A couple of years ago, I went off for a 5 week trip around Argentinian Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego, fitting in a 12-day cruise around the Antarctic Peninsula. Apart from the fact the the photos from that trip, in particular those from the Argentinian part, are still languishing neglected in my archives, one thing that keeps nagging at me is the ridiculous amount of gear I burdened myself with. I've whined quite a lot it here - here, and here, for example. I should have known better.

So, with a sort-of repeat experience coming up at the end of the month, have I learned my lesson ? Well, perhaps. I've worked out that even neglecting things like filters, batteries, film, and all the other paraphernalia, in December 2012 I set off with a backpack weighing over 10kg. And actually, I also had a Domke shoulder bag with a Ricoh GRD4, but I was relieved of this by a helpful Argentinian in Buenos Aires. This time, largely thanks to the Olympus Micro Four Thirds system, and swapping the Sigma Dp0 for the Hasselblad XPan set, I have a very similar set, but weighing under 7kg. It's still noticeable, but manageable. The difference between the Four Thirds and Micro Four Thirds sets is a significant contribution:



The range of focal lengths is a bit different. I left the 4/3 7-14 f/4 lens at home last time, because it was just impossible. But the m4/3 version is much lighter (and faster). What I am missing in my 2016 packing list is a long telephoto. In 2013 I took a non-mirrorless E-System kit with me, and the fabulous Zuiko Digital 150mm f2/0. Attaching this to a 2x convertor turned it into a 300m f/4, a pretty powerful tool. Coincidentally, Olympus now sells a very highly rated 300m f/4 for Micro Four Thirds. Forgetting the cost for a moment, this weighs in at 1.2kg, only 100g lighter than the old ZD 150. My Lightroom catalog tells me that in 2013, out of a total of 1108 photos taken in the Antarctic, only 89 were taken with this cumbersome and restrictive 150mm. However, those 89 include several of my favourites. But anyway the conclusive point is that there is no room in my backpack for a 300mm lens, so I'll just have to be more creative with what I've got. And anyway, I'm not really a dedicated wildlife photographer, so a 300mm prime lens really would be a little extravagant.

A pretty psychedelic penguin, rather an extreme shot taken with the Zuiko 150mm f/2 wide open

And a somewhat psychotic penguin. This time with the 150mm f/2 tele-converted to a 300mm f/2

Very recently Olympus introduced a new lens, a 12-100mm constant f/4 zoom, which would be really ideal for travel like this. The 12-40mm f2/8 is really excellent, but it is a little restricted in range, and a 12-100 would really help to avoid a lot of lens swapping, which in typically Antarctic Peninsula weather is really no bad thing. The new Olympus camera, the E-M1 Mk II, would also bring a lot of benefits. Unfortunately neither of these will apparently be available until 2 days before I return. Not being a Famous Photoblogger, there's no chance of getting my hands on them. Oh well, what I've got will work just fine.

Actually, weight is less of an issue this time, as the trip basically consists of a glorified taxi ride into (hopefully) the Weddell Sea, but still, it counts. One issue is of course ever stricter carry-on baggage restrictions, so that too needs to be taken into account, but there is also the point that too much gear can drastically interfere with photography.

Hopefully I won't end up whining so much this time.

For some random reason I recently stumbled across a group of photos I took in Antarctica in 2013, and which I had more or less discarded. The photos are of icebergs, and I suppose I had tried to turn them into the sort of eye candy which is more or less obligatory these days, with ominous dark skies and intense saturated blues. Easy enough to do, but not really very satisfying. I have some shots which are naturally that way, and those, I let be. These, however, I finally realised, have a lot more potential to convey something of my idea of Antarctica. I've mentioned this before, probably too often, but I find a lot of common ground in the work of Stuart Klipper, who's Antarctica photography is a million miles away from the 500px aesthetic (I'm being polite, there).

So I tried to accentuate the soft light, the feeling of mystery, and the essential whiteness of it all. Something a bit like this:








Actually the reason was far from random. With practically zero planning, unexpectedly I am off to Antarctica again next month, and I needed to pick up where I left off.

While browsing through various inter web channels the other day - in this case, I think, National Geographic - I cam across something which gave me a bit of a shock. The work shown here - Magda Biernat Photography: adrift - is basically exactly one of the main ongoing photographic ideas I've had in my head for years, and indeed have been quietly preparing. So there are no new ideas - either somebody else has already done it, or they are about to. I suppose the only solution is to stop procrastinating and just get on with it, or alternatively, ignore completely what other people are doing. Well, I do have an alternative idea running along the same path, more or less, but it's going to be harder to realise, and now, it will just look like a facsimile.

diptych by Magda Beignet, magdabiernat.com

What really grabs me about this idea is that it addresses an issue that I personally have with classic landscape photography, that it excludes, repels even the human element, and thus loses any real meaning beyond the superficial. The very fact that the photographer is there to take the photograph means that the idea of untouched, unreachable wilderness which is being hinted at just collapses. Magda Biernat's approach resolves this in a very elegant way. I'm sure all of see photographs we wish we could have made. What I saw here was photography I should, and quite easily could, have published, and that hurts a bit. Whatever, I ordered the book.

I’m please to announce that a set of my Antarctic XPan panoramas is featured in the latest issue of Landscape Photography Magazine.

It’s something of a coincidence to hear about this now, as I’ve been revisiting these over the past few days, and making new scans with the Plustek Opticfilm 120. I found that my initial interpretations, from which this set in Landscape Photography is drawn, were a little overwrought and the colour was inconsistent.

It’s always a difficult decision whether to stick exactly to the colours as recorded by (in this case) Ekctachrome, or to rebalance a bit. I’m tending now to stick more closely to the film. You can see the difference between the version as published and my latest interpretation below. The film itself has a slight magenta cast - not sure where that comes from - which I’ve chosen to tone down. But I haven’t tried to go for a “digital” white balance as in my initial attempt.

 

Since my last post mourning the apparent demise of my faithful Minolta film scanner, I have tried every kind of arcane trick know to the Internet, and a few more besides, to bring it back to life. It is sometimes possible to get it to revive, but there’s no pattern to it. I managed to extract a full-blown, medium format 16x sampling megascan from it, too, but soon after it relapsed. I have to face facts, I’m wasting far too much precious time on this.

One reason why it has been so much the focus of my attention - apart from a 15 year film archive, which can always benefit from my improving scanning skills - is my current project to refine a set of Antarctic landscape panoramas.  I’m trying to get the colour profile exactly as it should be, which to my way of seeing needs to be delicate, slightly subdued, but still allowing the often astonishing colour to speak.  But not the overblown, digital look that plagues so much photography (Adobe Lightroom default profiles have to take of the blame for this). Of course, photographing on reversal film means that I’ve pretty much defined the look before it gets anywhere near a computer, but there are still opportunities and decisions to be made in the scanning and post-processing stages.  The ideal is to transfer what I see on the light table on the screen, and then to print, but that’s very hard to achieve, especially without a drum scanner. And when I’m engaged in a long stretch of batch scanning, sometimes my initial post-processing attempts are not ideal. For example:

I’m not sure what I was thinking of here. The contrast is too strong, and the delicacy of the colours in the ice is lost. I’ve also pushed the sky and sea too much towards neutral.

The revised version is much closer to the Ektachrome, although with less density. In the processing, “less is more” certainly applied. Note, in both cases, reducing down to web sized JPGs is introducing some exaggerated tone transitions, especially in the sky.

Fortunately, using the Silverfast archive workflow I can go back and re-work the post processing without needing to do new scans. Unfortunately, for most of my Antarctic scans I used the Scanhancer to try to eke out the last bit of pixel-peeping quality, and this has not worked out to well. The coupled increase in exposure times seems to have greatly exaggerated shadow noise, possibly due to an ageing scanner CCD, and a few near invisible scratches on the Scanhancer itself have resulted in bands of shadowing on the scans, which was not immediately noticeable, but which are almost impossible to fix.

So going back to the scanner quandary, unless I decide to give up, I have three choices: try to get the Minolta fixed, which seems unlikely, track down a good, working Minolta DSMP or Nikon Coolscan 9000 at a sensible price, or take a chance on a Plustek OpticFilm 120. Although the inter webs are full of whining about the Plustek, two reviewers who actually have some track record have been less negative: Mike Pasini (“we achieved our finest scans of the test images we’ve ever managed. But it wasn’t easy.”), and particularly, Tim Parkin, who is something of a scanner guru (“the OpticFilm is definitely has the potential to be a great scanner and I can only recommend if you have the wherewithall to play around with creating a custom film holder”). Another strong argument is that the OpticFilm is currently in production and support by a company for which scanning is a major business activity. Well, I’m going to dither for a little longer, but I’m leaning towards the OpticFilm. Especially as it supports 6x12 film format and alledgedly could be persuaded to scan 6x17.