Calling all Photography nerds!

Here's something that I've been wanting to photograph for a long time, probably ever since I first saw it featured in the 1947 classic film noir Out of the Past starring Robert Mitchum and Kirk Douglass. The Mono County Courthouse, built in 1880 in Bridgeport, Ca. in the eastern Sierras. I wasn't sure what the right time would be but it definitely was not late in the afternoon, so we hit it on our way out of town the next morning around ten, or ten thirty. I have a few where the building is framed by trees. It was much harder to find an angle with no trees. Still with the Fuji GFX100II and this time with the fabulous and super rare Fuji 30mm tilt-shift lens, which is also super big and heavy.

 

SIESTA KEY,FL

 

Here's a frowning rock in the Alabama Hills just west of Lone Pine, Ca. in the Owens Valley. It was close to a hundred degrees out so this was a jump out and snap, no tripod and autofocus image with the truck still running.

 

Here's an architectural detail of an old steam engine at Bodie State Historic Park in the eastern Sierras. Here I was mostly interested in the compositional arcs and the gritty detail which seems to get even grittier in black and white. Another shot with the Fuji 30mm tilt-shift - equivalent to 24mm on a 35mm frame.

 

Wheaton Mansion, Maurice River, NJ. Had my Nikon SLR but this was with my iPhone 13.

 

I always have my iPhone 13 Pro Max with me.

I shoot RAW mode to get the best 300 dpi image with the least amount of over processing Apple does to JPG images.
RawTherapee 5.x does a good job of converting Apple DNG to JPG or TIF for post processing in Photoshop.

I looked at the iPhone 16 but found they only upgraded the ultra-wide camera, which is mostly useless for me.
When Apple upgrades the telephoto camera, I will be interested again.. but not until then.

 

I finally got around to making a portrait of this gorgeous Gibson J200 guitar I bought a few months ago. Sigma 135mm f/1.8 ART lens on a Fuji GFX camera with two soft boxes and one beauty dish.

 

My Sigma ART 135mm for my D850 is the sharpest lens I have ever used over a long pro career.

Combine this with soft box strobes and you get image perfection as seen above.

 

Yeah, that lens is pretty crazy. and that it covers GFX format is another bonus. I was actually looking for my Canon 135mm t/s-e tilt-shift, looked right at it and didn't see it so I used the Sigma, which is actually sharper than the Canon anyway. Neither of them, however, compares to the Rodenstock 105mm f/5.6 APO Float Macro lens that I use on a Novoflex bellows for most of my macro shots. Now, that's a lens, but over $6K.

 

I’m a big fan of 6x7 cm but similar in digital is beyond reach.

Also a fan of rodenstock.
My only is a 210 app sironar N for my sinar.
Have not shot film in a long time but have stock in freezer for the next 200 years.

Theses days I have more projects than years left

 

I've been shooting film for over half a century and have decades of rather well known images, mostly in the music industry shot on film, and a lot on Mamiya RB and RZ 67's, and owning two drum scanners that I've been using for over a quarter century, I'd have to say that the image quality from the Fuji GFX far surpasses 6x7, 4x5 and even 8x10. I am constantly astonished. That Rodenstock macro lens I've referred to is a true apochromatic lens but what makes it super special is that it has a manually operated floating element ring to set the floating elements exactly where they need to be for whatever reproduction ratio you're shooting at from 1:3 through 3:1. It's designed to be shot wide open and is, by far, the best lens I've ever owned or used. Mostly I'm doing extensive focus stacked extravaganzas with it, up to over 400 images stacked either in Helicon Focus or Zerene Stacker. I've also converted my old Beseler 45 enlarger chassis into a copy stand in anticipation of the day when my drum scanners no longer work and the GFX with that Rodenstock work amazingly well, equalling the Howtek drum scanner. Here's a recent 250 image focus stack with the Rodie.

 

Interesting.
Other than the drum scanner we are on a similar track.

I sold off my Pentax 6x7 system in favor of an RZ67 system. Sold the 8x10, kept the 4x5 in Sinar and multiple Crown Graphics. Also still the Beseler 45 with a cold head.