Hauling my Linhof kit on a 1,300m vertical incline to the top of the Königsee probably was not the best idea I have ever come up with, but the resulting views were more than worth it. Join me for a walk around the Königsee in the Berchtesgaden Alps in Bavaria.
Hiking long distances with my Linhof kit (and tripod!) isn’t for the faint hearted, although I know if I don’t take it with me I will just be thinking '“this shot would’ve looked really great on large format”, when reaching the top of a mountain. I’m still learning the ins and outs of this large format behemoth, so the more practice the better. I can’t say I was agreeing with the above statement on a recent 1,300m vertical hike up to the top of the Jenner mountain (1,874m above sea level), with panoramic views over the Königsee below.
A bit more about the hike
I’ve been to the Königsee a few times before, but never done a decent hike around it. There is a pretty cool cable car that takes you to the top of the Jenner mountain, which I was happy to take one-way down the mountain this time. My hiking buddy (also quite a decent photographer check out his social media here) and I decided to take the long route around and up to the top of the Jenner. I probably should have paid a bit more attention to the elevation increase prior to agreeing on this hike, or take lighter gear!
The main attraction of the hike are the panoramic views of the Königsee, which is a 7.7km long glacially formed lake, being about 1.7km across at its widest point. It is also the 3rd deepest lake in Germany, with a depth of 192m! It is advertised as the cleanest lake in Germany. It is also very cold, requiring a good dose of courage to leap in. I think it was about 16 degrees when we went for a dip at the end of the hike. I never knew 16 degrees felt that cold. My last visit to this area saw me take some interesting Kodak Aerochrome colour infrared shots, not to be missed and can be seen here.
The route we took up to Jenner mountain, as recorded by my Garmin watch.
A bit more about the gear and photos
Whilst the main attraction of this post are the shots with my Linhof large format 4x5 camera, I also decided to bring along the miniature Olympis XA2 camera as a simple point and shoot camera to document some snapshots along the way.
I had one roll of Kodak Pro Image 35mm film for my Olympis XA2 camera, and a number of 4x5 sheet films for the Linhof: Kodak Ektar 100 & Ilford FP4 125 black & white film.
Jennerbahn cable car and the start of the hike.
Heading slowly upwards along the winding path. Pretty cool views here with a massive blanket of fog covering the entire valley and Königsee.
Looking down towards the Königsee, which was covered in fog for at least the first hour of the hike.
One of my favourite shots of the roll, and actually the location for the front cover of this post (see one of the huts towards the bottom of the shot).
Some really nice early morning sun rays. We had some really great lighting on the way up.
Half way up and looking up towards the top of the Jenner.
Nearly made it! They’ve built a brand new visitor centre at the top, with a massive outdoor space to enjoy some cold Helles beer!
Easier to walk down than it is up!
View from the cable car heading down. It is a long-ish cable car route, stopping at a middle station on the way down.
View of the Königsee (bottom left) and wider view of the Bavarian Alps.
Large format shots
I packed my Linhof 4x5 camera, 90mm and 150mm lens, and my array of accessories and off we went. I figured Ektar 100 would be a good pick for landscape photography, and I was not wrong. My first shot below was taken before we arrived at the Königsee, as the sun was just rising and the lighting was fantastic. The shot below was tricky to take as I do not yet have graduated neutral density (ND) filters, that control the exposure between areas of an image that are very bright (in this case the sky) and those that are less bright (in this case everything else). It is very hard to expose for a shot without like this without the right filter, as can be seen from my final image.
Images on my blog are always clickable for full screen viewing, and more than ever I recommend that for viewing these large format images!
The final image, slightly over exposed sky as I metered for the ground to get everything else in focus and correctly exposed. Next time I will need a graduated ND filter. Oh, and I just love the random cow chilling in the field.
I can’t help but showing how much detail these 4x5 negatives have - this is a cropped in shot of the houses in the background of the image above. This level of detail just blows my mind (and bear in mind I am scanning these with a consumer grade scanner too).
The setup for my blog cover post. I am so happy this came out well.
Really happy with the final shot!
Some minor cropping out of trees on the left, but otherwise pretty much straight out of the camera shot.
Now that is one LARGE negative!
As if carting my Linhof gear up the mountain wasn’t hard enough (yes that is a sweaty back I know), it’s like 100 degrees under the dark cloth!
All setup at the top of the Jenner mountain with the panoramic view of the Konigsee. We started the hike around 7am but by the time we got to the top it was pretty busy with tourists who had taken the cable car up. I’m not a huge fan of taking a shot that has been taken a million times over but I figured I might as well given I lugged the gear the whole way up.
It also gave me great pleasure to take my time setting this up and interrupt the usual selfie shots.
The final image. Actually the viewing area is quite restricted as you get more sky than anything else in the image.
A cropped zoomed in version of St Bartholomew church, which you can’t really make out on the full size image above.
We hiked a bit around the bottom of the Königsee and found a great spot for a swim, but boy was it cold!! I decided to take advantage of the wonderful colours and setup a shot here.
All setup and ready to go!
For some reason I decided to experiment a bit with this shot, shooting close to wide open to see how strong the in-focus versus out-of-focus (also known as ‘bokeh’) came out. I really like the bright greens in the leaves, but I was a bit disappointed it didn’t capture the amazing colours of the water, as you can see in the setup shot above.
Ilford FP4+ shot on one of the viewing areas along the shoreline of the lake. I waited too long for the boat to go by and it would have been better if it were more in the centre of the image. Shot with an orange filter, although the shot came out quite dark. By this time it was close to noon and the sun was really bright anyways, not my favourite time to be out photographing.
Overall observations
Despite the heavy lifting to cart the Linhof gear all the way up to the top of Jenner mountain and then around and down to the Königsee, I am thrilled with some of the shots. A thank you and shout out to my mate Dan for his patience with my (a) complaining and (b) time in setting up each shot. I suppose at least he got a breather in whilst I setup the large format shots.
A well deserved beer at the top of Jenner.
And yes, the Olympus is much smaller than the Linhof!
I’m really impressed with the Kodak Ektar 100 4x5 sheet film, I’ve usually preferred Portra 400 in the 35mm and 120 roll film format range. This film really pairs well with the Linhof, and I look forward to using it for more landscape shots. I enjoyed experimenting with a few different views and will continue do so as I get more practice with this camera. It is heavy, slow work, but the results are really worth it!
Thanks for stopping by and I hope you enjoyed viewing these shots as much as I enjoyed taking them!
Cheers,
Neil
