The Part Where I Remember the Good Old Days..

I used a view camera, more or less exclusively, for over 20 years. I can wallow in nostalgia, but my much reduced Large Format kit sits in a drawer. it sits in a drawer almost all the time.

I do miss the accurate, loupe-up-in-each-corner, precision of a a good View Camera. I also, and this has been said by others, really miss the upside down and reversed left to right world of an image projected on a ground glass. Having a landscape image arrive upside down and reversed side to side made it an abstraction. With practice, it is easy to “fix” the projected image and imagine the final shot (or as an alternative, just look at the scene without using the camera) but the abstraction of the image was always part of the process.

The Part Where I forget the good old days – Canon TS-E Lenses

The Canon 17mm TS-E lens along with the TS-E 24mm II are best in class Tilt Shift Lenses. While Nikon may be close to the 24mm in sharpness (they don’t make anything wider so the 17mm stands alone), the Canon handely beats the Nikon mechanically with it’s ability to rotate the shift and tilt aspects of the lens independently. The 45mm TS-E and the 90mm TS-E are very good lenses as well but have not gone to “Mark II” design status and lack the independent tilt and shift feature.

If you have questions or are unfamiliar with a TS-E type lens click here for a nice review and tutorial that features the original Canon TS-E 24.

However good a tilt and shift lens is on a 35mm camera, it simply isn’t the equal of a view camera. A well made view camera had (at least) 4×5 inches of ground glass to wonder around and check for focus. A real view camera has more movements that just front tilt and shift. But I already wrote about the good old days, anyway… Shift on a TS-E lens is basically as good as a view camera, but tilt is course compared to a view camera, I use it carefully and not often. I will say that it has become better with live view. It is useful but lacking precision.

In early January, EyeFi announced that they would make available (When? I’ll  speculate late spring…) a firmware upgrade that would turn their any EyeFi X2 card into a WiFi hotspot. Your camera can now interact with any WiFi device – well any WiFi device that runs their free App. Or to quote the quick YouTube Video. “With Direct Mode full resolution Photo’s and Videos from your camera fly directly from your camera to your phone or tablet.” I would have used “transferred” rather than “fly” but I’ll give the presenter a pass – this time.

So, with an EyeFi card in direct mode and an iPod nearby I can preview my composition, including the imprecise tilt, on a nine inch screen. Since I use a Canon 1DsIII which has two card slots, I can send over a medium sized JPEG while recording the full size RAW. Nine inches of high resolution iPad screen compared to a 3 inch camera back is hardly a fair fight. Pinch to zoom should allow me to retire my well worn loop.

Problems. There Are Always Problems

I’m no fan of juggling thousands or even hundreds of dollars worth of tech so the iPad needs a good, safe home. I’d mount it high on a tripod leg and make it easy to mount and remove. I can do that using a Vogel iPad Holder and a bit of imagination. The Vogel holder also acts as a cover for the quarter acre of glass that is the front of an iPad. And, although I don’t shoot at noon, a hood might be handy. Here is one (on eBay so the link will die.) There may be others – pretty much any netbook shade should work.

Yep, it sounds a little cumbersome and fussy. But I spent 20 years under a dark cloth, 8x loop in hand, staring at the back of a view camera. I do fussy and cumbersome if the results are worth it.

Now, if the EyeFi folks would allow the app to mimic a real view camera and make it possible to reverse and flip the image…

If asked about my photography I instinctively use the words landscape or exterior to describe what I do. While that was once accurate, lately it is less so. With the construction of commercial buildings in my part of California pretty much stopped this past year I’ve found my commercial work moving indoors.

My commercial exterior skill set was borrowed from years of shooting the West’s landscapes. Decisive framing, knowing good light from lesser light, and shooting fairly quickly are some of the skills that work just as well while shooting in a National Park or a squeaky new Office Building. Also, photographing the exterior of an office building, like shooting landscapes, is (most often) a solo activity.

In contrast, interior work is far less spontaneous and far more about staging and fussiness. While not necessarily more technical, indoor work definitely uses different set of tools. Unlike exterior work, interior photography is almost always collaborative. While I’m happy looking through a view finder for composition, most interior designers and other interested parties are not.

The solution, and there are several variations depending on the species of camera, involves either tethering the camera to a nearby laptop or talking to the laptop wirelessly. Either way images show up on a nearby laptop and crowds gather. While tethering is cheap and reliable, stringing cables between things that don’t drop or fall without suffering greatly, is an invitation to a bad day. Tethering is for the studio.

I shoot Canon Digital and Canon has a wireless solution, the WFT-E2A Wireless File Transmitter, by all accounts it works well. It is pricey and does lots of things that I don’t much care about. Enter the Eye-Fi Pro Wi-Fi / Airport enabled SD card. The Eye-Fi Pro lets most any camera that has an SD slot (my main shooting camera a Canon 1Ds III has both CF and SD slots) to transfer files via a wireless network. Most importantly it allows for an Ad hoc, aka direct camera to laptop, network setup.

I’ve tested it with my MackBook sitting a full 25 feet away and it pretty much just works… well after the obligatory “new thing not working at all” phase.

Setting Up an Ad hoc Network

The folks at Eye-Fi central have a far more grand vision for this little card than simply transferring files from here to there. While the Eye-Fi is plugged into the computer’s USB port, all these features are enabled and managed in a browser based application. This all goes well until it’s time to set up the Ad hoc network feature. To configure the card you have to be on a network. Let’s pretend you are on a wireless network as I was. To configure the Ad hoc network you have to leave the network and create the computer to Eye-Fi link. This is unfortunate. If you try and do this wirelessly… well I couldn’t. The Eye-Fi browser application complained that it could not talk to Eye-Fi central every time I left the Airport network to configure the Ad hoc feature.

After a couple of rounds of this sort of behavior it became clear that the computer is being used to configure the card needs to be hard wired to the internet. After dusting off a spare ethernet cable and finding a spare port to plug it into, my MacBook and Eye-Fi were properly configured. The MacBook was able to talk via ethernet to Eye-Fi central while the wireless chatter between the MacBook and the Eye-Fi card set up the direct wireless link.

The Eye-Fi Pro allows for RAW files to be transferred. Saving (this is a slow, small capacity card) and sending big RAW seems unnecessary for this purpose. The 1Ds III allows for different files to be written to each of the two internal cards. I set up with RAW going to the fast CF card and a medium JPEG file is sent to the Eye-Fi. From click to transfer time seems strangely variable with maximum time of roughly one minute with less than 20 seconds more typical.

Fun With Folder Actions

While transferring a JPEG from camera to laptop using the Eye-Fi qualifies as a good trick, a real solution would display the resulting JPEG for the gathered crowds. Again, some solutions do this natively and others are home made. Follows is the latter.

As part of the Ad hoc network setup, the Eye-Fi application asks for a folder to load with the transferred JPEGs. Using the Automator application that ships with OS X I wrote a (very) simple action that automatically checks to see if anything has been added to the target folder and, when something arrives, to display it in the OS X native Preview application.

The workflow: Compose, worry about staging and lighting, and fire the shutter. The file is sent to the Eye-Fi Pro and from their to the anointed folder on the MacBook. The crowd stares at as the JPEG appears in Preview. Fault is found in the framing or the staging. Something is fixed, the shutter is tripped again…

Long ago I found the commercially available camera backpacks to be over-engineered, too heavy and too costly. Sure, encased in pounds of high density foam, your equipment would likely survive a drop of 30 feet. But, I asked myself, how often is this an issue?

My 4×5 equipment lives in a Dana (RIP), front loading Pack with the camera and lenses all safe in Gnass Gear (RIP?) cases. The pack is made for backpacking and other backcountry uses and easily carries 35-40 pounds. The camera infrastructure, the pack and the dedicated bags, weigh just 6 pounds (contrast this to the roughly equivalent Lowepro Photo Trekker which is nearly twice as heavy.) I figure it’s good for no more than a twelve foot drop. No, I’m not going to test it.

As I collected digital camera gear my first impulse was to go the build-it-yourself route. Once again, I needed a pack that was designed to carry well and was a front or panel loader. These are scarce and the ones that are available all had the same flaw – the front “rainbow” zipper stopped far short of the bottom of the pack

As Mark Dubovoy discovered and writes about over at Luminous Landscape the folks at RPT have a nice solution for large format types. The combine a modified Kelty Redwing Pack and custom lens cases into a decent carrying, lightweight system. And, to their everlasting credit, they modify the Redwing Pack so that the front panel zipper extends from the floor of the pack. But the system is intended for large format use…

So I bought one intent on making it work for DSLR cameras and lenses. A visit to the local Real Camera Store ™ solved the problem. Pelican makes a padded divider that fits perfectly and they had one in the back. No I don’t have the model number. Here is the link to the Pelican Case Accessories Page - it’s there somewhere.

The RPT Modified Redwing Pack with the Pelican Case padded divider weigh very little, provide plenty of protection for gear and look like this:

But, this nice carrying, light weight combo is too large for international carry on.

So I fly with a Lowepro All Weather Mini Trekker , which is internationally flyable. The RPT/Pelican Pack collapses well and is packed inside one of my two rolling duffels. I’m 6’2″ and the Mini Trekker is simply unwearable in the field. The pack is too small in every way but in particular, the waist belt is useless and your shoulders take the entire load.

Note how much longer the torso is on the RPT Kelty pack (left.) Also, it is nicely adjustable and has a real, “glad to help with the load,” padded, adjustable waist belt. The dog is Zach and really wanted to be part of this picture. So he is.

When I travel far from home I have two rules. OK, I have lots of rules but two that specifically apply to traveling with photo equipment.

1. Everything that matters (and is allowed) travels with me in the sumptuous confines that are economy class.
2. If any one thing breaks, something else can, more or less, take its place.

So, follows is an annotated list of the camera and lenses I’ll be hauling this year to Iceland.

Camera Bodies

• Canon 1Ds Mark III
• Canon 5D

Yep, two Canon full frames. I don’t expect the 5D will see a lot of work but it is significantly lighter which may earn it some use. A 40D or other APS sized sensor camera would do as well and help with telephoto work. I just happen to own these at the  moment.

Lenses

• EF 14mm f/2.8L II USM ((rented from LensRentals.com)
• EF 17-40 f/4L USM Zoom
• TS-E 45mm f/2.8
• EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM Zoom
• EF 70-200 f/4L USM Zoom
• Extender EF 1.4x

I’ve gone with the “slow but light” f/4 zoom line. These are good traveling lenses, Hell, these are good lenses under most any circumstances. Most often used on past trips to Iceland were the 17-40mm and the 70-200 zooms. A very nice, lightweight kit would use the 5D, the 17-40mm and the 70-200mm along with the 1.4x extender.

The 24-105, thanks to the nice zoom range and IS, is a great general purpose/walking around lens. However, at times, it isn’t quite wide enough while also not being quite long enough. That said, if I had to go with just one lens… It also can, per the second rule, stand in for either of the other zooms should disaster strike.

The TS-E lens (strangely enough the fastest lens that I own in this set) is along as an homage to my View Camera roots. The shift allows for easy to shoot, easy to stitch, 2:1 or 3:1 panoramas. It also helps, should I need to, keep buildings straight as the folks that built them intended. This is the sharpest lens in the bunch and that, along with tilt and shift, earn it a place on the trip.

The 14mm is along for a number of reasons. I bought and sent (right) back, the original EF 14mm so this is an extended audition of the, by all accounts, much improved version. It also has an f-stop and some real width over the wide end of the 17-40mm zoom. Again, invoking the second rule, the 14mm and the 45 TS-E, odd couple though they are, would do much of the work of the 17-40mm should something dire happen to that lens. Finally, the 14mm as a new-to-me tool, will allow me to approach the trip with a brand new perspective.

Last and lightest, the 1.4x extender gives me a little more reach with the 200 end of the 70-200mm zoom. Also, it is the essence of the second rule: it adds versatility to several of the other optics should I need it.

I’m scheduled for three weeks in Iceland this year. This will be my third trip in as many years.

With most of the population living in and near Reykjavik, much of Iceland is thinly populated. Even as tourism peaks in the Summer, the countryside outside the Capital area seldom seems crowded. Campgrounds are widely available, fairly priced and, thanks to the open style of camping, don’t really ever fill up in the way that American campgrounds, limited by individual sites, so often do. ¹

It is also easy to stay in places that have ceilings, walls and such. Guesthouses, hotels, hostels, resorts and even rural schools offer weatherproof if often expensive places to stay throughout the country. Unlike the campgrounds, indoor accommodations do fill up in high season so advanced reservations are a very good idea.

So, staying indoors is dry, pricey and inflexible. Car camping, despite the logistics of hauling gear 5000 miles from home, provides the freedom to travel and photograph as weather and whim dictate. Not incidentally, campgrounds typically have hot showers (geothermally heated in some parts of the country) and clean restrooms with flush toilets.

Getting there requires, at least for we West Coast types, both Domestic and International flights. Each has different restrictions on baggage with international, aka IcelandAir, the more restrictive. Since I’m not about to become responsible for a typo that results in a violation of IcelandAir’s baggage policy, you should go here and read it yourself.

Generally, the roads in Iceland are excellent. There are also plenty of rough, 4×4 style roads but the rental car companies don’t want their cars on them. The interior then is basically off limits except to tours, busses, locals and folks who bring their personal vehicles in from Europe. It’s just as well – you only think you want to drive across a glacial melt stream/river. Those giant four wheel drive rigs the locals drive have snorkels for a reason.

Vehicle rental is expensive and the price of fuel is just plain mean. As I type this AutoEurope (I have no interest or affiliation with these folks, they just have lots of my money…) is charging about $600 US per week for your choice of tiny car. Reserving early (as in February) or for travel off peak season can cut this price by one-third. Gasoline is sold by the liter and adds up to better than $8.00 US per gallon. That’s the bad news, the good news is that gasoline is widely available. Most stations are automated. Memorize your credit card pin – it is required in some areas to purchase at the pump.

With the rainfall totals in the Summer months less than you might expect, the wind becomes the most common camping problem. The Europeans are fond of tunnel type tents with large vestibules. After a first trip with a standard issue back packing type tent, I settled on this free-standing tent, complete with a giant wind-stopping vestibule, for year two.

¹ Campgrounds can seem very full on the first weekend in July. This is the traditional start of Icelandic camping season and just about everyone with a tent trailer is out enjoying the 24 hour daylight and summer weather. This is also the only time that Iceland campgrounds get noisy. The rest of the year all is quite by midnight.