My Equipment and Techniques

I have deliberately avoided discussion of cameras, lenses, shutter speeds and f-stops throughout the book, feeling that such information distracts from the emphasis of the book, which is the creative aspects of image making. That said, I know that I am always curious about just how another photographer makes his/her images and with what equipment; so here, tucked in at the end of the book, is a short description of my own equipment and techniques.

It is now October 2007, and for the past three years I have been shooting almost exclusively with digital equipment. I simply found that for me, the quality I achieve with my digital work is better than what I was obtaining with film. In part, this has to do with the rapid advances in sensors and image processing, and is partly due to my frequent use of stitching to obtain higher quality results. But, mostly it is because since switching to digital, I have become dramatically more productive and successful.

Prior to switching to digital, I was strictly a black and white photographer. Color was for snapshots. Now, if an image doesn't work in black and white, it may still work in color. More importantly, I can deliberately choose to record something that only works in color. This in itself increases my productivity rate at a shoot. Combine this with the speed at which I can make an image and start looking for the next image, or try a slightly different position or focal length (using zooms) for a possibly stronger image, and again my success rate goes up.

With a tripod, careful framing, and using the after-the-fact histogram to adjust exposure, I'm not dramatically faster in taking a single image with the digital camera; but the feedback of that histogram and the ability to check for wind and focus and not having to deal with a flapping dark cloth in the wind do speed things up overall.

The whole process of being reluctant to make minor adjustments and expose another sheet or two of film has meant that, in the past, images more often had minor flaws not noticed at the time.

While the ground glass on a 4 × 5 is lovely and large and the image being upside down doesn't bother me, the fact that I'm 58 and can't see well at close range any more has made working with a ground glass more awkward. I've tried various magnifiers and reading glasses and even custom bifocals without truly solving the problem.

There is a feeling of freedom to shoot more and experiment more when using digital that carries with it an unexpected effect on ones shooting. It was a rare day when I was shooting medium format that I would go through three rolls of 12 exposures of 120 film, whereas now a usual day's shooting is around 100 images. I take more photographs than that; but the extras are for blended exposures or focus checking or for stitching, so those don't really count.

Anyway, it is not my intention to persuade anyone to change from film to digital, rather it is just an explanation of why I made the change. For a dedicated black and white photographer, shooting medium format film (and there are some real bargains in used medium format equipment these days) or even large format is still emphatically a viable proposition, whether the results are scanned for digital printing or kept in the wet darkroom.

The images in this book were shot with a combination of 35mm film, medium format in a variety of cameras from a 1937 Zeiss Ikonta to Hasselblad to Mamiya Press, and a selection of 4 × 5 cameras. In digital, I started serious shooting with a Sony 707 using stitching, went then to a Canon 10D (usually stitched), and most recently to a Canon 1Ds2 (sometimes stitched), purchased because by then I was selling photographs and making ever larger prints. I have a 17-40, 24-70, 50 macro, 90 ts-e, 70-200 f2.8 IS and 300 f4 lens, all from Canon. My most used lens is the 90 ts-e, and my least used is the 300 f4 (but then I don't shoot sports or wildlife). To my surprise, I have been using extreme wide angle more than I ever thought I would, though largely NOT for the usual near/far type landscapes that are featured on the covers of some of the more popular photo magazines. Still, most of my images fall into the 70-135 mm focal length on a full-frame camera. Even when I shot 4 × 5, I used my 210 mm, 300 mm, and even a 480 mm lens more than my 90 mm.

I use Photoshop for processing my images (the current version is CS3). I have played with LightZone, but while I can see that it would make things easier, I can't see that it would make my images better. For years, all my fine control editing had been done using a mouse but I recently got a graphics tablet, which definitely gives me better control than the mouse. It's not essential, but it is nice!

I print on an Epson 7600 and a Canon iPF 5000, the latter purchased to try using glossier art papers, though I am still not satisfied that I have found the ideal solution there. My usual paper is Moab Entrada bright white matte paper, though my routine printing is done on Epson Ultra Premium matte paper (which used to be called Enhanced Matte and before that Archival Matte). It's a little thin, a little see-through, and is beige on the back, but it has a smooth, flat surface that makes for nice images and is significantly cheaper than the rag fine art papers (oh, and it machine loads from a bulk tray!).

My tripod is a Gitzo 1348, with a Manfrotto leveling base on top of the column and an Acratech V2 Ballhead, which I prefer to my previous Arca Swiss B1. I have used a wooden Berlebach tripod with great success and incredible durability in the past, and it worked really well when I sat my 4 × 5 right on top of the column. But, when I switched to a ballhead for my DSLR work, the additional height of the ballhead resulted in too much play at the top of the column. I'm very happy with my carbon fiber tripod and I appreciate the extra height available from the four-section legs, as well as the adjustable center column, not withstanding that I realize fewer leg sections and no center column could provide superior stability. I have shots that I could not have taken with a smaller tripod or one without a centre column.

With mixed feelings I use a Lowepro Photo Trecker II backpack. I find the weight of the 1Ds2 means that the Velcro dividers come undone when the pack is anything but full. I have to take the pack off to access lenses and lay the pack down on its straps in the dirt to open it up. If I don't remember to zip it up, picking it up to move even a few feet means lenses fall out, but there is no practical way to carry as many lenses as I have in a manageable shoulder bag. Of course, these issues are not unique to Lowepro but simply are the tradeoff for choosing to carry all that weight in a backpack. When I had a two-lens system, I happily used Lowepro's belt and suspenders system, and although it looked a bit geeky, it worked really well and nothing had to be laid on the ground. Perhaps I need to consolidate my equipment and go back to that system, but I seem to need an awful lot of stuff from spare batteries to memory cards, nodal sliders, spare electronic cable releases (don't get me started on their reliability and cost), lens and sensor cleaning equipment, and allen wrenches. Maybe I need a trailer or, hey, an assistant! Nah, they'd expect to be fed, or heaven forbid, paid. Maybe I could use a donkey like Ansel did in the early days. Wonder if Lowepro makes packs for donkey....

For a long time, my image stitching was done with a little homemade wooden slider with an Arca-type clamp on the back so that I could rotate the camera under the nodal point of the lens. Now I use one made by Really Right Stuff. In addition, I use their wonderful L brackets on my 1Ds2 for reorienting to vertical format without leaning the camera way over to the side.

I use PtGui for much of the stitching of my multi-images, though for shift stitching done with the 90 t-se, I use Photoshop. I frequently use Akvis Enhancer to increase local contrast in images, though I often tone it down a bit afterwards or use masking to use its effects locally. I have had considerable success blending images in which the focus is gradually changed between images, and the results blended with Helicon Focus create a depth of field not possible any other way (including a full movement 4 × 5).

If I didn't have digital any more, I could comfortably go back to film, probably 4 × 5, and almost certainly entirely black and white. I have thought of doing so and scanning film, or even of doing the opposite and shooting digitally but making enlarged contact negatives for silver printing; but with the quality of the results I'm getting these days, there isn't a lot of reason to go in that direction, and I'd certainly be submitting fewer portfolios for publication, and likely even something like this book would not have been possible.

That said, I do have a slight hankering to try really large format and contact printing. I have been checking out 5 × 12 cameras ever since I saw Tillman Crane use one.

I shoot Canon equipment for the simple reason that at the time that I got my 10D, Canon was way ahead of everyone else. That has changed and there are more options recently with the dramatic and largely unpredicted catch up by Nikon. Even Pentax, and now Sony, have interesting offerings. By the time you read this, who knows who will be on top or what the latest equipment will look like? I have been in photography long enough to remember when auto exposure seemed impossible, never mind auto focus.

In the end though, it's the image that counts and there are wonderful images made with very inexpensive cameras when the person standing behind the camera is thoughtful and creative, sensitive and informed.

Of all the advice in this book, if there were one single suggestion I could make, it would be to study great photographs; to acquire them in whatever fashion possible and to study them, whether in magazines, books, CDs, the Web, or hopefully, as good-quality original prints.