CORNWALL BRIDGE, CONNECTICUT – The bridge in Cornwall Bridge is actually a highway flyover. A few miles north in Cornwall there is a famous covered bridge. Anyway down under the flyover in Cornwall Bridge, near the Housatonic River, is a lovely wooden gothic church. I’ve photographed it before but never well. Many of the churches that I’ve photographed are in poor condition. St Bridget Church is beautifully maintained. There is a new addition to a long stone wall and an impeccably kept graveyard. I shot the church full frontal with my Alpa Max, Schneider 48mm Digitar and a Hasselblad 60 meg digital back, using the movements on the Max to control perspective.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – I’m spending a lot of time trying to get my Hasselblad back to produce acceptable images in my Alpa Max. Hasselblad claims, accurately, that their “closed” system creates a high level of integration between the camera, lenses, the digital back and software. The system produces sensational images but Hasselblad is evidently not committed to doing the work to make their digital back work on a “technical” camera, like the Alpa Max. Most Hasselblad shooters don’t care about this – technical cameras are of primary interest to landscape and architectural shooters, people who want the highest performance wide angle lenses and those want to create immense high resolution images with a technique called “planar stitching”. It turns out that a technical camera like the Alpa Max (and its little brother the Alpa TC) fit my style and interests perfectly.
Putting a digital back on a tech camera general results in undesirable color shifts across the frame, which within limits can be corrected by software. The Hasselblad files also show a line down the center of the image ( a phenomenon called “centerfolding”) when the lens is shifted relative to the back on the tech camera. I spent most of the day shooting out my window trying to find the limits to this issue and looking for a solution. Here’s the view from my dining room window – it’s a two frame planar stitch. I’ve cropped the sky out because that’s where the centerfolding issue is most evident. Not a distinguished photograph but this view out my window is very useful for testing lenses, backs and techniques.
NEW YORK NEW YORK – I had a nice opportunity to walk around midtown Manhattan today in crisp early summer light with my Alpa, a 36mm Schneider Digitar and 60 meg Hasselblad back. .
Fathers DayBloomberg buildingBloomberg building II
NEW PRESTON, CONNECTICUT – Here’s the New Preston Congregational Church captured in profile with my Alpa TC, 36mm Schneider lens and 60 meg Hasselblad digital back. I’ve been here before with a camera – a full frontal view is the subject of my post for November 7, 2009 – in one of the early shots in my ongoing project on Churches in Litchfield County.
WARREN CONNECTICUT – I explored another rainy day in Connecticut with my Hasselblad and a 300mm lens. This combination is a handful and really requires a solid tripod – hand holding is out of the question. I particularly like the way that the Hasselblad renders greens. Here is a three frames stitch for an amazing 130 megs in pixel dimensions.
After the rain
This is another focus stack – nine images combined in Helicon Focus.
