The main event (The Hard Times Ten Ball Open) was a big Event with a lot of big names (Dennis Orcullo, Shane VanBoening, Francisco Bustamante, Max Eberle, Rodney Morris, Raj Hundal, Scott Frost, John Morra, Ernesto and Oscar Dominguez, Brandon Shuff and Jose Parica to name just a few). Jay Helfert was commentating with Barbara Lee and Daniel Bush did the streamin (check out www.povpool.com for streams) Organizer was Marielle Lim. All this people and many more were responsible for that great pool event. Thanks to everybody for that!!

Congrats to Dennis Orcollo for winning this Tournament. (Shane finished second and Max third)

It was my first tournament after a longer break, so you can imagine how I enjoyed to visit old friends and watch high level pool again.
I was in Hard Times some days before and shot also a 9 Ball Tournament (Pics at the end of the gallery)

Click on the picture to jump to the gallery.
(Any image may not be reproduced, copied, transmitted or manipulated without my permission. Watermarks must remain on the photo!)

Rest In Peace…

After winning 9:4 against Darren Appelton and 9:5 against Chris Melling he played the finals against Dimitri Jungo.
The clash of the Alps (©Marco Takis) finished with 9:3 for Albin.
Congratulations again! We are very proud of you!!!

Enjoy the photos (Click on the picture to see the gallery):

www.markus-hofstaetter.at

I enjoyed it a lot with you guys and later after the gig I felt alive again for some moments…..

Enjoy the photos (Click on the picture to see the gallery):
Gallery includes also pictures from Sereph http://www.facebook.com/#!/serephofficial and HARSCH

Pool photography and playing takes a lot of my energy. But it also gives a lot of energy.
At this edition of Pool Synergy I wanna share some my thankful moments.

At the Sarajevo Open a player (Karlo) came to me and told me that he likes my pictures a lot and meant that nobody before did such great photos during that tournament.I had similar experiences at the World Team Championship, during my visit in Chicago, in China and so on.
You know, I work as hard as I can on taking photos and it costs a lot of energy to develop them at night, but this moments make me forget all that and put a big smile in my face.

To meet new people around the globe and hang out with the players is the next thing I enjoy a lot. Hanging out with Sarah, Jason, Mike and the Brits in China, sitting together with Samm and Vanessa at Derby, Joking around with Johnny during the WTC or listening to guitar music during the Sarajevo Open with people I know are very unique moments I will never forget.

Also shooting people on the street can be very satisfying. Often its strange and I have to trust my gut feeling. But often people where coming to me to say thanks for taking pictures of them or just started to chat with my about what I do and so on. These moments are great too.

Some years back I was practicing a lot and it took a while until I was able use all my things I learned on the table. I stopped serious playing right now, but I will never forget the moments under pressure and nervousness on the table. To still be able to run out a table during this moments is one of the best feelings I had.

I am thankful to all the people who helped me thru all the years. I don’t want to specify everybody, that would be too much. But there is one person I have to mention:

My mum. Without her I would not be able to do all this things. She is always here for me and takes care about everything when I am not home. She supports me a lot and never would complain about anything. Thanks mum!

Click the Poolsynergy picture to see all articles this month

First thing I tried was the new autofocus. I am very happy with the autofocus of my 7d, the automatic af point selection in AI Servo mode works pretty well. But jumps around when too much people are moving at the same distance. Also in very dark areas its safer to work without the AI Servo mode.
On the 1DX I turned AI Servo and automatic point selection on (easy to change with the Mfn button like on the 7d).
You can imagine that a lot of people are running around on a fair. So I pointed one of the focus points in the face of a visitor and pressed the shutter half down (I prefer to have that focusing action on the af on button).
The visitor started moving thru the crowed and the focus system of the Canon 1DX was following him. No matter how many people crossed his way at the same distance and no matter how much I moved the camera, the camera kept focusing on his face. I guess the color detection af feature is responsible for this great result. I tried to shoot some pics in between of the visitor and every single one was sharp (Love the new function to zoom in at 100% with one time pushing the zoom button)
I had the feeling that the shutter is more quiet as the shutter on the 7d. I asked also for the face detection af, but the Canon guy told me that this feature is right now not working very well.(I just thought, who needs that feature if the normal af works that perfect)It will be full functional in a later firmware release.

Another thing was, that the camera felt pretty heavy with the 70-200 2.8. Again I can only compare it to the 7D with the battery extension.

I know, everybody wants to know the performance in low light situations. (The girl behind me was very excited about that)
The memory card slots were taped, so no chance for posting pictures here, I only can post my experiences about the image quality with checking the lcd on the cam (btw, that one looks realy great and I also liked the new menu a lot)
The camera was set to L jpg with noise reduction on. So I changed the cam to raw and tried some shots with ISO 25600 and 51200. As expected I was able to see some noise on the pictures, but its tough to compare that to other cams when you are only able to check them on the camera screen. I just can tell you that I did not see any horizontal or vertical lines (like other websites netioned) in the noise, I had the feeling they look very good for that high ISO. I changed the setting back to iso 6400 and shot some pictures. Checking those on the screen was pretty amazing, I could not see any noise on the screen . Would realy be interesting how they look like on the pc.

Finally I got my hands on the new fisheys zoom lens. I tried it on a full frame and on a crop body. Somehow liked it more on the crop body, because you have the same view as on the full frame. How come? On the full frame at 8mm you have a lot of black nothing around the picture, the crop camera has less “black nothing” and so I had the feeling you get more resolution out of it at 8 mm. The build quality is very good and I guess this baby could give me some amazing views during a big tournament. I also liked the minimum focus distance a lot. Makes fun to shoot close up faces with that lens

I was shooting pictures at a lot of tournaments and the Sarajevo Open was a very special one. The organization was first class (Nearly all matches started on time….with more than 250 players). The Radon Plaza Hotel was a beautiful place to be. The rooms are luxury there, as the spa is. Because of my back problems I had a massage there….I was speechless.

Now imagine to be at this beautiful place and see all the big names on the tables there (Check the pictures to see the crowd during the final day). Guys thats the place to be, I am looking forward to next year and hope to see even more fans and players there.

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Enjoy the photos (Click on the picture to see the gallery):
(If you want to use the pictures please contact me and please don’t crop my watermark out)

Here is the link for the Livescore:

http://www.saopenbilijar.ba/view.php?show=livescore

Scroll down for and click on the picture for the gallery.

Enjoy the photos (Click on the picture to see the gallery):
(If you want to use the pictures please contact me and please don’t crop my watermark out)