.5 EV comp, WB:direct sunlight

Break in the storm: 80-200 at 200mm, aperture priority, matrix metered, 1/400at f/8, 0 EV comp, WB:cloudy

After the storm: 17-35 at 35mm, aperture priority, spot metered, 1/80 at f/7.1, 0 EV comp, WB:cloudy

Beer: 17-35 at 30mm, aperture priority, matrix metered, 1/60 at f/6.3, 0 EV comp, WB:Auto (should have been flash), Flash sync:front curtain, Balanced i-TTL, no flash comp

Brewery: 17-35 at 17mm, aperture priority, centre-weighted, 1/500 at f/10, 0 EV comp, WB: direct sunlight

Clouds: 17-35 at 32mm, aperture priority, matrix metered, 1/750 at f/8, -1 EV comp, WB:Auto

Beach pic 1: 17-35 at 35mm, aperture priority, matrix metered, 1/250at f/9, 0 EV comp, WB:Auto

Beach pic 2: 80-200 at 100mm, aperture priority, matrix metered, 1/500 at f/5.6, 0 EV comp, WB: Auto

RAV4: 17-35 at 17mm, aperture priority, centre-weighted, 1/90 at f/14, 0 EV comp, WB: direct sunlight

Gothic pic 1: 17-35 at 17mm, aperture priority, centre-weighted, 1/1600 at f/14, -2 EV comp, WB:Auto

Gothic pic 2: 17-35 at 35mm, aperture priority, centre-weighted, 1/1250 at f/10, +0.5 EV comp, WB: auto

Sunset: 17-35 at 35mm, aperture priority, spot metered, 1/40 at f/14, -1 EV comp, WB: direct sunlight

Boat silhouette: 80-200 at 200, aperture priority, centre-weighted, 1/2000 at f/22, 0 EV comp, WB:direct sunlight

Aix town hall gates: 17-35 at 22mm, aperture priority, matrix metered, 1/160 at f/5.6, 0 EV comp, WB:Auto

Aix lion door handle: 17-35 at 30mm, aperture priority, matrix metered, 1/40 at f/2.8, 0 EV, WB:Auto

Aix fountain: 17-35 at 26mm, aperture priority, matrix metered, 1/90 at f/18, -0.5 EV comp, WB: Auto

chiark

Mr Frenchie, I need help with colour management: every time I shoot in Adobe RGB, stuff looks great for *me*, but when I post it on the web it looks ****e... Are you boosting saturation at all, or just a bit of levels?

carl

BTW, those clouds are called lenticular clouds. Google will tell you how they form, etc.

PS: I love using polarizing filters

PPS: On my (non-Nikon) camera I've always had to add a bit of EV comp when using a polarizer.

STi-Frenchie

Chiark, the only picture out of the ones above where I tweaked (boosted) the colour a little was in the sunset as it was a bit weak and washed out looking in the reds. I do this with Nikon Capture which I use to get rid of dust marks and occasionally unsharp mask the images (although I prefer to USM with Photoshop). My normal workflow is to save the images out of NC as TIF then bring them into Photoshop for editing - I use the embedded profile of the image rather than the Photoshop working space (I guess I just prefer it). After setting the size I want to work with (i.e. 800 pixels width) and as the images are usually a little washed out, I use curves to gently make a smooth "S" to bring the contrast out a tiny bit, after that, it's USM, change mode to 8 bits/channel and save as jpeg for publishing on the web. Hope this helps.

STi-Frenchie

Carl, yeah, polarizers are a blast ! I like using them but am always a bit wary of them at the wide end of the 17-35. With the skies as blue as they were/are in Corsica you can almost get a "Velvia" impact using a polarizer set to maximum ! Have to admit I couldn't resist using it on the ferry

chiark

Fantastic - thanks for the info. I think I'll be shooting raw...

carl

Yes, the problem with polarizers at wide angle is that only a relatively small part of the sky is polarized, so you end up with a darker blob and lighter bits like in your first photo. Still looks cool, though