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FollowCatching the wave action at one of the lesser known beaches on Lofoten islands during the arctic winter. That was done using the 12 mm wide-angle Voigtlander Le...
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Catching the wave action at one of the lesser known beaches on Lofoten islands during the arctic winter. That was done using the 12 mm wide-angle Voigtlander Leica-M-mount lens mounted onto my Sony A72 with an adapter. 12 mm is REALLY wide. So you gotta get REALLY close (and wet). I don't know why I keep risking my gear (and probably my life) for shots like this. Must be some kind of addiction...
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Contest Finalist in The Ocean Photo Contest
Contest Finalist in Your Point Of View Photo Contest
Contest Finalist in Celebrating Nature Photography Day Photo Contest 2016
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Behind The Lens
Location
One of the lesser know north-facing beaches on Lofoten Islands, Northern Norway.Time
Blue hour in February, which means this far north around 3 pm.Lighting
As always: No flash! Only available light. And who wouldn't? This amazing arctic light you get only in winter way up in the north is just so special! At blue hour (after sunset) it is best.Equipment
This one was done using the 12 mm wide-angle Voigtlander Leica-M-mount lens mounted onto my Sony A72 with an adapter.Inspiration
I wanted to catch the wave action on this arctic coastline together with the grand landscape and this amazing sky, really transporting the viewer into the scene. For this, I needed wide-angle, the wider the better. That's why I try to always have the widest possible lens with me. The nice thing about the Sony A7 cameras is, that you can mount (with adapters) almost any lens from any manufacturer. And the widest available rectilinear full frame lens on the market (from any manufacturer) at that time was the Voigtlaender 12mm. So I used this one.Editing
My post-processing workflow was quite involved and all about quality. Starting out with the best possible raw file I used DxO to convert the file into another raw format (.dng) using DxO's very good and gentle noise reduction, sharpening and my custom made lense profile for the Voigtländer 12mm on the Sony A7II. Then I opened the .dng in Lightroom and did 95% of the post-processing there, completely nondestructive, everything still in raw. At the latest possible point I finally opened the file in Photoshop as a 16 bit .tif for some final touches (like a slight Orton effect, some filters from Nik and Topaz, etc.). Then I saved it as a 16 bit .tif and added it to my Lightroom library. Never, ever did I convert to jpg. A jpg file has only 8 bit of information-depth as compared to the 14 bit I started out with in raw. That is only a tiny fraction, namely 1/64th, of the information I gathered with the camera (2 to the power of 6)! Therefore I do not consider jpgs as a decent photo format worth having in my library. The only time I touch jpg is when I export something to upload to the web.In my camera bag
I used to have Nikon equipment, namely a D800 and later a D810 camera, the classic Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8 lens and the Nikon 85mm f/1.8 lens, a Nikon D750 camera and the Nikon 70-200 f/4. But now I have sold all this and changed to Sony. I now have a Sony A7RII and a Sony A7II as cameras, the Sony-Zeiss 16-35 f/4, the Sony 70-200 f/4 and the Sony-Zeiss 55 f/1.8 lens. The Voigtlaender 12mm f/5.6 VM lens with a Leica-to-Sony adapter I used for this shot I have sold already. Why? Because Voigtlaender now makes an even wider lens - the 10mm Hyper-Wide! And since for me, wider is always better... as soon as it came out, I bought it straight away. I was probably the first person in Germany using it.Feedback
Be careful! Don't go as close to the waves as I did! Use a longer lens (16mm maybe?) from a safer distance. 12 mm is REALLY wide. That means, you gotta get REALLY close... and wet! I don't know why I keep risking my gear (and probably my life) for shots like this. Must be some kind of addiction...