My wife and I recently spent a week near Machynlleth in Wales. She found a good cottage up the end of a long single lane track in a steep valley. We had a very relaxing time and did quite.a bit of walking. I got a chance to take some photographs and came up with a few nice ones I think. This trip we took after having cancelled a trip to the US to see friends and relatives due to the Covid19 scare.
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| Photo for 'Front Page' |
I decided to take a simple camera setup this time so I dusted off the Fuji GSW690iii which I haven’t used in a while. It is a rangefinder with a 6x9 negative and a 65 mm wide angle lens. I have found this camera a real challenge to use. (I have very often thought I should have bought the 90 mm version.) It has a very wide angle with the 65 mm lens and 9 cm wide film. Compared with my G617 very wide panorama camera it has half the film width but a much wider lens. The overlaid image below puts this in perspective. Despite being half the negative size the 6x9 image covers 80% of the G617 but has a much greater vertical coverage.
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| 6x9 overlaid on 6x17 images. Taken from same tripod position. Note shift of moon due to differing times. Color difference due to time and film differences. |
My preference for most panoramas is the G617 as the image crops close to the horizon. The 65 mm lens of the GSW690 makes it is easy to lose the subject. In some cases this works well like the photo below where the Viaduct is 'lost' in the greatness of the landscape.
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| Ribblehead Viaduct from Whernside (Fuji GSW690iii) |
The camera despite having a reputation for being large is among the smaller of my cameras. I found that after my recent large format work I miss the adjustments the large format offers. I brought a tripod on some walks as the valleys could be quite dark and I also wanted slower shutter speeds for some of the water photos. Consequently I used slower speed film; one roll of Ilford FP4+ shot at ASA 80 and a less promising roll of Fuji Velvia 100F. (As usual I publish the black and white photos first and later the colors once the lab has developed them.)
I think I learned a bit more about how to get the most out of this camera. Here are my examples.
The first is probably the best of the lot. This was stream side in a deep rain-forested valley. The water was clear and perfect. Because the lens is so wide I got right down at stream side. I set my tripod up with the legs completely retracted which made it a pain to compose and focus. In these photos I set a shutter speed of 1 second. I spot-metered the whitewater to place it between zone VIII and IX so it would appear white. The shadows turned up nicely around zone III so the detail was retained there. The valley was very shaded so the dynamic range was not too challenging. I composed this to keep the boulders and water vertically centered and being mindful to keep the interesting tree in frame.
The next one is along the same section of stream and is not as good. The composition is not as well thought out, the sky is prominent in terms of brightness though the boulder provides interest. I think there may be a better photo closer to the boulder which is a challenge for this lens and access to the stream side. I am seriously considering bringing my chest waders in the future as the ability to stand in a lake or stream could enhance the compositions. That being said I think there are some promising crops.
Here are the alternative crops (8x10) best to worst in my opinion.
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| The best crop which focuses on the boulder and limits the sky. |
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| This works by emphasizing the sky and valley. |
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| Not enough foreground and too much sky in my opinion. |
The next photo I will call 'Three Trees' in homage to Michael Kenna. My wife got me a book of his photos for my birthday which I have enjoyed immensely. I took this inspired by some of his photos. Again the wide lens challenged me. I first notice this at some distance but had to get closer to make the trees better fill the frame. As I walked up the hill I lost some of the isolation of the trees and their separation as more distracting object appeared in the background.
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| Three Trees |
Again a crop makes more sense as there is too much foreground so I did an 8x10 crop. A print will probably require me to burn the upper left corner to make that edge more defined.
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| Three Trees 8x10 crop |
Finally one that when I took it my wife said 'what are you doing?' while I was composing it. I tried to explain but she thought I was crazy. When I showed her the scan she immediately understood. The image seemed obvious but a bit of a challenge. The day clouded up by this point and the evergreen forest made it quite dark as well. I did not have a tripod so had to shoot handheld at 1/30th second and it metered at about f4 but the lens only does f5.6 so I took a chance with underexposure and depth of field. The gamble seems to have paid off. The negative is thin but should be printable.
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| Forest 6x9 |
Overall I learned a lot about how to use this camera and am really happy with these images. Now off to the darkroom!
Update: As promised my color... also as promised I predicted a disappointing roll and I was not disappointed... Two photos with lens cap on (rangefinder...), two completely clear, two with a small section of overexposure but the rest clear, one underexposed I cannot recover the color and one decent image. Here it is... Pretty happy with it. A whole roll of errors and mysteries however.
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| Roadside Waterfall Fuji Velvia 100F |
Update II:The mystery is now resolved. While taking the final couple of photos I noticed that it didn't seem the shutter was behaving properly. I wasn't sure as I was using a mechanical shutter timer as a substitute for a cable release and I thought the problem might be with how that was working or not. I was also close to rushing water and so couldn't hear the shutter noises well.
Today I finally decided to investigate this problem in light of the failed images. The camera showed itself to be stuck with the shutter stuck partially open. As I had it apart on the kitchen table my wife reminded me of an all mighty fall I had during a hike that week. I slipped on a wet rock near a waterfall and went down flat on my back. I was surprisingly unscathed though a little sore the next day. The camera however went right over my head and landed on the rock with quite a whack. I looked it over and it seemed to not even have a dent or scratch on it. I thought great I got lucky and carried on!
Alas it seems not to be the case. I looked over the frame sequence on the film and saw the photo I took of the waterfall. Then one black frame (forgot to remove lens cap). Another black frame (not sure this was a lens cap problem) then the subsequent frames where clear (overexposed) or remnants of an overexposed image. All consistent with the shutter not closing properly. The shutter itself seems broken and I have had enough bad luck trying to repair one shutter to know I should leave this to professionals.
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