Tim Parkin - Landscape Photographer

The Arca Swiss plate from Really Right Stuff arrived today and is a great fit for the camera. I also phoned Robert White today about the eccentricity on the focus knob. They were very nice about it and are arranging a pick up to replace it with another 45SU that they have in stock. They agreed with my assessment that if it’s received a knock, who knows what else may have been rearranged. So I’ll be back without the camera for a few days (and the weather so good too). Ah well, I don’t have my BlackJacket yet so I can’t photograph in earnest. The truth is that I have a nervous feeling about taking a photograph with the camera. There is a lack of risk associated with digital that means you don’t have worries about screwing up. The mindset now is more ‘I must not make a mistake’. At the end of the day, a mistake just costs some money now, wheras it didn’t before. The other thing is that mistakes become a LOT more obvious. Wheras I would filter my 800 photos down to 10 good ones (if I’m lucky), I now have to take 10 good ones. This brings up all sorts of doubts about how good I actually am. I’m sure once I’ve gone through 10 frames and sent them to be processed, this fear will start to recede. This is one of the main reasons why I wanted to keep the digital camera, so I could still experiment and take risks.

Anyway, with the goal of getting to know the camera a little better, I took it out into the garden today to play around a little. Firstly taking a (virtual) photo of the setting sun and getting good scheimpflug on the fence and trees, also playing with aperture and depth of field. I can still see a reasonable picture to focus at f16. Next I thought I’d see how close I could focus. With full bellows extension, I could get to within a meter of the flowers in the picture with my 210 Symmar S. Also the Symmar S has a HUGE image circle (at least I couldn’t get to the edges of it).

I then played around with lining up next to a wall for swing and taking a shot next to the ground for extreme front and rear tilt (almost horizontal plane of focus). It was strange to watch the focus move from the base of the blades of grass to the tips all the way across the lawn from my tripod to 20ft away.

Here is a photo of my current bag layout. More photos are in the previous post (they seemed more appropriate there)