My new 4GB USB Film Roll from PhotoJojo.

These are so cool! PhotoJojo has taken used 35mm film canisters and made them into 4GB USB Drives! The best part is that even though you don’t get to pick what type of film canister you receive, I got my film of choice for landscape photography – Fuji Provia!

I can’t wait to use this next time I take files to the lab for printing!

I’ve recently begun shooting with a Tachihara 4×5 Field Camera, and let me tell you it has been alot of fun! Although it looks like an antique, it was made in the modern era and cameras like it are still made to this day. A field camera is essentially a folding box that opens up with a lens board on one end, a ground glass and film holder on the other, and a light proof belows to connect them. Although many advances have been made in camera technology to help us do things faster and easier, the ultimate in quality is still obtained by shooting large format. Aside from the insane level of image quality, the process of shooting large format film has been a great experience.

Yep, that’s right, film! I shoot Fuji Provia 100F film, which is an excellent fine grained film that captures natural looking colors and scans well. That is an unexposed sheet of Provia in the center, with a bottle cap for scale. The film must be loaded into film holders (top right) before it can be used with the view camera. Opening boxes of film and loading holders must be done in total darkness, either in a darkroom or a special lightproof changing bag. I currently have five double sided film holders, so I can make a maximum of 10 exposures in a single outing. Each exposure costs approximately $5 for film and development. Needless to say, it is important to be very deliberate and careful when shooting large format.

I am currently shooting with two different lenses, a Nikon 90mm f/8 wide angle and a Nikon 180mm f/5.6 normal lens. These are approximately the same field of view as a 24mm lens and a 50mm lens on a regular 35mm camera. Large format lenses have much slower maximum apertures than SLR lenses, rarely exceeding f/5.6. The aperture must be adjusted manually using a lever attached to the shutter, and the shutter itself is a spring mechanism that must be cocked between each exposure.

After you get the camera set up, you focus and compose your image using the ground glass on the back of the camera. The image is projected onto the ground glass upside down. It might seem awkward, but it I haven’t found it to be much of an issue. Lenses with large apertures help with composition and focusing since they will project a brighter image. In dim light a dark cloth is usually necessary to shade the ground glass.

In my next post, I will share a selection of my large format photos from my recent trip to Moab, Utah.

I recently checked out a GigaPan Epic Pro from LensRentals.com and tested it out by creating some high resolution panaromas of  popular Front Range rock climbing destinations.

Setting up the GigaPan Epic Pro on Mount Lady Washington to create a panorama of The Diamond (East Face) of Longs Peak. (Photo: Brad Taylor)

The GigaPan Epic Pro is basically a robotic tripod head that automates the creation of massive panoramas from several to literally thousands of photos.  By inputting the upper left and lower right limits of the scene, the GigaPan calculates the number of rows and columns of photos necessary and goes to work shooting, reseting, shooting and reseting.

Some first impressions:

The device is remarkably simple to set up.  It really only takes a few minutes with the quick start guide to get going, although it does have many settings for specialized situations.  I didn’t really dig into these much.  It did everything I needed right out of the box.

Once the photos have been captured, the special GigaStich software does a great job of stitching and is also very simple to use.  You do need to specify the number of rows in the panorama, which isn’t too difficult to figure out if you can’t remember, but  it would be nice if the GigaPan could log this as metadata at capture.

In a couple of my panoramas I wound up with my rows and columns being just a little bit off due to an extra photo at the beginning, end, or maybe somewhere in the middle.  Again, I think the GigaPan logging each photo’s position in metadata might solve this minor issue.

The GigaPan is bulky and with all of those little moters, a bit delicate.  I hiked 25-30 miles with it in my pack during the week I had it and the best solution I found was to store it in a rectangular plastic tub with generous bubble wrap and foam padding.  This just barely squeezed into my 60L pack.  Add a camera, long lens, and a heavy tripod and the whole rig was probably around 40lbs. Yikes.  I also had some issues with it turning on inside my pack while hiking and draining the battery.  It would be best to pull the battery while in transit.

I shot most of my panoramas using a 1.7 teleconverter on a 70-200 zoom.  I think a 300 f/4 would work as well or better, but I don’t think the GigaPan Epic Pro is going to be very stable shooting with any heavier lenses, although it is rated to be good to 10lbs.  With my setup even a slight breeze produced noticable vibration and in the 20-30mph gusts common in Rocky Mountain National Park the vibration reduction on my 70-200 was the only way I got a usable photo.

Overall, I think the GigaPan Epic Pro is a success and I’m certainly going to be using it again.  I will post a link to the panoramas I created (including Longs Peak, Hallett Peak, Eldorado Canyon, and the Flatirons)  in the near future.