Nye Simmons - A Journey Into Tech Cameras

Editors Notes: The following are the thoughts and musings of one of our favorite customers, Nye Simmons, who recently made a major change of equipment. All images shown are © to Nye Simmons and are available for sale as Fine Art Prints. Contact Nye (nyesimmons@chartertn.net) for more information. All images below were taken using a Phase One P45 and Arca Swiss RM3Di camera. The 47XL lens referenced is the Schneider 47mm XL Digitar lens. The “stitching” technique used is “flat-field stitching” in which the lens stays stationary and the digital back is moved left/right or up/down to capture different sections of the same continous image circle. This technique will be covered in-depth at our upcoming New England Workshop.

A Newbie in the Land of Arca

There was a bit of a leap of faith involved… After lurking on the forums at GetDPI.com and Luminous-Landscape.com it became clear that this new beast was manageable, but there would be a learning curve. It has been quite an interesting journey. My camera and two lenses arrived a few short days before a scheduled trip to the Lake Powell area, where I have photographed many times. Arriving fatigued and with inadequate time to make all the needed presets, I spent the first 2 days resting and making presets with a couple of short afternoon photo sessions. I am not quite clear at what point I thought I could focus adequately on the ground glass, but with a laptop that was intermittently allowing tethered capture, I decided to give it a shot.

The Making of Alien Skin Redux

This first image was a revisit to an old favorite area near Coyote Buttes, a fairly easy walk once I got my bearings – flash floods had changed the appearance of the entry point. I had planned both vertical and horizontal stitches in this area but was foiled early on when a knob came off – more on this later. This image is a vertical stack of three horizontals using the rise / fall in the camera. My Rotaslide had not yet arrived, nor would it have worked for this configuration other than to mount the back. Actually that would have been huge as the [focus > remove ground glass > place back on camera > reverse after the shot] sequence became rather tedious. The sliding back is more secure for the digital back and much faster from a workflow perspective (also as an added advantage more dust/rain/mist resistant).

I used my presets for this and tweaked slightly for the upper part of the image. That area is a tad soft, but considering the geometry of the scene – the top being at over a 20 degree angle form the base , I was pleased overall. And “soft” with the Schneider 47XL isn’t far off from what I got with the Mamiya 45 non-D glass when focused properly. OK I’m sold.

I reverted to the Mamiya for a while, and the freedom of SLR versatility certainly has its strong points. A call to Rod Klukas and he was able to walk me through a field fix of the knob that came loose from the RM3Di, and back in business. The shift knob is held on by 2 lock screws. There was only one on mine and it had loosened. Guess they have Monday at Arca just like in Detroit. Anyhow – for those who need to know it’s a TorX – 6 (T6) screw. You can get a driver set at most auto stores for about $5.95. Many thanks to Rod who dissected his own camera to determine the needed fix and walked me through it. Try that for service and customer support!!

The Making of What Kind of Place Is This?

Another day and a side trip to White Pockets – a hard to reach area near Coyote Buttes for those not familiar with the Arizona Strip. This is a favorite haunt, but I was on a compressed schedule, scouting in blue sky and had an evening image in mind. I was hoping this mid-afternoon image might work with the intermittent soft light I was getting. This was a fairly tight three-panel vertical with the 47XL lower to the ground maybe 3 feet off the ground and maybe 3 degrees of lens tilt. The very tops of the near rocks get a little soft – but usable with additional selective sharpening. Some post processing, drawing off the extra dynamic range of the digital back, salvaged the sky. The tilt just barely worked; which is fortunate as I wasn’t eager to do a focus stack on an image requiring multiple panels.  In this situation I wished I had the 35XL or 24XL as an alternative option.

The Making of Chinle Skeleton

Another stack with the 47XL, 3 horizontals to produce a vertical image. This was another “exercise” image which could have been done as a single capture with a wider angle lens (which I did not have). But it proved to me that I could 1) focus on the ground glass accurately enough for f/16 to take up the slack and that 2) stitching was easily doable when I needed a wider focal length than I had with me. If my 35XL had arrived in time I might not have done some of these stitches using the 47XL. But it did prove the possibility of selecting wider spacing of the lenses in your kit and using stitches for the times that you need to bridge the gap.

The Making of Antelope Glow

On to Antelope – the land of “been there”. Well it was mid day – clear sky – so either sleep, scout or work in the slot. I chose the latter. Both for fun – and to try to answer some more questions. The Arca Swiss focus card was arguably all I needed for this setup, but I focused visually, then confirmed with the focus card. This is another 3-panel stitch to get a wider angle perspective than the 47XL allowed in a single capture. The larger native file size is an added bonus.

The Making of Antelope Wave Box

OK – acid test #1. Could I, aim upward, focus on a near object (5 foot), and tilt for the far successfully? It’s an unusual situation, in an extremely dark setting (the bottom of Antelope Canyon). The tilt was necessary as DOF wouldn’t cover this scene in a single capture. And it’s a stitcheroo – 6 vertical in 2 rows of 3, cropped to 30×30. the near spine is a tad soft – but only a tad – and usable with a little touch up. The far is spot on. The upper right rib and upper left close in are a little soft as well – but it’s a view camera thing – the geometry of the scene vs. the cone of sharp focus when tilted. Possibly there is a focus / tilt combo that covers it all at f/16 – though I would probably just stop down to f/22 next time. Yeah – I know – stay away from f/22 (due to diffraction) – but maybe that is only relative. Final impression – definitely doable though it took a lot of effort. A 6x loupe would probably help – I had a 4x.

The Making of Antelope

This was a (gasp!) 9-shot panel stacked and stitched cropped to native 30×40 from a 33 x 48 panel. There is a bright hot spot that is just barely within salvage using every post processing trick I could think of. But it did hold. This was a relatively simple set up. The focus card and Disto did the work – I confirmed focus on the ground glass but it wasn’t necessary. The eye can fool you because the 5 full revolutions of the focusing helical keeps the sharp “snap in – snap out” of focus from happening like it does on an SLR. So it takes more effort, but can be done. I am not sure the angle of view after all the shifting with the 47XL – somebody can calculate that one – but I suspect it’s around 24mm, maybe less. I didn’t have a 24XL – and the detail will be much improved with the longer focal length as well, though admittedly less important on sandstone than fine foliage. All in all, a lot of work. Better be sure the end result will be worth it unless you have lots of time to kill.

The Making of Pool Flood

On to greener pastures – literally – Spring in the Smokies. Having had a little more time to work things through and process the Southwest trip and learn what did and didn’t work, things went smoother. Big question – how would stitches work on moving water? And my Rotaslide had come in so needed to give it a whirl. The Rota makes everything much, much easier. The sliding back allows you to compose and then shoot while leaving the back attached. This minimizes the opportunity to drop the back and exposing the sensor to dust, debris and water.

I did take the precaution of making multiple sets of captures, in case one sequence of water pulsations stitched more easily than another. I used the best blend of water vs. tree movement. There was just enough wind to add an extra challenge. I worked on one set for hours in PS before moving to my second choice which stitched easily. Standing on the river bank several feet above water level, my eye level preset with tilt kept everything sharp. Hyperfocal might have covered it, but I wasn’t sure. I should have taken a backup set without tilt, but didn’t feel the need.  The original (uncropped) panel was about 46 inches wide.

The Making of White Oak Sinks Pano

If you need more DOF then tilt is the obvious answer, but what about the tops of the trees? Really close would suck, but I thought these were just far enough away to squeeze by. Wind gusts to 30 mph made focus stacks out of the question, even if I was so inclined, as everything was shaking, and I didn’t have time to go back another day. Some editing of the masks because of wind motion in the FG flowers and it all went together.

The Making of MST Junction

When the weather sucks how does the camera perform? This is near Craggy Gardens on the Blue Ridge Parkway, shooting in the rain with John Smith who I alternately curse and bless for getting me into Arca in the first place. It was raining and it was blowing fine mist. I had an umbrella rigged over my tripod and still had to wipe the lens before each and every shot, cover it immediately with a lens cloth, remove the cloth just in time to make the image. You get the idea; it’s possible, but in conditions this adverse: pack up and go home.

OK – first its not my strongest composition ever. But there were multiple messy field issues to deal with. The back stayed on the Rotaslide the entire time – and was safe – no water droplets. That was a huge plus. After making an image and tweaking with rise / fall – not “live view” but better than nothing (and usable actually as a workflow option) – the pan materialized. This was the acid test for tilt vs. tall near objects. This time it pushed past the envelope. Top half of the nearest tree on the left is quite soft. If you sharpen the living hell out of it, its not too distracting, but with loss of style points. Printable, just don’t linger on the warts. With the Rotaslide over into shooting position I kept getting water droplets on the inside of the ground glass – took me a minute – duh – that’s exposed to the blowing mist. 47XL again this pan was almost 48 wide before cropping.

Lessons Learned

1. Have a tool kit with you with a couple of spare parts. The x-sync pulled off my 70 Rodenstock HRW. Thanks to Steve Hendrix for cannibalizing one from a rental lens and bailing me out. My pending solution is a male to female PC extender to stay on the lens and attach to the wake up cord that way relieving repetitive stress on the lens connector. Cheap if you can find them. A $6.00 T6 driver will fix a loose knob for you. Carefully lift up the rubber knurled knob cover and slide it off to expose the screw sockets. Simple once you understand how it’s built.
2. Mark your ground glass with your focus area or have a mask. I used a mask that Dave Gallagher sent and scribed the inside of the ground glass with pencil like unto a red cross symbol for both horizontal and vertical. Works well. You can visually extrapolate for pans.
3. The Bogen 410 geared head for about $225.00 levels with micrometer precision and makes getting level much easier than with a ball head. Independent tilt pan and leveling. Needs some sort of Arca compatible clamp plate on top. Their plate I don’t like, but it’s an easy fix.
4. I use Really Right Stuff clamps on my gear. I like the lever clamps for quickness and ease of use, but the “bigfoot” – the Arca Classic mounting shoe – is loose in one of my clamps though fine in another. The folks at Really Right Stuff tell me the clamp is intended for proprietary use with their system, and might not fit other, including Arca, plates. A single layer of duct tape on the base of the foot made it nice and snug. Not a pretty solution, but another addition to the long list of things you can do with duct tape. Their traditional knob driven clamp doesn’t seem affected by a slight mis-sizing or manufacturing tolerance issue.
5. Keep the LCC raw files in case you need to reprocess the file. Easy to save the raw capture in the same folder so you can delete the LCC itself and avoid having a huge list.
6. It’s quicker to leave a cheap cable release on the lens. Cheaper the better – they are more flexible. The magnetic ones are OK to a point, but as soon as the shaft bends they become a problem, and they pop off at inconvenient times. And it’s extra time in set up.
7. Make a dark cloth for viewing the ground glass. So far the commercial ones I have seen are too big. Wouldn’t mind a reflex viewer if it had enough magnification for focusing but bulk is an issue as is eye-level use. Haven’t had one to play with.
8. Spend the time to make, check, and recheck your presets. It’s faster than ground glass focusing. Save that for when you are in unfamiliar situations or haven’t had the time.
9. Harold Merklinger has a downloadable spread sheet for estimating tilt needed relative to distance from the focal plane. Functionally that’s camera to ground distance but can be greater, if for instance, the focal plane runs some distance under the ground beneath your feet. This is old hat to view camera users but may take a little getting used to. http://www.trenholm.org/hmmerk/TABLESX.ZIP takes you to Harold Merklinger’s web site directly to the file download and http://www.trenholm.org/hmmerk/HMbook18.html takes you to his View Camera Focus page. On the latter page, scroll down to “spreadsheets” open the file and follow the instructions to make your own table for your lens set. Then test. You might have to tweak slightly, but these are great starting points. You will notice that as you get higher off the ground – i.e. farther from the focal plane – you need less tilt.