Beliche & Tonel
In the last few weeks we were teaching two on location workshops and have been busy with scouting new locations in the field. The summer time here is offering different opportunities. No big landscapes, the light is very boring. So I concentrated on details, smaller scenes.
Praia do Tonel, Reflections, Zeiss Sonnar 100mm
And that brought up some interesting questions. How far could I go with different gear? Equipment is giving me headaches, you have to buy it, take care of it. Every piece needs special care and cleaning after working close to the sea. Even after a few minutes, spray and salt will cover most of the parts of your lens and camera. Then you need plenty of room to store it. And of course, you have to carry all the needed tools in the field, not funny at extreme temperatures.
To keep that simple, I shoot most of the time with the Zeiss Ikon ZM. But there is a small big problem. The image quality is outstanding, no doubt. But getting closer to subjects, limitations will be introduced. The depth of field, the overall sharpness. You can work with smaller apertures and this will introduce diffraction, taking away the overall sharpness. Special movement is needed, the tilt movement for the Scheimpflug principle. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scheimpflug_principle)
Low Tide, Beliche, Zeiss Distagon 21mm
This is almost impossible with 35mm cameras. Yes, there a a few 35mm tilt-shift lenses from japanese/chinese lensmakers. But I want quality, built and image wise. One solution, the contax bellow system. I own the S-Planar 100mm f4. One of the sharpest lenses I have ever seen. But there is still a problem. The bellow only allows a tilt with the front standard, the back standard is almost fixed, only allowing a few millimeters tilt, no shift.
For quite a long time I was thinking about getting a large format camera. They are bulky and slow to operate. Totally different. I’m still not sure about which kind of LF camera I want, there are optical banks and field cameras. The optical bank is even more heavier than the field camera. A pack animal might become neccessary. Arca Swiss released the Rl3D, a large format camera, but handy, compared to other LF systems, very interesting.
I have seen very talented landscape photographers, daring to move to large format and film, without regret. Tim Parkin is offering large fomat workshops (UK) on his beautiful website: http://www.landscapephotographyworkshops.com/
Praia do Beliche, Sunset, Zeiss Distagon 21mm