It is always a bit "funny" - that the day before a big party - it feels unreal, and a bit "off". Because the inner atmosphere had not arrived yet. I only thought of... boy we have to prepare a lot before the party stands.

And like always - it stands, with whistles and bells - and more decoration than ever before, because we upped them two notches further (compared to the first Carnival Party).

Once the day turning into Friday the 29th of March - things went turbo; with food shopping, decorations, cleaning and preparations. But we were four people; Mary, Sal, Paola and I - so everything was super ready and in time before the guests arrived.

• Mary, here with the Fujifilm GFX 50s II + Mitakon 65mm f 1.4 lens

The Mitakon 65mm lens has less contrast

in the photos of Mary, when i took the shots at wide open aperture ƒ1.4 - So, compared with the Laowa Argus 28mm f 1.2 lens (at 1.2) showed higher contrast and finer details. Quite delightful, I must say. It just shows how extraordinary the Laowa Argus lens is with it's ƒ1.2 aperture.

But hey - while the Mitakon lens is more of a specialty lens for the Fuji GFX camera when used at wide open aperture. And indeed difficult to focus wide open... Some may like the results, wile other may feel it is vastly inferior in optical quality.

I like it.

• "Where is the party ?!" - we're waiting for the guests to arrive. Sal and Mary in the Kitchen (Laowa 28mm f 1.2 lens)

Daylight - boring decoration look

One thing i thought was puzzling was, that when I looked at our over-the-top decorations - they looked totally weird and not so nice in DAYLIGHT. But once it is dark outside - it looks like you step into a world of a true Carnival Party. The more colorful the better. LOTS and LOTS of atmosphere.

Below are photos of how it looked like in daylight...

Guest: 18.15 | Sunset 18.30

The guests started to arrive half past 18.00 - which also was the time around sunset. Only 45 minutes earlier, the sun was extremely bright shining into the other room towards the west. You couldn't see any candle lights or other lights from all the decorations *LOL*

Once it started to get dark outside - then everything just lit up, in every single room, including balcony. With thousands of glittery tiny fairy lights. Really, really lovely.

Despite all the lights, the light level wasn't really bright. It is a challenge to take images at lower light levels, with people in full swing... (While photos you'll see on the next page, make it look like it was bright light indoors)

Here i only used the Laowa Argus 28mm f 1.2 lens, and additionally the Canon RF 50/1.2 L lens this time. So, both super bright lenses. Naturally all images taken with RAW, in order to get a grip over the color balance, which at times can get pretty screwed up, due to strong colors like pink, yellow and green.

But that works well with RAW - no problem.