This little clump of cypress trees, on the main road towards Rome, just south of San Quirico d’Orcia in Tuscany, Italy, must be a very strong candidate for the most photographed trees in the world. They even have their own group on Flickr - Boschetto del Cipressi - which also conveniently gives you the exact GPS coordinates.  Apart from that, there aren’t all that many good angles, so pretty much all the good shots are done. And I’ve been going there for well over 10 years. A few years ago, as often as not you’d have the place to yourself, but of course now it is a regular stop on the the dreaded Photo Workshop Circuit.

Nevertheless, a few weeks back, when doing a quick “highlights” tour in those parts for some friends, we did pass, and of course I had to stop.  And what the hell, I pulled out the XPan, stuck the 90mm lens on it, wandered over to the edge of the field, and took a few frames. Couldn’t be bothered with the tripod. Afterwards I was fairly sure I’d screwed something up, I don’t remember what, but it turns out that if indeed I did it was a good thing. Because I think I’ve ended up with my all-time personal favourite of the boschetto.

il boschetto dei cipressi, XPan, 90mm f/4, Fuji Provia 400X, handheld

This is a quick note which will be of interest to almost nobody, except perhaps the person who asked about it on Flickr, but whatever, I’m in a public service kind of mood.

A while ago I invested in the Lee RF75 filter system, which fits nicely on both my Hasselblad XPan and Olympus micro four thirds lenses.  My source for this kind of equipment is the ever reliable Robert White.

On their website they state:

“The RF75 will take 2 filters as standard and can be adjusted to take a single filter to enable its safe use on the widest angle lenses, like a 30mm on the Hasselblad XPan.”

However, I’ve found to my cost that this is not 100% accurate, at least not when using the RF75 clip-on polariser. Skipping the point that using a polariser on a ultra wide angle lens is not always a good idea - at least not if you’re using it for the basic make-the-sky-prettier application - unfortunately it is not safe on the XPan 30mm lens.

The examples below are straight uncorrected scans direct to JPG.

Evidence, case 1.  The “blue sky” test.

XPan 30mm lens, clip-on polariser, RF75 holder as shipped with two filter slots. Extremely intrusive.

XPan 30mm lens, clip-on polariser, RF75 holder with one filter slot. Still some intrusion, but salvageable (not that you’d want the sky looking like that. This is a TEST!).

Evidence, case 2, Vegetation, reflections test - something you might conceivably want to do even at 30mm.

XPan 30mm lens, clip-on polariser, RF75 holder as shipped with two filter slots. Extremely intrusive.

XPan 30mm lens, clip-on polariser, RF75 holder with one filter slot. Still some intrusion, barely noticeable in this case. Probably you’d get away with it in this kind of scenario

So, in conclusion, the RF75 polariser can be used on the XPan 30mm, but you need to remove all but one filter slot, and be very careful. And take a safety shot without it on.

This is really an extreme case, and is in no way a criticism of either the Lee RF75 (or the similar “7” system) or of the Robert White team. They’re both excellent.

p.s. - there is no issue using the polariser on either the 45mm or 90mm lens, or indeed any Olympus lenses I’ve tried it on. This, I repeat, is an extreme case.

I’ve just added a portfolio of 12 Antarctic panoramas to my photo galleries. The captions will need updating, once I can figure out where the locations really are. But that’s not terribly important. I really can’t say at this point if these area the “best” of the 200 or so candidates, but they’re a representative selection.  It really was that gloomy!

Now I can move on to the rest of the backlog…

Although I’m hopelessly addicted to wide-format photography, using my Hasselblad XPan film camera, there’s no question that it lacks the immediacy of digital. It has taken over two months to get the 10 rolls of Ektachrome E100G which I put through it in Antarctica developed, scanned, cleaned up and somewhat edited. Of course this time I was sidetracked by a trip to Venice as well as several other tangents I shot off on, not to mention earning a living and keep the garden under control. And having a life. Well, marginally. At the same time I still have another 12 rolls from Patagonia which remain in their boxes, and a veritable avalanche of digital photographs from Antarctica which I have had but a cursory look at. I tend to get very linear about this stuff, so apart from the distraction of my Venice projects (which were also a bit linear), I have really concentrated on this process.

Coaxing the best results I can out of my ageing film scanner is time-consuming, as is removing the artefacts it generates. But that’s just part of the deal. The challenge is to get some approximation of the fantastic way the slide film looks on the light table onto the screen.

The next step is to select a dozen or so for a gallery page, but here’s a quick preview.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I was inspired by reading Stuart Klipper’s “The Antarctic: From the Circle to the Pole“ to attempt to capture some feeling of Antarctica away from the more usual high drama of high contrast, mirrored, dramatic landscapes. I hope this doesn’t descend into plagiarism - after all it’s hardly the first time I’ve tried this, or something like it - but I can’t deny that I was compelled to get the hell out of the library, and work with this soft, dull light while I still had the opportunity.  Actually, there would be all too much opportunity in the days ahead!

Both photos taken with the Hasselblad XPan, 90mm lens, and Kodak Ektachrome E100G