technical
Nikon and Zeiss
For the curious the system I mainly use is a Nikon film and digital setup. Since December 2007 I switched to the new Nikon D3 and several months afterwards added a D700. I still use 35mm film an awful lot and have an array of bodies namely an F6, an F5, an F4, an F2AS, an FA and an FM3a which see a lot of use.
One significant change I have made over the last year is moving off the various Nikon pro zooms I used to favour (i.e the 14-24mm, 17-35mm, 24-70mm and 80-200mm f2.8s) and now only use primes and specifically the ZF range by Zeiss as they are superior to the Nikon offerings - prime or zoom - in most ways.
The lenses I regularly use are:
Carl Zeiss 21mm f/2.8 Distagon ZF
Carl Zeiss 25mm f/2.8 Distagon ZF
Carl Zeiss 28mm f/2 Distagon ZF
Carl Zeiss 35mm f/2 Distagon ZF
Carl Zeiss 50mm f/1.4 Planar ZF
Carl Zeiss 100mm f/2 Makro-Planar ZF
I usually only carry three of them at one time and vary the focal lengths depending on what I want to photograph. If I am going to be in narrow valleys I would have something like the 21mm, 28mm & and 50mm with me whereas for more open landscapes I might carry the 25mm, 35mm and the 100mm to pick out far off detail. Often enough though going out with just one prime - the 35mm - is what I really enjoy.
Rather more occasionally the fabulous 24mm f/3.5D ED PC-E Nikkor makes it into my bag.
I perch this lot on top of a Gitzo 3540XLS carbon tripod with the impressive Kirk BH-1 ball head.
Over the years I have owned several Hasselblad and Pentax medium format systems - and many of the photograps on this site were shot using them - but am not nearly so active in using medium format as I once was. I have moved away from the fallacy that being able to print as large as possible is desirable as in fact the best way to enjoy a photograph is to actually hold a print in your hands and this rather limits the size to nothing bigger than about A3 and preferably even smaller than that.
What I have discovered over the last couple of years after much toil is that, contrary to popularly accepted wisdom, the performance of modern 35mm slide film is actually superior to a camera such as the D700 and D3 in terms of the detail it can capture and so I find myself using, and buying, 35mm film cameras more than ever. The big caveat to this statement is that it requires a very good scanner, I use a Coolscan 9000ED along with its glass holder for any slides that are not perfectly flat, and a lot of patience. The final requirement to get the turbo boost out of your scan is the correct use of Smart Sharpen in Photoshop. No other sharpening procedure/software I have used - and I have a few - seems to do anywhere near as good a job. USM, what I used to use in my naivety, is hopeless and is a recipe for poor results. Provided your workflow is immaculate, and now mine is pretty good, your old beat up Nikon FM with a good prime and a roll of Provia 100F will outperform the current top end 12 megapixel DSLRs in terms of resolution.
Of course with DSLRs like the D3 you are free to use high ISOs that film can't begin to match and the dynamic range of RAW files is wider too. The workflow is also easier of course but somehow rather less satisfying. In the end I split my photography between digital and film relatively evenly depending on the volume of shooting I expect to do. Scanning 2000 images is not a task to take lightly believe me.
In terms of film I was an avid user of Agfa APX 100 black and white negative film until its demise and have now transferred my affections to Ilford Pan-F and FP4 as well as XP2 Super from time to time. I remain a fan of Fuji Velvia 50 and I am happy to see it back in the shops although recently I have begun using Provia 100F much more as I don't always want extremely saturated images.
The value of Live View
When I first heard of Live View my initial thought was "So what?". How misguided I was.
One of the early lessons more attentive photographers learn is that autofocus is far from infallible even when you would imagine it has no excuse to go wrong. Well, it frequently does. Often the margin of error is small and is lost to a landscape photographer as routinely you are focusing at - or close to - infinity and you are using an aperture of f8 or f11. However, as soon as you start employing selective depth of field at subjects that are relatively close by any focusing errors - even very slight ones - are image destroyers.
This has been particularly brought home to me in the last year as I have turned almost exclusively to the use of manual focus prime lenses - the superlative Carl Zeiss ZF range. They are fantastically high quality both mechanically and optically but their extraordinary performance is easily nullified by small focusing errors and so the scales have fallen from my eyes in terms of the value of Live View on my D3 and now my D700. Unless I am shooting at infinity and well stopped down I now make it a matter of policy to check focus in Live View. The end result is that the technical quality of some of my photography has taken one upward step.
Importantly Nikon's implementation of Live View does exactly what you would need it to do - it stops down the lens to the requested aperture thus you instantly eliminate any focus shift which you would sometimes get from focusing on a wide-open lens which is subsequently stopped down during the exposure. I imagine that Canon and other manufacturers implementation works similarly but I do not know for sure.
The use of Live View is the 21st century analogue to the use of a loupe on the ground glass of a large format camera and I now wouldn't be prepared to do without it for the kind of photography I pursue.
As an aside, the Leica M9 which has only just come out at the time of writing (December 2009) would be an ideal camera for me because of its small size and high quality lenses had it had Live View implemented. You could dispense with those silly external viewfinders you are forced to use for wide angle lenses and you could actually focus telephoto lenses with complete accuracy. Without it the M9, which is otherwise very appealing apart from the price, is being forced to work with one hand tied behind its back if you want to focus it in an exacting way.
In short I would strongly recommend to anyone reading this to use Live View whenever appropriate to the composition you are working on (i.e. wider apertures at shorter distances) as you will often find it will help make the shot.
70-200mm hopelessly bad as a landscape lens on full frame
Just as an update to my comments below about the D3 and the 70-200mm VR my lens has been to Nikon UK twice now for adjustment but essentially the corner performance of the lens, even when stopped down to f8, is very bad.
I thought that sample variation accounted for the bad performance of my copy of the lens but a straw poll of fellow photo.net members revealed that everybody's 70-200mm seems to be the same on a D3 or film and nobody could post shots of the 70-200mm producing sharp corners. If anyone can prove me wrong I would actually be very happy.
Well, not that happy as I just sold my 70-200mm and went back to an 80-200mm f2.8D, I used to own one prior to my 'upgrade' to the 70-200mm, which is still just about in production.
The 80-200mm is perfectly sharp into the corners and the only real disadvantages of it compared to the 70-200mm is that it does display more chromatic aberration (easily correctible). It's lack of VR and Silent Wave motor are not issues for what, and how, I photograph so renouncing them was very easy for me. Anecdotally I also had a quick look at the Sigma 70-200mm and also found that to perform very well.
Now that this issue is becoming more well-known I think the 80-200mm is going to start getting much more popular until such time as Nikon replaces the seriously flawed 70-200mm.
It does need to be stressed though that this problem is only really going to be evident if your subject is in focus edge-to-edge as you frequently do in landscape photography. For sports, portaiture, wedding photography and the like this problem is likely to be a non issue. Equally on DX cameras the offending corners are cut off and the 70-200mm is a dream on that format.
Some observations on image quality
Most people who look at a carefully made print of a high quality photograph, whether it be inkjet or from a traditional wet darkroom, are often amazed at the quality obtained. Details are sharp, the colours are saturated and the image can even seem three dimensional. Inevitably the first question asked is: "What camera do you use?".
In many ways it's the wrong question or, rather, it's asked for the wrong reason. One's choice of equipment is probably the least important variable in the image taking process - but it is certainly not unimportant either. Almost any camera body built in the last thirty years or more (and which allows user override on any automation it may have) will produce first class results when used knowledgeably. However, if the lens you use is a cheap, plastic zoom more often than not the final image quality will suffer a bit (and sometimes a lot!). Similarly if you fail to use a tripod you will erode the picture quality further unless it's bright enough to use a very fast shutter speed. Your choice of lens aperture can also have a significant effect on the final image as you often have to balance your need, as a landscape photographer, for extensive depth of field with the degradation in image quality due to diffraction. Last but not least is the image size itself. Generally speaking the larger the negative/file size the better the quality of the final print and for this reason I still use medium format film when I can which, when well scanned, can produce results that outstrip any current DSLR. All that the latest cameras - digital or film - bring you is added convenience but not always added quality. That said I am certainly not alone in wanting to own the latest camera or lens but I am conscious of the fact that it is often enough a want rather than a need.
The real determinants of successful landscape photography lie elsewhere than the camera or lens. Chief amongst them is being in the right place at the right time. You need to plan where you are going to be and at what time to catch the right light falling on your chosen subject. This will have you up and about whilst the rest of the world is still fast asleep and have you lingering around well after everybody else has had their dinner. Next after being in the right place at the right time is having the ability to see what will make an eye-catching photograph - your compositional skills. Yet further down the list is having the appropriate technical skills to cope with the scene that is unfolding before you and in last place is the actual equipment you have chosen to use both for image capture as well as processing and printing. Although I ascribe differing importance to these various elements of the photographic process, they nevertheless all form part of a chain. No single element can fall significantly beneath another, in terms of quality, for that image to be compromised.
In short, much of the work and thought involved in making a high quality image occurs before you even take the camera out of its bag. Once you have chosen your location well, arrived at it in good time for the best light to emerge and visualised what kind of shot you want then the remaining steps from image capture to making a final print are usually straightforward and, with experience, automatic.
Nikon D3 - after one month
I have managed to use the D3 extensively now on a trip to the USA and have come back very pleased with the results. The photographs on the first page of the USA gallery are all taken with the D3 - not that you can tell from the lousy jpegs you will find there. Take it from me that they look stunning when printed.
Although at 12 megapixels the D3 doesn't lead the pack by any stretch compared to the near 17 I used to get from my Canon 1Ds II (not to mention the 1Ds III) the image processing seems to give the final result a much more vivid and three dimensional, although of course slightly less detailed, look. That said at prints of 13X19 inches - as big as I ever routinely print - you wouldn't really be able to tell.
All in all the D3 gets a big gold star from me and short of the 1Ds III (or the hypothesized D3X) it is the camera to get.
On the lens side the 14-24mm arrived an hour after I left for the airport (I hate it when that happens and I hate UPS for torturing me like that) so I had the 17-35mm f2.8, the new 24-70mm f2.8 and the 70-200mm f2.8 VR. The workhorse of the trip turned out to be the 17-35mm and it performed impeccably. Apart from the artificial vignetting I got at 17mm using my Lee filter holder (yes, with the ultra-wide ring) the image quality was first class as expected.
The 24-70mm f2.8G was impressing as well until it started falling apart. Somehow two of the screws going through the lens mounting ring came loose (the cold, vibration - who knows) resulting in the lens flexing at the base. Nikon UK are adamant this was as a result of an impact. As I know that to be hogwash we shall see if other people have this problem over the course of time. You read it here first. Oddly enough I had a Canon 24-70mm f2.8 L that literally fell apart on me in Wadi Rum for the same reason a few years ago so obviously these are cursed focal lengths for me.
Lastly I had the 70-200mm f2.8 VR which was also recently acquired for use on the D3 (I sold the excellent 80-200mm f2.8D). This also had a problem which I was annoyed to find - that being that when zoomed out to 200mm and stopped down to f8 there was an unacceptable amount of corner distortion. Nikon UK are looking at that too - if they tell me that's a result of an impact too I shall go around there and hit them with it...Joking aside that's probably an error made in assembly and I am hopeful of getting it back in perfect operational order.
Nikon F6
As part of my film renaissance my interest in 35mm has returned and along with it has come a couple of Nikon F6s and some AF lenses. Although this will not be a review of the Nikon F6 - of which several can be found on the web - I have had many 35mm SLRs over the years and nothing comes close to the perfection of this camera and particularly in the realm of street/travel photography where it is blisteringly fast, extremely quiet with no wind-on noise whatsoever and relatively compact and unobtrusive for a modern SLR - particularly so if you mount one of the small Nikkor primes like the 50mm f1.4, 35mm f2 or 24mm f2.8. I used an F6 and the 50mm f1.4 prime exclusively on a recent visit to Marrakech and got shots at night in poorly illuminated souks that I would have flailed about to focus on using a Leica M. Additionally the 3D Colour Matrix metering is astounding and the need to bracket shots when shooting slide film seems to be much diminished from other, largely Canon, SLRs I have owned. The only annoyance I have found with this camera is the nonsensical omission of a combined self-timer and mirror lock-up facility which even the humblest FM2 effectively gives you. With the F6 you are obliged to use an (expensive) cable release to make sensible use of the lock-up feature. This is really silly given the huge capabilities of the camera and the almost endless custom functions available to the user. This is certainly not unique to the F6 as the D2Xs, and regrettably also the D3 & D700, suffer from this ridiculous trait.
Nevertheless I am impressed with this camera and my only regret is that I didn't get one when they first came out. The results I get from it when scanned in the glass carrier of my Coolscan 9000 are first rate and have that nice texture from the film grain that I find I now miss from DSLR photos.
Certainly you feel as if you are swimming against the current when you buy 35mm film cameras in 2006 but I still very much like the look of film even though it is admittedly far less convenient than digital. To my mind film still has more character and with a bit of care the results you can extract from 35mm can be outstanding and, indeed, the challenge of extracting the most from it is part of its enduring attraction to me.
Nikon must be congratulated on the F6 and although I hope it won't be the last of its line it almost certainly will be. The serial numbers on my cameras indicate that since it was introduced two years ago only about 27,000 units have been made which anyone can see is a tiny number for a global market. How much longer Nikon will produce them for I certainly can't say but my advice is that if you are tempted by an F6 get one soon before it is too late.