Did you ever woke up just to think you’re still dreaming? It happened to me plenty of times, but most recently in our Cappadocia trip in Turkey.
Hanging mid air at over 500m, before sunrise, surrounded only by silence, hearing nothing but your breath and heartbeat it’s a difficult thing to express in words, or even images. You have to live it by yourself, at least once in a lifetime!
I’ve been invited to a Sony Press Trip to Cappadocia, Turkey at the end of September and I was blown away. It was long in my travel bucket list this location, and even if you see plenty of splendid photos with this amazing location, nothing really prepares you for what you’re going to experience in this old Anatolian region.
First of all, we’ve been accommodated in a cave hotel (check it here). I mean a real cave, like hundreds dug into the ash-like or solidified sand rock available everywhere in this vast region (larger than 50 square km). A huge room only for myself, with it’s bathroom “downstairs”, deeper into the cave. First I thought there is also a Hammam but I got “only” a Jacuzzi :D. The view on top of my room looked like this:
Being a Sony press-trip as I’ve mentioned above, we had plenty of Sony cameras and lenses at our disposal. My last review of the newly launched Sony A9 (check it here) left me with the impression I didn’t have enough time to discover this amazing camera, at my own pace. I’m more and more incline to buy it, alongside my current Sony A7R II (of course, review is here) but I wanted to test it more. So I grabbed one of the available Sony A9 and the Sony 16-35 G Master lens (hands on review here) and used it for the entire trip.
Oh boy how I love its autofocus and its speed in complete silence! Again, it took me a while to get used to its new controls and I say it again: it’s difficult to work side-to-side with both A9 and A7R II because of the new controls (which I love, but then I couldn’t find them on my A7R II and get frustrated).
All photos in this article are made with both cameras (except one made with my DJI Mavic, I’ll let you discover it). I won’t mention which is which so you can make your own conclusion. The EXIF contains all the data in case you are in doubt.
I’ve arrived at this press-trip after a 4 days 4AM wake-up marathon :). So I was expecting to take a good rest in the king-sized bed of the hotel. But at the welcome dinner we’ve been informed that our surprises start next day at 5AM. Wait, what?! Not again!
When my phone rang in the morning, nothing in the world could convince me at that moment it’s going to be a great day ahead! And then, this happened:
As I said – nothing prepares you for the experience of hanging mid air in a hot-air balloon. It was a blast and suddenly I couldn’t feel tired at all.
It was only 8:30 AM and for me looked like an entire year has passed, while drinking a glass of champagne in the name of our safe-return on the ground. Hail for the Pilot, an amazing guy who landed the ballon directly on the car platform that transported the basket and ballon back at their garage.
We were taken to have breakfast at another amazing Cave-Hotel and we had a product presentation, the new game-changing production camera, the Sony RX0 and also the 4th instalment of the Sony RX10. Unfortunately there were only two bodies to test and plenty of hands which wanted to grab the cameras. I only got the RX0 for a small video presentation. And I’ve dropped it:
Well, nothing happened, as expected. Can’t wait to get my hands on this little gem for a real world test.
The day continued on a small walking tour in the valleys we’ve just flew over with the balloon. Hot day and dusty paths (more ash-like as I said) meant nothing for the cameras, but I was a little afraid with my 16-35 F4 not to swallow dust inside while zoomed, so I’ve used it less.
In the end I’ve made my mind:
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