The Quiet Picture

We got some snow this week and the landscape looks just amazing. I can’t help it, I love snow! There’s not too much of the good thing yet so it’s still possible to walk around without problems, just ankle deep mostly. I made good use of it today, took the new road down to Öster-Hocklan and then past the shooting range to Loossjön and back home. It was an 11 km hike, I think I earned my slice of chocolate cake. What a perfect way to spend the day!

I had a new camera with me. I bought the Canon PowerShot S95 compact, which I hope will be everything that the PowerShot G10 wasn’t. The idea with the compact is that I can have it with me even when photography is not the main thing on the agenda. It’s true, sometimes I actually go for a walk just for the sake of the walk! Dragging around a heavy camera/lens combo and a tripod “just in case” is really not much fun. The S95 is small and light and so easily pocketable that I didn’t even notice I was carrying it. Doing a long walk like the one today is pure pleasure and it’s even better when I know that the image quality is so good that it holds up against the 40D, and I’m not kidding about that. It really is that good. I wouldn’t compare the IQ past ISO 200 of course but it’s not an issue because I would never go beyond ISO 200 with landscape pictures anyway and I doubt I will use the S95 for anything else than landscapes.

The problem I had with the G10 was that it was not small and light, I wouldn’t have stuffed it in the jacket pocket and that horrible 15 megapixels was a real turn-off (and Canon realised it, considering that they reduced it to 10 MP in the follow-up G11). So as soon as the novelty of having it had worn off, I was less and less interested in using it until it got to the point where I realised that I might as well sell it and wait for something better to come up. When I saw the specs for the PowerShot S95, I knew that this was the right compact for me. There is only one thing where the G10 beats the S95 and it’s the zoom range, the G10 went a little longer. So I know that there will be times when I wish I could zoom in a bit further when using the S95, but it’s still a minor problem when everything else about the camera is just so perfect for my needs! Granted, I’ve only used the S95 on a couple of occasions so far so it’s a bit risky to make any grand statements, but I honestly feel that this little camera is very capable and I will have many a good walk with it in the future!

Last day with the 5D MkII that I was supposed to use for wideangle photography. Ironic then that most of the time I was zooming the 24-105mm lens at full tilt and of course found it short, so if I would ever get a full frame camera I would probably need to invest in a 70-200mm lens while I’m at it. And a new computer – my workstation had considerable trouble dealing with the 5D files which are twice the size of the 40D raws!

It was a sunny day but I’m definitely having trouble of making use of the evening light. I’ve never been quite as into sunset light as I know that I should be as a photographer, but shooting at sunset is not nearly as easy as setting up your tripod and waiting for the light to happen. You have to choose your subjects with great care, scout ahead and then double check in the evening. It’s the shadows – the thing you thought would be nicely lit is suddenly shaded in the evening. And shadow is something we have plenty of around here. In small scale, it’s the forest. In large scale, it’s the hills. What it means that you don’t ever really get to see the actual sunset, the time when the sun “officially” sets. It will be gone behind the nearest hill long before it has actually set. There are no grand views here and even if you do find a good viewpoint, there is so much logging that the landscape is guaranteed to be ruined in every direction.

Or then I just haven’t learned how to handle the evening light. I’m fairly sure that it’s exactly the same problem with sunrise light – it’s just that I rarely bother to wake up early enough to check it!

When I lived in Ljusdal, I used make long trips by car in search of nice places to photograph. When I moved to Loos, the car got some rest and I found many good spots within walking distance. And a lot of more great locations are just a few kilometres further so there’s not a lot of driving required anyway.

But today I felt like doing a road trip again. I had found one interesting location when studying the map and I decided to make a big de-tour getting there. Loos is in the north-eastern corner of Finnmark, and there’s a lot of interesting nature in Finnmark. History as well, but I’m more interested in the landscape, even if I’m a Finn and get an occasional kick out of seeing the Swedish spellings of the old Finnish names! My company on this trip was a Canon 5D MkII that I got to borrow for the weekend. To be honest, I wasn’t quite as keen on the camera as I was on using a wideangle but since there was no wideangle lens I could get my hands on (that would be a wideangle on the 40D), the full-frame camera did fine with the 24-105mm lens of mine.

I really should have stopped at every interesting place, but for whatever reason, I drove past most of them. This small tarn was the first spot I saw so it was a good beginning, but then after a while… how many nice tarns can you shoot during one trip? After I had set up the tripod for the picture and started attaching the camera, I found out to my horror that I had forgotten to switch the camera plate from the film camera to the 5D. I had no way of securing the camera on the tripod! After thinking about it for a moment, I noticed that the rubberised zoom ring of the lens provides enough friction to make the camera stay on the quick release platform by itself, so with the remote release in one hand the camera strap in the other (so I could catch the camera if it slips off!) I was able to use long shutter speeds without compromising image quality. By long shutter speeds I mean ISO 50 and polarising filter – it’s not handholdable even in sunlight. This makeshift support system worked fine for horizontal pictures, but it was a whole lot trickier to balance it for vertical. Adjusting the camera position for the composition was a real pain in the butt in horizontal, and it was near impossible in vertical!

The goal of this trip was Amsen, a large-ish (in local scale) lake north-west from Fågelsjö. I saw on the satellite picture that there’s a really long curving beach at one end of the lake, and sandy beaches are rare enough around here that it would get my attention. I had a suspicion that it would be difficult to get that long beach in a picture so that you can actually see what it is, and indeed it turned out to be even worse. You can see the beach in the horizon, but obviously it’s impossible to appreciate it from this earth-worm perspective. And I didn’t find many other opportunities either, the place is ruined by logging which reaches all the way to the shore so just trying to avoid the ugly wasteland reduced the composition options to minimum. Having said that, it was interesting to see the place. Never seen anything like it in this corner of the world and I might go back there one day, to explore it better than I did now.

And the 5D MkII then? Interesting. It has ISO 50 which I love. Honestly, if the next version in the x0D series has ISO 50, I’d seriously consider switching. That is more important to me than any other feature, closely followed by weather-proofing. But working with a full-framer gave me a problem I never have with the 40D – vignetting with filters. I was still seeing black corners at 28mm and what kills me is that the vignetting was evident in one picture but not the next, when they’re both taken at 28mm with the same filter, with only a slight difference in composition. I can only speculate that I rotated the filter in between the frames and the glass element is a little bit loose so that it would hang down a little bit in some position. I only saw the vignetting in the upper corners which would support this theory, even if it sounds a bit strange. In any case, it’s not the camera’s fault. The camera is fine, but it’s not good enough for me to upgrade. For one thing, I can’t afford it. For the second, my 40D still works and that is good enough for me!

I hate to keep repeating myself but I seem to be coming no closer to end of my photographic slump. Spring is definitely on the way now, we’ve been having some warm days and the snow has started melting but it’s also been very windy and the snow is covered with wind blown debris. Maybe someone can take landscape pictures under these conditions, but not me. Seems like it’s April already, just with more snow. And I don’t like April.

Anyway, despite the conditions, I actually had a few ideas. I drove to Fågelsjö, equipped with both digital and film cameras, that’s how inspired I was! The afternoon sun was looking very nice and warm on the old buildings at Hembygdsgården. Emphasis on the word “look” – the wind was heavy and cold and I felt the inspiration sink along with my body temperature. But there was this one building in particular which looks gorgeous in the warm light so I set up the tripod and film camera and composed my picture and pressed the shutter and … nothing. How could this happen again?? My worst nightmare, press the shutter button and nothing happens. A closer inspection of the camera revealed that it’s probably a battery problem. The display is flashing “bc”, the manual says it can be the battery but it could also be a connection issue, with the lens or pretty much anything else. I tried another lens but it didn’t help, so either it’s the battery or then the camera is kaput. It’s not worth sending it to service in any case, so I hope I get away with the price of a new 2CR5.

Good thing I had both cameras with me then. I took the picture with digital instead and took off in search for more pictures. And found nothing. Nothing! I followed the snowmobile trail for a while but it was pointless. My plan was to wait for the sunset but I didn’t feel like standing around in Fågelsjö for an hour in the bitingly cold wind, so I decided to drive back home via Hamra, the road should take me to some viewpoints in case the sunset would be nice. And of course it wasn’t anything special now that I had a chance to shoot it. It’s been nice just about every evening this week, as I’ve seen from the bus window… but not today.

I promise I won’t complain in my next post! I probably won’t post anything until May…

A couple of weeks ago Canon announced a whole pile of new products, including a Powershot G11 and S90. There was no SLR in the announcements but I guess they wanted to release it separately so people would pay more attention – so enter EOS 7D! It’s a follow-up to 50D (and here I was thinking it would be called 60D, duh) which means that it’s the camera that I would potentially upgrade to (my plan is to hop over every second release). So I pored over the specifications but the first thing I saw put me off immediately – 18 MP. 18?! For a sensor that is only marginally larger than on my 40D. Forget it. That’s almost as crazy as 15 MP on the G10, and Canon seems to have realised that and jumped off the megapixel race and reduced the pixel count to 10 MP in the G11. So one would hope that they would’ve been equally smart with the 7D, but apparently they plan to cater to an un-educated audience who think that more pixels is better.

So I’m disappointed to say the least. But as I continued reading the specs, I was kind of relieved to find nothing of any interest to me. HD Video is there, of course, but for the life of me I can’t think of any reason why I would want it. Just something extra I’ll be paying for, no thanks. It’s probably too much to hope for a non-video alternative in the future.

However, it’s not all that bleak. The new camera has weather sealing! Yes, after years of waiting, it’s finally there. But during all those years of waiting I’ve learned to photograph in inclement weather without weather sealing and I’ve never had a problem, so ironically, I don’t really need the sealing now.

And the best news of all – since the 7D is definitely not for me, I can save my money for something useful. Like a MacBook Pro!

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DP Review has a hands-on preview of 7D.

We’re finally there – we can take the photographer out of the equation. If the pictures are bad, you can genuinely blame the camera!

Time to concentrate on the main thing – flowers. Considering the slow progress of all flowers in Loos, I figured there was a risk that I wouldn’t find anything interesting (read: orchids) in the mountains. And I was right, the best I could find all day was some lapland marsh orchids which were in the first stages of opening. I also visited Torkilstöten, which is a reknowned floral hotspot, but summer is always late there. Today, the coltsfoot were blooming at their best… and the mountain avens were barely even budding. Plenty of snow, though.

The mosquitos are turning out to be a real nuisance. This is why I’d prefer cooler weather – it’s easy to wear protective clothing, but in this heat, it’s only a choice between bad or worse. Grin and bear. The option is to stay at home and do nothing.

The afternoon hike took me to a lake in Anådalen, on the map it seemed like the lake would be a nice foreground to some mountains. Alas, it wasn’t at all like I had imagined, but now I know. One to check off the list. I did find something else nice though, ironically, just a few hundred meters from the road…

During my late evening session, I suddenly came across a pair of cranes, walking around in a marsh. It would be just perfect as a foreground for the mountain, so I took out the camera… and found that it was stuck on aperture 16. No matter what I did, take out the battery, memory card and lens, it refused to budge. The wheel itself was ok, I was able to use it to change other settings. But not aperture. Dang! The cranes are getting further and further away while I’m trying to figure it out… then it hits me. In the previous session I had assigned the focus point selection to the wheel, because I couldn’t make the joystick select the middle point. And by doing this, I seemed to have disabled the wheel for aperture, a very useful function – not! – who on earth needs that? At this point, I finally realised what had happened. It must’ve started as an accident – the focus point selection custom function was reset so that I couldn’t use the joystick to select the point like I’m used to. But I couldn’t remember which option it was in the menu, so I had to do some testing, but the testing was spoiled by a brain fart. I had forgotten that in order to select the centre point, you just press the joystick. And because I had been in desperate need of the centre point, I had gone for the next best thing which was the wheel, without realising the consequences. By the time I had all of this sorted out, with correct exposure settings and focus point, the cranes had moved away almost too far but it was still worth trying. Click… and huh? I still had mirror lock-up on!!

What did I learn from this? That accidents and brain farts will happen!

First the G10 and now the 40D… my EOS 3 is not giving me any trouble, I’m loving film at the moment…

I’ve no special plans for this year’s vacation – just mountains. I started with a de-tour to Klövsjö, I wanted to check out the Fettjeåfallet waterfall. It was a sunny day so not really ideal for waterfalls, but at least I’d get to see the place. It’s a relatively short hike – about 2 km – but very rocky. But there’s also plenty to photograph along the way, and it’s this “along the way” that makes Fettjeåfallet one of the better waterfalls I’ve seen.

I had made the radical decision of taking the film camera (and the G10) on this excursion. The contrasty light in the forest is a nightmare for any camera so every time I wanted a picture I waited for a cloud to drift in. With the G10, I was able to use bracketing for HDR. And I must say I struggled a great deal with that. Every single time I’m on the field and need the bracketing function, I forget how to use it! And what kills me is that it’s not difficult, but I just can’t remember the combination of buttons to press. Because there’s that bracketing function, I can set it, I can even choose the interval… but the darn camera totally ignores my settings. So I’m missing some crucial last step in the process. Which leaves me doing manual bracketing, which takes too long, when the clouds are moving fast and thus changing the conditions of shadows and light in the composition. When I get home, I’ll have to check the manual and write down some notes and put them in the bag. I refuse to let a compact camera beat me.

But the film camera then. Not enough functions to get confused! The only custom function I need is the mirror lockup, but just in case, I carry the manual in the bag. You know, the good old days when you actually got a hardcopy of the manual. When I was walking back to the car, I was wondering why I’m not a least bit bothered about whether or not the slides will be any good. All too easy to botch the exposure in these conditions, and I didn’t even bracket. And I realised – the final picture is not that important! I’ve always said that the journey is more important than the goal, and it truly is. Good pictures are just a bonus. Sweet!

Compact cameras have quite awesome closest focusing distances. I mean, how many SLRs with macro lenses can brag with CFD of 1cm? So compact cameras must be really good at macro, right?

Pur-lease. Honestly, what’s the point of focusing at 1cm when you have to do it at wide angle? But I’m sure everyone who’s never shot macro with an SLR and a real macro lens are absolutely convinced that their compacts are far superior.

To be fair, the extreme focusing distance might be good for something. But to use a compact camera to create good macro pictures probably requires more from the photographer than using an SLR with a macro lens and I have to confess that I was lost with the G10 today. Try focusing to 1cm with a live toad – I didn’t.

I’ve just one thing to say – shallow DOF rules! I want my 40D back.

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The 40D is actually already on the way back to me. It’s just that UPS are not able to deliver it to me at home and I haven’t found out how to tell them that I’m at work during the day so they can divert the package to Ljusdal. Frustrating.

I was only supposed to write three posts about film, but that was before I actually got the camera. It feels like I’m more excited about my 2nd hand film camera than I was with my brand new 40D!  So I picked it up last night and the first impression when I was unpacking it was “wow it’s huge”. When I compared it to the 40D, it’s only marginally bigger but somehow it still seems larger than its dimensions indicate. Weird. The second reaction after unpacking the camera was “wow no display”. Just a tiny window to see the film roll, LOL.

Then after I had attached a lens and turned on the camera and pressed the shutter – oh wow. The Sound. When the 40D came out, a lot of people were complaining about the shutter sound. It was different than on the 20D, yes, but I got over it in about a day. But the EOS 3 is like beautiful music… I need to get it as an MP3. I’m telling ya, you want to take pictures with this camera just so you can hear the shutter!

What the Duck 648

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The lens I mounted on the camera was the Sigma 15mm fish-eye. I’ll add a fourth “wow” here – for the first time, I saw how wide 15mm really is. I could get the whole room in the frame… it’s a brand new photographic experience for me. I think I should try to learn to use wideangles this summer!