Copenhagen Art & Photography

I’ve been away from the world of visual arts for about 16 years, but I’m back with a refueled interest after buying a vintage Nikon D3 for a minor macro-photography project. This branched out into shots of architecture and various objects, some of which have been clustered into the ‘Objects for an Ideal Home‘ series.… Continue reading Copenhagen Photographer ~ Kasper Bergholt

This blogpost on the Leben CS-600 and the Leben CS-600X tube-based amplifiers started out as a thorough introduction to vintage tubes after buying a Leben CS-600 in 2024. From there, it branched out to cover additional amplifiers from Leben Hi-Fi Stereo Company; from their early models to their latest offerings of tube-based products with a… Continue reading The Leben CS-600 ~ An Introduction to Leben Tube Amplifiers

In December 2023, I ‘side-graded’ from a Pentax K5 to a Nikon D3. With the K5, I used either a 35mm macro limited lens or a 77mm 1.8 limited. The K5 had deteriorated gradually. First thing that stopped working, was the sd card slot where the cards got stuck, which meant that only the USB… Continue reading The Nikon D3 in 2025 ~ Photos & Thoughts

Here’s my first tube photo in a while: a Russian 5U3C (Cyrillic: 5Ц3C) rectifier tube from 1976. It’s so-called New Old Stock (NOS), meaning that the tube has never been used. The tube was bought for a Kondo Audio Note KSL-M7 pre-amplifier clone produced and sold by the Chinese brand Sunbuck on Aliexpress; this is… Continue reading Sunbuck (Kondo Audio Note) KSL-M7 amplifier “clone”/ Exploding Capacitors

This October (2024), I’ve done some night photography experiments with a Nikon D3 and a Pentax K1. On a  Pentax forum, I saw a couple of photos taken with an old Pentax K10D, which is the last DSLR camera from Pentax built around a CCD (Charge-Coupled Device) sensor. The 10D was released in 2006 following… Continue reading The Pentax K10D in 2025 ~ Photos & Impressions

With an odd focal length of 77mm and an unconventional f-stop value of 1.8 – in comparison to traditional values such as 55/50/80/85mm and 2.0 or 1.4 – we find ourselves in the company of the Pentax 77mm f/1.8 lens, the brainchild of Japanese lens designer Mr. Jun Hirakawa, a designer who clearly marches to… Continue reading Pentax 77mm 1.8 Limited Lens

The Carl Zeiss 35mm f/2 distagon is by some considered  the best of 35mm lenses made for Pentax mount (ZK). It was discontinued in 2010 resulting in high prices for deadstock and lenses in mint condition (especially in comparison to the same lens with Nikon or Canon mount, and they are rarely seen for sale… Continue reading The Zeiss 35mm f/2 distagon (ZK / Pentax mount) in 2025

At 6 years old, Bill Evans (August 16, 1929 – September 15, 1980, full name: William John Evans) started learning the piano. In 1979, he and his band (Marc Johnson on bass and Joe LaBarbera on drums) played at l’Espace Cardin in Paris on November 26. The concert was recorded by Radio France / Yves… Continue reading Bill Evans: The Paris Concert Two + An Interview by Jim Aikin

Originally designed for use in televisions and radios, 6CS7 tubes generally see little use in audio products. The chief designer and owner of Leben Hi-Fi Stereo Company, Mr. Taku Hyodo, who is often referred as one of the eight best tube amplifier designers in Japan, has a fondness for the 6CS7 type, presumably because of… Continue reading 6CS7 Tubes: Data, Specifications & Usage

The ‘Objects for an Ideal Home’ series is inspired by a 1999 music album — in the electronica genre, as it was labeled in the mid-90s — by that name. ‘Objects for an Ideal Home’ was produced and released by the Danish musician Opiate (Thomas Knak) on the record label April Records. In 2009, a… Continue reading ‘Objects for an Ideal Home’

The Pentax *istD series marked a significant milestone for Japanese brand Pentax when it was introduced in the early 2000s. The series was the brand’s first venture into digital SLR cameras. The series built upon Pentax’s reputation for solid build quality, compact design, and advanced technology at an affordable price. Launch in 2003 The first… Continue reading Pentax *ist DS ~ 2025 Review ~ Photos ~ Impressions

The Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University, founded in 1856, was a veterinary and agricultural science university in Copenhagen, Denmark, until its merger with the University of Copenhagen in 2007. Surrounding the buildings, designed by Gottlieb Bindesbøll, are the unique gardens, which house more than 6,000 different plants and flowers. The Gardens of the Royal Veterinary… Continue reading ‘Flora Excursoria Hafniensis’

In addition to a Leben CS-600 tube amplifier, I’m also satisfied owner of Leben’s only RIAA so far, the Leben RS-30EQ, which both looks and sounds stunningly well. The RS-30EQ RIAA is based on a circuit including a single 6X5GT rectifier tube and two 12AT7s Jan Philips tubes. The European designation for the 12AT7 is… Continue reading The Leben RS30-EQ RIAA, 6X5GT & ECC81 Tubes

‘This looks like the end of everything!’, someone remarked at an exhibition. First work from the ‘Time Is Out of Joint’ series, which references the following exclamation by Prince Hamlet in William Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’ (in the form of an embodied metaphor): “The time is out of joint: O cursed spite, That ever I was born… Continue reading ‘The Time Is Out of Joint’ ~ Shakespeare, Deridda, T.S. Eliot

When going through the photos in my blog post on my Leben amplifier, I noticed that the damper tube in this photo: was marked 6DN3, which I, funnily enough, hadn’t noticed before. I was of the impression that the CS-600 uses 6CJ3 tubes, which is stated on Leben’s official site. In the folder that came… Continue reading 6CJ3, 6DN3, 6CM3, 6CH3 and 6DW4B damper tubes

Lens: vintage Pentax SMC-A 50mm f/1.2. Camera: Pentax K10D. Also see: Garden of the Royal Danish Library in Light Snowfall.

Designed by Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), the development consists of two towers standing at 100 and 80 meters tall, respectively. Nearly 500 balconies are distributed across the towers’ façades, lending the buildings their ‘Kaktus’ nickname due to the spiky, irregular appearance of their silhouettes. The recent opening of IKEA’s rooftop terrace has made it possible… Continue reading Kaktus Towers, Copenhagen

Light snowfall over the Garden of the Royal Danish Library (also referred to as ‘The Royal Library Gardens’) is a public garden in Copenhagen, Denmark – designed in 1920 by the architects Jens Peder Andersen and Thorvald Jørgnsen. The Garden of the Royal Danish Library, one of the oldest university libraries in Europe, in Danish:… Continue reading Garden of the Royal Danish Library in Light Snowfall

Tea wrapper hand-made from fibre of the Paper Mulberry tree (Latin: Broussonetia Papyrifera) by Essence of tea produced 12 years ago in the year of dragon treated with raw linseed oil for preservation (and experimentation to see how this would affact the paper). The photo was taken after drinking the last 7 grams (of a… Continue reading Pu-Erh Tea Wrapper, Broussonetia Papyrifera & Chinese Yixing Claypot

The MOCA (Museum of Crypto Art) Fundraiser 2023 was a call for financial support for the museum. More than 700 artists and creators showed their support. The individual artworks were subsequently combined into a colorful mosaic, intentionally or unintentionally similar to The Million Dollar Homepage, which sold screen real estate in 1,000,000 pixels. My contribution… Continue reading Copenhagen Metro at Night