Memos From The Digital Darkroom

(Guest Blog by Gary Wilson)

All photos © Gary Wilson

One of the wonderful things about photography is its rich heritage spanning evolutions of time and technology. I often rely on that heritage to try old things out in new ways for the fun of experimentation, just to keep interest alive.

Less than a month ago I was doing some on-line reading on premium medium format film cameras, which inspired me to reflect back on the legendary Hasselblad SWC line of cameras. I recalled how enthralled I was by the combination of their square format with the wide viewing perspective offered through their well-reputed 38MM Biogon lens.

Back in the heyday of film, wishful window-shopping was as close as I could come to actually owning one of these cameras. In great part, my fascination was for the implicit functionality of that particular square format camera. The camera’s auxiliary optical viewfinder was the only way to view and compose the image, adding to its simplicity. Any inconvenience in that regard however, was made up for by the system’s square format making it unnecessary to rotate the camera in order to compose for either horizontal or vertical image taking.

I still regard the square format as an appealing attribute and one that I’ve wanted to emulate with my horizontally held Canon 5D2. With some informal math, I came to realize that the 38mm Biogon’s angle of view can be well replicated by a 20MM lens on the 5D2 camera body. I need to admit at this point that an exotic Carl Zeiss 18 or 21mm lens could more aptly be viewed as the perfect lens to use to emulate the reputation and resolution equivalent of the 38mm f4.5 Hasselblad lens. However, my Canon 20mm f2.8 does a great job at about 1/4 the price.

I principally compose to fill the frame from top to bottom and allow for the left-right crop to occur post capture. This provides me with lots of room for composition. An added benefit to this digital approach is that there is now the option of post capture perspective control which wasn’t possible when shooting film with the Hasselblad SWC and the 38mm Biogon lens. The Canon lens also has the advantage of auto focus, which works quite well with this handheld approach.

All of the examples that accompany this article were taken within this last month using the method described. It should be noted that all these examples are handheld, three exposure, High Dynamic Range images, which suits my personal aesthetic. You may not be into shooting HDR, but if you are interested in exploring the look of the legendary Hasselblad SWC, think about pairing your full-frame dSLR with a 20mm lens.

Gary Wilson is a long time Portland, OR based architectural photographer, who over the many years of enthusiastically pursuing his professional career has found that it is helpful in staying flexible by dedicating time to travel and to his fine art photographic work. Over the past three years he has enjoyed exploring the various expressions of HDR work and routinely employs facets of it in his commercial architectural photography. You can learn more about Gary at http://www.garywilsonphoto.com.