This post sees me going heading to the foothills of the Bavarian Alps, with thankfully less climbing involved with the large format heavy gear. I shoot Kodak Ektar 100 film and Ilford FP4, come join me for a leisurely walk around two Alpine lakes.
Bavaria and the area surrounding Munich has an abundance of lakes to visit, you really are spoilt for choice for areas to walk around, swim, row, sail, or take part in any other maritime activity. Luckily for me, many of these lakes have fantastic views of the Bavarian Alps, making for a nice foreground. This time we head 100km south of Munich to the Wagenbrüchsee & Barmsee, two lakes within easy walking distance of each other.
These shots were taken a few weeks ago, I have been very productive in the last few weeks taking photographs (and doing lots of hiking), so I have a bit of a backlog of posts to get through. For this short hike, I brought along a few sheets of Kodak Ektar 100 film and paired it with some Ilford FP4+ black & white film.
One of the benefits of arriving early is that you get to experience very nice changing lighting during the sunrise hour.
The final shot on Kodak Ektar 100. Really lovely colours and reflection, very happy with how this came out.
I even liked the cropped version - it looks like a painting!
Yours truly.
Kodak Ektar 100 at its finest.
I love the colours and the depth in this shot. It is hard to take a unique looking shot with some of these views as the same location and perspective has been shot many times before (maybe not that many times with a large format camera though!).
And of course none of those other cameras can do this…
Shot on Ilford FP4+.
I opted for a wide 90mm lens for this shot, but the foreground is a bit lacking and the shot overall lacks anything interesting. Too much empty space, and also underexposed. Ah well.
I quite like the cropped version, although kind of defeats the purpose of using the 90mm wide lens in the first place. I have always been a fan of telephoto landscape shots, hence I tend to use my 150mm lens the most. One day I will add a 200mm or 300mm lens to my 4x5 setup.
All setup for this next shot!
Linhof setup with 150mm lens, polariser and orange filter.
The final shot. I am really happy with how this come out, although truth be told I had to do some very minor processing to ensure equal exposure in the highlights (blown out sky). Whilst I used an orange filter, what I probably needed was a graduated neutral density filter to control the exposure in different parts of the scene.
The lighting and morning fog at these scene was spectacular.
Really happy I was able to capture the morning fog.
I really had no idea how this shot would come out. I think I broke every photography rule that exists. Shooting directly into the sun, with the sun high up in the sky, loads of light reflecting off the water, with some cloud and foggy areas on the top of the mountains. I threw caution to the window and shot this with a polariser and orange filter. I really like how this came out, I must get this printed!
Overall observations
I certainly enjoyed the fact that there was little to any elevation gain during this hike, as the Linhof setup gets heavy pretty quickly to cart around. Despite having a little mishap with one of the film holders and my first attempt with my first shot (unfortunately on Kodak EKtar film so that sheet was lost, goodbye €5), I was quite productive with the other shots.
One thing I have learned over these past few weeks (with lots of hiking trips with various camera setups) is that I want to be creative and intentional with my shots, to create more unique images. It is far too easy to get stuck into the ‘standard’ eye level postcard shot (whether that be on a phone, 35mm camera or a 4x5 Linhof). Whilst these can still produce some nice shots, they are far too easily confused with the next same shot. My best shots seem to be of unique perspectives or unique environmental conditions that produce really nice images. That being said, there is absolutely nothing wrong with having some nice shots of beautiful landscapes, and all the better if on 4x5 film, as it will have
I hope you enjoyed these shots as much as I did taking them (even the bad ones!).
More to come soon!
Neil
