the day of the long lens

It's fair to say that my purchase of Fujifilm's excellent 100-200mm telephoto zoom lens has given my landscape photography a new impetus.

my 2018 shot

Previously, the vast majority of my landscape shots were made at the wider-angle range of things.  That's not to say that I never shot with anything longer, and this week's image is a re-make of one I shot way back in 2018 with a 90mm equivalent lens.

I was looking at this image again the other day and figured I'd like to shoot it again with my medium format camera and a longer lens which would compress the scene even more.

So, it was a case of waiting for the right conditions - an early evening sunset with little atmospheric distortion (mist, if you like!) - to capture the layered scene of foreground, mountains and sky.  But they never materialised.  Or when they did, I was unable to get out to capture them.

But I still really wanted to make this image, so I shot it anyway in far from ideal conditions.  But hey-ho, sometimes you just have to make do.

To try to make the shot a little more interesting, I employed a really long exposure of 2 minutes, necessitating the use of my Lee "Big Stopper" and then de-saturated the image in post-processing to give it an aged, filmic look.

Fujifilm GFX50R, Fujinon GF 100-200mm f5.6 @ 200mm
2 minutes @ f16, ISO 50
tripod, self-timer release
Lee 10-stop neutral density filter, Formatt Hitech 3-stop reverse graduated filter

I hope you agree the re-visiting of this shot, although not when I really wanted to, along with the techniques used, was worth it?

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You can watch a video detailing the making of this image and including some lovely drone footage by clicking on the link below.