Portrait von Dr. Gerd-Uwe Neukamp
Dr. Gerd-Uwe Neukamp

Wel­come to my web­site. Since I was 15 years old, I am inter­est­ed in pho­tog­ra­phy as an inten­sive hob­by. It all start­ed with an Olym­pus OM-2n, for which I had painstak­ing­ly saved up every pen­ny as a school­boy and which final­ly lay under the Christ­mas tree. At first I had to be con­tent with the stan­dard 50mm f/1.8 lens. For almost 30 years I remained loy­al to the OM Sys­tem. Over the time, sev­er­al bod­ies and lens­es were added. Lat­er on I added a medi­um for­mat Mamiya 645 sys­tem with two bod­ies and sev­er­al lens­es. At last I had accu­mu­lat­ed an exten­sive sys­tem with 5 SLR cam­era bod­ies and more than twen­ty lens­es and many acces­sories. Pho­tog­ra­phy alone was no longer enough for me, so I start­ed to process films and prints myself - that meant devel­op­ing in the dark­room. In the begin­ning only in black and white, lat­er I owned a com­plete col­or lab with run-through devel­op­er (for experts: Durst RCP-20) and spent hours over hours with my pic­tures in the dark.

Then, in 2003, the dig­i­tal rev­o­lu­tion in the form of the first afford­able dig­i­tal SLR cam­era (a Canon EOS 300D with kit zoom 18-55mm) hit me. At first only planned for the pho­tos on the side­line, it quick­ly replaced my Olym­pus 35mm sys­tem due to the good image qual­i­ty of the 6 megapix­el body. Not much lat­er came the EOS 20D and again a huge leap with the full frame EOS 5D. Final­ly, I got my famil­iar large and bright viewfind­er again. The results were in direct com­par­i­son at least on par with medi­um for­mat film, so I final­ly sold the medi­um for­mat sys­tem completely.

The Canon 1Ds Mk II, 5D Mk II, 5D Mk III DSLR fol­lowed and recent­ly I worked with a 7D Mk II and since Jan­u­ary 2016 also with the 5DS R. In the mean­time I got 13 lens­es in the range from 14 to 600mm. With­in 13 years the res­o­lu­tion of my cam­era sen­sors has increased from 6 to 50 Megapixel!

In addi­tion to the Canon DSLR bod­ies, I want­ed to use a mir­ror­less sys­tem with an elec­tron­ic viewfind­er, because I see the future in it. Since Canon had slept through this trend for a long time, I had an inter­mez­zo with sys­tem cam­eras from Sony, which could be equipped with adapters (Metabones and Sig­ma MC-11) and use my Canon EF lens­es. My excur­sion to Sony began in 2014 with the pur­chase of a Sony Alpha 7R with Metabones IV-Adapter, which offered the then (at the time of the 5D Mk III) sen­sa­tion­al­ly high res­o­lu­tion of 36 megapix­els. Over the years, it was replaced by a7R-Ver­sions II and III, and final­ly two lens­es for the Sony FE mount were added.

Even though the qual­i­ty of the lens adapters became bet­ter and bet­ter due to firmware updates, work­ing with Canon lens­es on the Sony bod­ies was always just a com­pro­mise. Then, on July 9th 2020, Canon final­ly intro­duced a state-of-the-art mir­ror­less sys­tem cam­era that I a long time was wait­ing for, the Canon EOS R5. In terms of spec­i­fi­ca­tions, it was at least equal to the cur­rent Sony cam­eras, and in many points even clear­ly supe­ri­or to them. I did­n’t hes­i­tate to order the cam­era on the day of the pre­sen­ta­tion, a month lat­er I held it in my hands and I am thrilled. Many of my expe­ri­ence reports about the Canon EOS R5 can be found here on my web­site. I have already sold all my Sony equip­ment completely.

The EOS R5 has a fan­tas­tic high-res­o­lu­tion elec­tron­ic viewfind­er, and for the first time, I don’t miss the opti­cal viewfind­er of DSLR cam­eras. In addi­tion, it has a high sen­sor res­o­lu­tion of 45 megapix­els and excel­lent high-ISO capa­bil­i­ties, which rivals the Sony sen­sors in terms of per­for­mance. The eye aut­o­fo­cus works per­fect­ly with peo­ple and ani­mals (even birds). Por­traits tak­en with my Canon EF 85mm f1.2L USM II are much sharp­er than before. The TS-E 17mm f/4L also works great with the elec­tron­ic viewfind­er and now even with image sta­bi­liz­er! My proven 5DS R will now be degrad­ed to a sec­ond body.

Here on my web­site I would like to show you some of my pho­tos from recent times. I have also pre­pared detailed reports of our long-dis­tance trav­els, which might be use­ful, if you are plan­ning sim­i­lar trips. In addi­tion, you will find cur­rent tips and field reports about pho­to­graph­ic equip­ment and soft­ware in my blog. I would be hap­py to receive your com­ments and suggestions.

Willich in Novem­ber 2021,

Dr. Gerd-Uwe Neukamp