I’ve been spending a lot of time recently wondering about what type of film to take to Svalbard next month. The arguments about the subjective qualities of different types rage across the internet (yes, still), with no end of “expert”, dogmatic opinions (as well as the odd voice of reason).

I won’t go into the arguments here, but I did remember an interesting experience from a few years back.

During a photographic trip around Iceland in March 2008 with Daniel Bergmann, we were driving towards the town of Vik while a storm front was approaching from the south, making a very dramatic contrast between thick, dense cloud reflect dark sand and sea, and snow covered dunes.

We stopped to take a few photos. I was using my XPan loaded with Fuji Velvia 100F, Daniel was using his Canon EOS 1Ds Mk whatever.

When I got the processed film, it looked like this:

uncorrected scan

Not at ALL what I remembered!  No, I remember a leaden gray sky and pure white snow, so after some fairly drastic Photoshoppery (the slide has very low contrast, which should have given me a clue) I ended up with this:

the Truth ... is out there ?

Daniel meanwhile worked on his RAW file, without any idea or sight of what I had done, and some later mailed me this (cropped by me from his 35mm FF format):

Daniel Bergmann’s view (© Daniel Bergmann)

Interestingly, he’s ended up with much more blue, pretty much as the Velvia 100F slide suggested, and a lot lower contrast: I think he’s believed the camera, as opposed to me trying to recreate whatever I could remember of my impression.

The point of all this is this: with such a range of subjectivity, which can give results which are neither “right” nor “wrong” (even removing a colour cast is subjective), what characteristics of film can really be so important ? In the digital age, the main issue surely is to capture a neutral image which will give as much latitude as possible for subjective interpretation.

Which pretty much rules out Velvia 50, the great favourite of landscape photographers since Noah launched the Ark…

well ok, not quite Venice. But close enough.

Burano: Xpan with 30mm lens on Fuji Velvia 100

I’ve just completed uploading my latest gallery, and this one is particularly special for me. It features 16 so-called panoramic photographs, all taken in Iceland with the Hasselblad XPan. This is probably my favourite format, and the camera I have the closest relationship with it. I had considered selling it along with all my other film gear, but I’ve been convinced by others and myself that this would just be plain stupid. If I’m ever going to produce any notable photography, it is probably going to be with this camera.

An XPan photo of Jökulsárlón which didn’t make the last 16

Note: At the moment there’s a bit of a glitch with the display of the gallery thumbnails (they’re too wide for the page). This is due (a) to lack of planning on my part and (b) because I can’t get the fix I’ve kludged together to work yet.