NikonGear'23
Images => Nature, Flora, Fauna & Landscapes => Topic started by: Bjørn Rørslett on September 10, 2015, 10:21:41
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The all-encompassing blue hues so familiar to people in the Nordic countries, and actually, common to all high-latitude locations, might a bit tricky to capture on film or digital. Their persistent warmth is readily perceived yet conveying to the viewer is often fraught with difficulties.
Here is a winter scene where I think the warm blue might have survived. Taken in a wilderness area north of Oslo with the 45 mm lens on a Hasselblad Xpan camera. I had set up the camera for a 30 minutes exposure, but hadn't distanced myself away from the camera before I heard the soft click of its shutter closing. Puzzled, I rechecked my settings (B, a locked cable release to keep the shutter open the time it took for my to wade through the snow to my car and back again), found them okey, and redid the capture. Same behaviour this time, and then yet another. I gave up. Later, Hasselblad informed me that the maximum time for "B" was set to 8 seconds for "technical reasons". A later update had this increased to a whopping 32 seconds ....
One can imgine how underexposed the slides were. Only the pinprick lights of a far off village down in the valley could be vaguely seen, everything else was black.
Intent not to spoil the opportunity of a potentially good shot, years later I scanned the slide on a Nikon LS 8000 ED scanner set to 14 bit depth and 16X oversampling. I batch-scanned the same slide 64 (!) times, which took more than a day, and stacked the images to arrive at this final output image. It might be an exercise to redo this using a digital camera these days;
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I loved that scanner but disliked waiting for it to finish... Lovely Blues!
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Very noisy...is this ISO 25600..hehehe.....
8 to 32 sec - they must have put in a weaker spiral spring on the internal clock.
Seriously, I like it and it would do well on a large print as a decoration in a large hall.
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It goes to show that not only do you (Bjørn) know how to create images, but also that Nikon knows how to create imaging devices. I had the coolscan 5000 to scan my 135 slides. I should make it a winter project to scan them all for archiving, but i digress.
I really like the picture and see what you mean with warm blue. However, i think what makes the picture is the patch of pink/purple in between the trees on the left hand side, well ... for me anyway.
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Bjørn, I would bet you read "8" as "B". :P
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Nice photo.
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Bjørn, I would bet you read "8" as "B". :P
Nope. It was "B". The later technical explanation (or rather, excuse?) by Hasselblad was that the electromagnet holding the shutter curtain open would overheat if longer times were allowed. I used the camera at -20C so overheating was the least of my concerns ....
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Nope. It was "B". The later technical explanation (or rather, excuse?) by Hasselblad was that the electromagnet holding the shutter curtain open would overheat if longer times were allowed. I used the camera at -20C so overheating was the least of my concerns ....
Wow, that should have been a serious design flaw.
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According to Hasselblad it was "by design".
It might be unfair to point out this now, but actually Hasselblad did not make this camera themselves - it was designed and produced by a fairly familiar Japanese camera maker.
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Yes, I know. But have you ever heard of any other film camera(s) to allow B or T setting to last only 8 seconds?
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No, that is against the definition of those speeds ...
However, the new cameras sometimes turn up with curious results. Thus, the Nikon Df has a "T" setting, but the shutter will close after 30 minutes whether you touch the release or not. On the other hand, "B" that requires a locked cable release to remain active, happily will allow the Df to exposure for hours until your battery is depleted. quite contradictory I dare say.
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I have rarely worked in extreme cold environments. On the rare occasion when venturing into those climes, I found it difficult to work and my attention seemed to be focused on the details of the technical rather than the details of the image/composition. I truly appreciate these wonderful, cold images.
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I can easily see the warm blue color, you certainly went to great length to get the shot. The calmness of the shot is disturbed a bit by the footsteps / animal tracks in the snow, I can't decide whether I would prefer the image without them or not.
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Footsteps in snow tell their own story. In this case also my own progress to get the optimal vantage point, if you look closer.