Meeting of the Mountains and Mist

Here is another one of my images from a hike I did in the Pocaterra Ridge area of Kananaskis Country while with friends back in September of this year, quite a bit of rain but it made for some interesting images. 4 x 5 view camera and 270mm lens.

My Pinhole Photograph

Talk about simplistic photography, no lens with this camera ! here is an image I made near Peachland B.C.'s waterfront looking out onto Okanagan Lake, Okanagan Mountain Provincial park is in the distance across the lake. A couple of years ago while visiting Vancouver, I had bought this very nice and beautifully made pinhole camera that takes standard 4 x 5 film holders, the camera is made of Yellow Cedar with and brass parts and it looks nice sitting on my bookshelf in my office too. The F200 lens is quite wide angle, the exposure was about 8 to 10 seconds, using Kodak Tri-X film.

My Favourite Lens

Colin left a reply to my recent "Gone Fishing" post, I thought I would I make a blog post out of it , Colin asks :

" I notice you use the 120mm lens a lot -- I myself have the 150mm lens as my 'normal'.

Do you see a big difference between the two? It seems yours is just a tad wider but I wonder if there's an appreciable difference? "


I use the 120mm Schneider Symmar-S lens a lot, its my favourite lens for 4 x 5, so its my normal lens for myself. I do think there is difference between the 120mm and 150mm lenses, not huge but enough where I feel more comfortable with the 120mm lens. I started out with a 150mm lens years ago ( more than twenty ) when I bought my first 4 x 5 view camera, I traded it in on the 120mm after about a year later. I would say the differences between the 150mm and 120mm lens would be something like a 45mm lens and a 35mm lens on a 35mm film format camera ( or what some refer to as full frame digital today ) so I would say yes I think there is an appreciable difference between the two lenses.

I have always liked the "view" that the 120mm lens has provided me and I would say that about 90 % of my entire body of personal work has been done with this one lens. I also carry with me a 270mm Schneider G-Clarion which would be a medium telephoto on my 4 x 5 view camera.

I have somewhat of an minimalist approach when it comes to my own personal work unlike my day to day work as a newspaper photographer where I usually carry an extensive amount of equipment for my job. I have always enjoyed shooting on my days off and holidays even before I shot with large format cameras, I didn't feel I needed to take my full range of lenses and motor driven cameras and so forth with me, so what I would do is to take only the 35mm lens and my 105mm lens ( Nikon ) also with my old Nikon FM2's camera bodies I would take the motor drives off so I would not be tempted to blast away at my subjects, I wanted to be more thoughtful and try for the famous "decisive moment".


The picture posted was taken at East Sooke Park showing my 4 x 5 Tachihara with my favourite lens - 120mm Schneider Symmar-S.