Living nativity scene of Horní Planá

23.12.2009 Czechia Reportage

As every year, this year as well, the traditional "LIVING BETHLEHEM" took place in Horní Planá – a small town located by the Lipno dam.
The plot, characters and people who portray this story are more or less the same every year; therefore, the reason for the creation of photographs was not an attempt to capture something that had already been photographed perhaps a million times in countless different ways, but rather a test of the quality of photographs created in very low-quality (meaning very low) lighting, i.e. when using high sensitivity. On the one hand, it depended on how the camera's own sensor copes with the problematic scene, and on the other hand, how the algorithm of the program for processing the resulting RAW format copes with such a high sensitivity. Of course, the lens used has a great influence on the quality of the resulting image – here (as almost everywhere) the brighter the lens, the better. The speed and range of approach (zoom) play a secondary role in this case. You can judge how the sensor and later the converter coped with such a complex scene in the resulting photos.