Coming Full Circle
Preorders for my 2024 Portfolio Calendar end on Sunday, November 26. If you have not had the chance to order one and would like to do so, you can find a link to it HERE.
I also have a print sale from now until December 31. All photographic prints are 20 percent off with the discount code “DECEMBER20.” I’ve added a bunch of new photos to the print shop, which you can find here.
In 2020, on the advice of my friend Nassef, I began photographing on film again for the first time since I was a kid. At first glance, my decision to switch away from using a digital camera seems like an odd one. The limitations are obvious: the lack of instant feedback, the expense of buying and developing film, as well as the hassle of storing physical negatives. Yet the drawbacks became catalysts for me to approach photography with a newfound enthusiasm.
The film I use for most of my work, slide (also known as reversal or transparency) film, yields rich, saturated colors. However, it also has a very narrow dynamic range—meaning that it can only capture a limited range of tones from light to dark. For scenes with a lot of contrast (i.e. dark shadows and bright highlights), I have to use graduated neutral density filters to dim the brightest parts of the landscape. Shaded areas also turn out much bluer on slide film than in real life. Sometimes this serves to enhance the effect of my images by contrasting warm and cool tones. However, in other situations, this also means that images taken in reflected light turn out drastically different from how my eyes had perceived them. To mitigate this, I use warming filters to balance out the color.
Despite all the limitations, many of which I grumble about consistently in these articles, I grew to embrace, or at least accept them. I fell in love with film for all the typically stated reasons: it slowed me down, forced me to deliberate over each photograph, and felt like a more tangible experience. Working within those confines pushed me to become a more technically proficient photographer. I learned how to look for good light and to seek out scenes that were best suited for the types of film I used. In fact, I enjoyed process of analog photography so much that I decided to sell my digital camera. For most of the last three years, all my published landscape photography work has been shot on film.
That all changed a few months ago, when I finally turned back to the “dark side” and bought a digital camera again—a lightly used Nikon Z7. What prompted this?
In the time since I started seriously photographing on film, the market has shifted. As a result of increased demand and production costs, both Kodak and Fujifilm have increased their prices consistently and dramatically over the last three years. The prices of Fujifilm Provia and Velvia, the reversal films on which I shoot the vast majority of my work, has skyrocketed since the pandemic. Provia’s price risen from $18 to almost $26 per roll. The cost of a roll of Velvia has risen to well over $30. Despite charging astronomical prices, Fujifilm’s future as a film company remains doubtful as it continues to suspend or outsource production.
Even Nassef, who had first inspired me to shoot film again, grew frustrated with the growing expense of doing so. Eventually he switched to digital for much of his work and encouraged me to give it a try. I was initially hesitant. Using a digital camera again seemed like a step backwards. Yet the economics of it became more and more compelling. I also could not escape the fact that a digital camera would be far more versatile and convenient than a film one. After some consideration, I decided to purchase a used Nikon Z7 and a 24-70mm lens. I had come full circle.
I bought my digital kit just in time for a Labor Day weekend backpacking trip with my girlfriend, Emily, and our mutual friend Julie. This would be my third one of the season, after the two failed attempts mentioned in last month’s article. It would be Emily’s first ever backpacking trip, and Julie’s first in the Sierra.
We selected permits for Dusy Basin in Kings Canyon National Park. I had first visited the area last July and thought it had some of the best scenery I had seen in the Sierra backcountry. The basin, flanked on one side by a tall series of peaks known as the Palisades, seemed like the perfect introduction to the High Sierra for Emily and Julie.
Unfortunately, on the week of our trip weather reports predicted another storm rolling through the Sierra. We decided to move forward with our plans, in hopes of finding clearer weather after the storm had passed.
Our first morning started off spectacularly as we were greeted by a rainbow right outside our motel. As we drove towards our trailhead, we saw several more, each stronger than the last.
I thought, “Wow this trip is off to a great start! Maybe the weather forecast was wrong.” Perhaps I shouldn’t have tempted fate. Soon the rainbows disappeared as morning sunlight gave way to stormier skies.
Rain and forty mile-an-hour wind blew straight into our faces when we stepped out of the car at the trailhead parking lot. Intermittent patches of heavy rain soaked us as we packed our backpacks and prepared for the trail. Then, as we began hiking, it even began to hail.
Rain and forty mile-an-hour wind blew straight into our faces when we stepped out of the car at the trailhead parking lot. Intermittent patches of heavy rain soaked us as we packed our backpacks and prepared for the trail. Then, as we began hiking, it even began to hail.
The night before our hike, I agonized over the camera set up I would bring. I eventually decided to carry my Z7 in a waist pack, with a Nikon N80 film camera stowed securely in my backpack.
The differences between the two cameras could not be clearer. The N80, first released in 2000, has five autofocus points, cutting edge for its day. In comparison, the Z7, released a full eighteen years later, boasts a whopping 493. More importantly for this occasion, the Z7 is fully weather-sealed, meaning it can easily withstand the rain and snow. In contrast, the older N80 boasts no weather-sealing of any kind. I decided to stow it away inside my backpack, away from any moisture. My film photos would have to wait.
Using the Z7 on the hike proved to be a joy. I had forgotten the convenience of being able to adjust the camera’s ISO, or the light sensitivity, in real-time. With film, I’m limited by the ISO of whichever film I loaded into the camera. This capability on the Z7 allowed me to forego using my tripod entirely and enabled me to capture more “on-the-go” photos. Its weather sealing also meant that I no longer had to worry quite so much about rain seeping into my camera.
The hike into Dusy Basin can be challenging for us casual hikers in the best of times. On this day, the wind and rain combined with the high elevation to make the ascent a slog. We slowly huffed and puffed our way up the numerous inclines and switchbacks. Thankfully, the weather cleared as we approached Bishop Pass, the high point of the trail at 11,972 feet above sea level. We celebrated a small victory, then proceeded to hobble down to Dusy Basin to set up camp before dark.
The next morning began with overcast skies, but gradually the clouds cleared to reveal a bright, backlit sunrise. I set up my tripod besides a small glacial lake near our campsite and prepared to photograph the sun coming up behind the Palisades.
After photographing the scene first on the Z7, I switched over to the N80 only to discover that I had forgotten to screw on a tripod attachment plate to the camera. There was no way for me to lock the camera to the tripod. Disappointed, I improvised by balancing the camera on the top of the tripod and held it in place while clicking the shutter.
I wandered further away from camp and, much to my surprise, found lush green meadows and wildflowers everywhere. In contrast, on my previous trip I had found almost no flowers anywhere in the basin. I couldn’t believe my luck. Meanwhile, the overcast skies provided nice, even light. At times, the clouds swirled up and around the peaks, creating some incredible atmospherics.
Later that morning the clouds began to slowly dissipate. We hiked down towards a cliff overlooking one of the larger lakes in the basin. Sensing a photo opportunity, I stayed above the cliff while Julie hiked down. As I waited and hoped for a break in the clouds, I asked Julie to pose for the camera. Within minutes, the entire scene, clouded over just seconds before, lit up under the morning sun.
We wandered back to our camp that morning in awe of the scenery and thankful that the weather had cleared. After packing up camp, we spent the rest of the day hiking back to the trailhead and driving back down to civilization.
Though we were exhausted, we woke up early the next morning for sunrise in Little Lakes Valley. After hiking fourteen miles out and back over the past two days, our morning hike felt like a breeze in comparison.
The Nikon Z7 blew me away. Despite it being a five-year-old camera at this point, it nevertheless performed wonderfully. While I still needed to use my trusty set of filters for my film photos, the Z7 handled those same lighting situations easily. It had enough dynamic range to capture the full range of highlights and shadows in sunrise or sunset scenes without needing a filter.
A month later, it was time for my annual fall trip to the Sierra. On these outings, instead of grand landscapes, I primarily photograph smaller scenes in even, reflected light. I would have the opportunity to compare film and digital in very different circumstances. For these types of scenes, slide film’s limited dynamic range no longer poses an issue. In my mind, this would be a much more even comparison.
I spent half of my first day reacquainting myself with Bishop Creek Canyon. Though I had visited just several weeks earlier, the area had completely changed. The lush late-summer foliage had given way to a patchwork of green, yellow, and orange leaves. I spent a quiet morning wandering along the forest floor, revisiting scenes from last year and finding new ones.
I drove north through Mono County in the afternoon, stopping along the way to visit some unfamiliar areas and see the fall foliage.
I arrived at Conway Summit right as the sun set behind the mountains. Initially I had planned to photograph the entire vista—a valley full of fall color—in direct sunlight. Instead, I pulled out a 70-300mm telephoto lens and used it to look for a specific patch of foliage I could photograph in the even, indirect light of early evening. I finally spotted the right confluence of branches and leaves after scanning the area with the telephoto lens zoomed in at 300mm.
In this case, I actually preferred the colors on the digital photo. The film version, taken on Fujifilm Provia 100F, turned out a bit more magenta than I had anticipated. Despite several rounds of editing, I found that I gravitated towards the more accurate color balance of the digital file. A surprise to be sure, but a welcome one.
The next morning, I tested the Z7 with a particularly difficult scene I had photographed last year.
At the time, I struggled to render the scene accurately. My film could not match the range of light that my eyes saw—the mountains were far too bright and the trees too dim. The scene remained too bright even with a soft-edged graduated neutral density filter. In the above photograph, I used a hard-edged graduated neutral density filter to even out the exposure, which did the job at the expense of a noticeably dim area in the middle of the frame where the filter gradates suddenly from light to dark. With the help of some AI-enabled tools in Adobe Lightroom, I managed to partially even out the gradation in the photo, but I nevertheless wondered if I could attain a better result on a digital sensor.
The scene proved to be a challenge even on the Z7. I tried several different exposures both with and without a graduated ND filter. In the end, I still needed a filter to even out the lighting contrast. However, the digital RAW file retained much more usable detail, which allowed for easier editing in Lightroom. The resulting photo more closely matched what my eyes saw. Quite frankly, the digital result blew my film shot out of the water. I had waited a year, but I finally had satisfactory image of the scene.
That night, I decided to try my hand at some astrophotography. When I had previously done it on film, this had always necessitated extremely long exposure times, ranging from several minutes to almost an hour. The lack of instant feedback meant that I often had no idea how my shot turned out and therefore no idea how to compensate my settings accordingly. I had eventually practiced enough to have a rough estimate of exposure times. Nevertheless, I still often returned from a night of astrophotography without any usable photos. With the Z7, I suddenly had the ability to adjust the camera’s sensitivity to light and review my images immediately.
After a hearty dinner, I drove up to Tuolumne Meadow in Yosemite to photograph a wide-open vista. I started with a simple wide-angle composition but realized that my zoom lens could not autofocus due to the lack of light. With my film setup, I would usually use a prime lens with a focus ring that stops at infinity. In situations with low light, I could simply focus my camera by turning the lens all the way to infinity and know that the photo would be reasonably sharp.
I needed something bright enough for the camera to pick up as a focal point. Because there was no moon that night, I waited until I saw a car headlight pop into view on the horizon and tapped the camera’s rear screen to focus on it. Just like that, the lens whirred into focus. After a few test shots, I figured out the necessary shutter speed and aperture.
I photographed the scene above at ISO 8000, about six to seven times more light-sensitive than the ISO 100 or ISO 50 rated films I usually use. On Fujifilm Provia, for example, a shot equivalent to the fifteen second exposure shown above would require at least an hour. Instead of one try, I now could make dozens of attempts in the same amount of time, using each exposure to further dial in my settings. Here, the benefits of a digital camera truly became evident.
I repeated the process again at Tenaya Lake, another area with a wide-open view. As with my previous shot, I waited until a car headlight popped into view to calibrate the autofocus, then waited again for the car to disappear before clicking the shutter.
So far, all of my shots had a well-lit night sky against a near-black landscape. The lack of moonlight meant that almost no light shone on the ground. I remembered that I had brought a portable flash unit with me. If I could find a good foreground subject, I could illuminate it with the flash.
I drove further west to Olmsted Point. A solitary Jeffrey pine stands atop a ridge overlooking the parking lot. In the daytime, the back of Half Dome looms in the distance. It took several attempts to figure out the right composition. I walked back and forth, guessing at the framing because the scene was too dark to even see on my screen. I illuminated the pine tree with my headlamp, which provided just enough light for the camera’s sensor to focus on it.
I shifted my tripod back and forth along the ridge, taking care not to trip and slide off it. Finally, I decided to frame the tree on one side of the photo and the Milky Way on the other. I needed a bit of troubleshooting as I worked through issues with the photos, most notably the noticeable light trails in the sky from passing airplanes and dialing in the strength of the flash. Soon enough I had all the elements in place and snapped a final exposure.
In hindsight, I wish I had activated the flash slightly further away from the tree. However, my “light painting” had its desired effect. The tree stood out clearly against the night sky. When I reviewed the image on my camera screen, I felt as if I had found a winning lottery ticket. I had initially pre-visualized a rough idea of what I wanted the photo to look like. Over the course of an hour or two, I had slowly seen the idea taking shape as I moved my tripod and adjusted the strength and direction of my flash. Finally, it had paid off. The process had been so much fun that I did not realize it was almost midnight. I drove back to my campsite, almost two hours and over a hundred miles away, ready for bed and overjoyed at my efforts.
On the subsequent morning, I woke up early and walked along the creek in search of a few more final fall photos to round out the trip.
Comparing my Z7 with my film setup over the course of these two trips allowed me to weigh the benefits of both. The digital camera undoubtedly outperformed my film cameras when it came to technical capabilities.
However, film still held one advantage. I continued to prefer its color rendition for a majority of the scenes I photographed. Out of the camera, I noticed my digital files looked a bit “flat.” It took a great deal of editing to replicate the rich colors and contrast of my film images. Even once I had dialed in the settings, the digital photos still seemed to lack that final “pop.” Granted, there were exceptions to this preference. In the most difficult of lighting situations, such as the backlit sunrise at Dusy Basin or the sunrise composition on the fall trip, the Z7 produced far better results than I could manage on film.
My new batch of digital photos made me reevaluate my work. Because I had exclusively used film for years, I came to think of myself as a film photographer. In some sense, this also felt aspirational. Two of my favorite landscape photographers, Ansel Adams and Galen Rowell, shot all of their work exclusively on film. Of course, this was because both men’s careers came before the advent of widespread digital photography. Nevertheless, I have come to associate the genre of landscape photography I do with the medium on which their work was captured.
Even as I write this, I remain undecided on how much of my work will now shift from analog to digital. Now that I had a collection of digital photos to add to my portfolio, where do they fit in? What does it mean to create a cohesive body of work? Should the medium used to create that work matter?
Please let me know your thoughts, I’d love to read them.
In the meantime, here are a few more pictures from both trips:
