Wolfgang Jaekel - Photography

Equipment:

DSLRs: Canon 1DsMarkII, 1DMarkII, 10D

Filmbodies: Canon EOS 1V, EOS 3

Films: Fuji Provia 100F, Fuji Velvia 50F, Fuji Provia 400F/X. As long as it was available,
I mostly used Kodakchrome 64 for landscape shots because of its longevity and neutral colors.

Zoom lenses: f2.8/16-35mm, f4.0/24-105mm IS, f 2.8/24-70mm, f2.8/70-200mm IS

Primes: f1.4/24mm, f1.4/35mm, f1.4/50mm, f2.8/100mm Macro, f2.8/300mm IS, f4.0/300mm, f4.0/600mm IS, 1,4x & 2x Converter, Zeiss Distagon f2.8/21mm,

Flashes: Macro Ring Lite MR-14EX, Speedlites 540/550 EZ

Tripods & Heads: Gitzo G1325/G1548, Arca Swiss B2, Wimberley Head, Novoflex Magic Ball

Storage: JOBO GigaVu Pro

Backpacks/ Foto Bags: LoewePro Trekker AW, Tamrac, Thinktank Airport Addicted


General comments: The equipment listed above is the one I mostly have been using for nature photography on my recent trips. It's not intended to provide a comprehensive catalogue of lenses and accessoires here. Of course, there are special situations in which alternative lenses, such as the f1,2/85mm, f2.8/400mm or f3.5/180mm macro, are more advantageous for me. It goes without saying for any serious nature photographer to be prepared and informed of the shooting conditions, the kind and behaviour of wildlife and the distance to the subjects that is expected at the location before you leave for a trip. For example, it would have been at least questionable for me to carry the heavy 600mm lens to Antarctica where wildlife is sitting right in front of you most of the time.
You have to define your needs in advance of each trip, the more as the restrictions for the carry-on luggage are reported to get more and more rigid, - especially on some airports in Western Europe. Though there's no logical connection of weight, dimensions and security after the events of 9/11, politicians and several airlines don't care about the necessity to protect the fragile equipment from damage and the need to take it into the cabin for this reason. However, they don't see themselves responsible if the gear is lost, stolen or broken after they had forced you to put it into the checked luggage. Even a Pelicase won't prevent your calibrated lenses from being misaligned as the baggage is dropped or thrown around. Though I met some photographers who had got a lot of trouble at big airports like London Heathrow and Frankfurt, I personally have been lucky so far and had no serious problems to take my gear into the cabin. But I always try to chose a good airline and to avoid the airports known for trouble. Nevertheless, travelling by air is more and more getting a challenge for serious photographers and I' m pretty nervous every time now as long as I'm not sitting in the plane.That's why I recently bought a Thinktank Airport Addicted trolley which at least provides the dimensions required for hand-luggage now. It can take the f2.8/300mm, 2 bodies and some additional lenses but is too small for the 600. Whenever I need to travel with this lens I have to chose the LoewePro AW Trekker backpack. Enforcing the stricter regulations everywhere without exceptions and without offering an acceptable solution to photographers would have a big impact on nature photography and dramatically limit your possibilities.
In the meantime it's a widely known fact, that you should never put your unprocessed films into the checked luggage. The new explosive detection systems installed on the U.S and many non U.S. airports in order to scan (X-ray) the checked baggage, definetely ruin (fog) every film - not only highspeed films over 400 ISO as it could happen formerly, too. Hand-checked luggage ist exposed to lower radiation, so damages of films are unlikely up to at least 400 ISO unless they aren't exposed more than 5 times to X-ray scans. TSA states that films up to 800 ISO are not affected but I personally wouldn't expose them to screening. Because of the lower radiation, the Smiths Heimann and Rapiscan systems that can be found at the checkpoints claim to be film safe. Until now, I have not seen any fogged images of my slide films. But keep in mind that the effect of x-ray screening is cumulative. So in any case it is safer to request a visual inspection of films and any camera containing film. This is a guaranteed option in the US air travel. In Europe and elsewhere it depends on the local standards and regulations. In my experience it's generally advisable to take at least a look at the labelling of the devices at the check-in, ask the staff and insist on a hand inspection if you have any doubts. Evidentally there are newer backscatter systems planned or already installed in order to screen people and vehicles at terminals, border crossings and other checkpoints. I don't know if they can fog films. Digital equipment such as CF cards, HDs etc is not known to be affected by x-ray scans so far.
Cameras: I mostly use the Canon 1D Mark II for wildlife and action photography while the 1DsMark II is taken for landscapes, macros and closer wildlife shots too. I previously owned the original 1Ds which had a weaker AA filter and thus a more film-like output. It was almost as good as the 1DsMark II regarding resolution, despite the difference of 5,6 MP. Indeed, the image size of the 1Ds is 4064 x 2704 px versus 4992 x 3328 px, provided by the 1DsMark II. So the "huge" 66% difference between 11,1 MP and 16,7 MP comes down to an increase of 928 pixels in the horizontal direction and 624 pixels vertically which is rarely visible - even in bigger prints. Though the original 1Ds was replaced by the 1DsMK II 3 years ago, it might interesting to compare the resolution of a 11,1 MP camera with one that offers a 16,7 MP CMOS, see sample 1 and sample 2. The higher the resolution the more increase in MP count is necessary to make up a remarkable step over the predecessor. People are too much blinded by the megapixel race and admitted, I was it too at first. The drawbacks of the 1Ds were the noise at ISOs above 400, its smaller buffer and slower processor as well as the poor LCD with a limited loupe - not its lower resolution. There's annother important point to consider. The more pixels are squeezed into a given CMOS area the smaller the size of the photosites will be. This increases noise and - mostly overlooked - diffraktion comes into play much earlier if the lens is stopped down. Diffraktion heavily decreases the image quality. For example, a given consumer Digicam with 6MP can be optically limited to 1/3 of the claimed resolution (about 2 MP !) at f 11 due to diffraktion. The same physical basics are valid for high end DSLRs of course too, if more and smaller pixels are added into a given CMOS area.
As said, the 1D Mark II is great for action or wildlife shots because of its reliable high speed AF and the frame rate up to 8fps. Beyond this, its 1,3x sensor is a good compromise too. But due to just 8MP resolution combined with the relatively small pixel density there is not too much room for cropping if you need big prints containing a lot of detail. The 1DMark II has pretty big photodiodes which were designed to collect more light and thus effectively keep noise down at high ISOs. But this goes at the cost of the pixel density, of course. People oftenly think that the high res FF cameras, such as the 1DsMarkII (16,7 MP) and the 5D (12,7MP) give them more cropping abilities resulting in better resolution compared to the lower res 1,6x prosumer DSLRs. This is not the simple truth and depends on a lot of parameters. I was quite surprised when I once did the maths and found that you gain not much over the 1,6 x 10D (6MP !) in terms of resolution if you crop an image taken with the 1DsMark II to the same FOV as the 10D provides. Here's another example to clarify: The Canon 5D has a pixel density of 14700 pixels/ mm^2 on a larger sensor which is totaly 12,7MP on the chip. The Canon 20D has a pixel density of 24300 pixels/mm^2. But these are placed on a smaller area which sums up to 8,2 MP for its total sensor. If you now crop the area of the 20D's CMOS out of the 5D's sensor, there are only 4,9 MP left ! {14700pixels/mm^2 * 22.5mm x 15mm = 4.9 megapixel }. That is why the 20D is superior to the full frame 5D for long focal lengths because of the 1.6 crop sensor and its "magnification" effect with the higher pixel density which more than equals the crop. In order to be better than the 20D you would have to get closer to the subject with the 5D and the same lens, so that the full sensor size could be utilized and you get the full 12,7 megapixel image. Since it's not possible approaching wildlife that close, crop sensors are of advantage concerning IQ for shooting these subjects. Alternatively, you have to use a bigger lens on a FF camera, of course. Nevertheless, I use my old 1,6x 10D most of the time only for personal shots or as a backup since the AF is not usable for faster moving subjects such as wildlife.
Films: Concerning films, Kodakchrome 64 had been my favourite choice for almost two decades because of its longevity and neutral colors. To enhance its somewhat weak saturation, I used a B &W polarizer and mostly stopped down the exposure by 0.3 for my landscape photographs. Unfortunately this film is no more available in Europe and the special labs that had been needed for processing, are gone. In case you have some KCR left in the refrigerator, you have to send them to the US for processing. I now use Provia 100F and 400F (recently replaced by the 400X) which gives me the best compromise of speed and colors for my wildlife shots and also deliver good results when scanned. I also take velvia 50 for landscapes, especially if I can use a tripod. I was not content with the velvia 100F which had a too strong red color shift according to my tests. As to scan my slides, I use a Nikon LS 4000 filmscanner and Silverfast Scan Software. Because of its special chemistry it's difficult to get good results when scanning KCR. I found that dust removal by the Silverfast software doesn't work for Kodakchromes and produces blurred scans while the hardware based dust removal of the Nikon scanner delivers acceptable results. There's no such poblem if the regular E6-processed slides are scanned. BTW, if you still shot slides it's more important then ever to send your films to a well respected lab for processing even if the costs are higher in the end. In my experience many labs deliver very poor quality in the meantime. Because of the digital boom they're reducing the costs for the staff and the technics.
Digital Workflow: I exclusively shoot in raw mode, the files are transferred to the GigaVU Pro and saved on DVDs as additional backups when I'm on a trip. Later on the PC, the preselected files are converted to 16bit tiffs into the AdobeRGB colorspace using Capture One Pro. I prefer Magne Nilsons profiles over the generic camera profiles included in the PhaseOne Software. Occasionally I convert via Canon's DPP too, which has been improved a lot. So far, I' ve been not impressed with the AdobeRaw- Converter concerning detail and tonal graduation. Right now, I test Adobe Lightroom which is said to be better as previous versions of ARC. It provides a lot of great features for quickly and effectively organizing your workflow. But for me, all comes down to the quality of the raw conversion. Since Capture One 4 is in the pipeline right now, I've not yet decided to switch to LR. That is why additional postprocessing, such as dust removal, tonal correction etc. still is done in Photoshop CS2 using adjustment layers. For my work I use an Eizo monitor which is profiled using EyeOne (Xrite) Photo. For the removal of vignetting, lens distortion and chromatic aberrations, I prefer PTlens Plugin over the PS filter. Additional noise reduction rarely is required using today's DSLR line. However, if NR is to be applied (for instance when shooting very dark motifs at ISOs 1000 to 1600 - such as some Northern Light scenes whentravelling by ship), I use Neatimage Pro. In general, it's rarely necessary to apply additional noise reduction for images displayed in webgalleries and digital presentations - even for high ISO images. Noise can be only relevant in bigger prints. I save the 16bit tiffs on external harddrives and DVDs as master files. Depending on the use, these files are converted for example to 8bit sRGB in the next step. For sharpening Pixelgenius Pksharpener provides the best flexibility and best results in my opinion. In my understanding nature photography still is kind of a document as it was more or less in the film days. So I generally do rot arrange, combine or fake any of my motifs. This may be naiv in today's digital world but that's my position. I know that there are different opinions even of fulltime pros. But I'm not under pressure to sell my photos nor eager to win any competition. Either my photographs are good for my taste and serve my needs or they do not. I only correct technical defects such as vignetting, sensor dust and CA and adapt exposure or contrast which is necessary when shooting raws. The camera processor does exactly the same if jpegs are required out of the box. It comes down to the possibility to chose different kinds of films in the predigital world or to use a polarizer to remove flare and enhance saturation. At a certain point this can be regarded as manipulation too, of course. Therefore I know that there are questionable operations in the normal workflow too. But I've defined my personal limits as described above.
I've not yet come to a final decision concerning the purchase of an A3+ printer. Since I do not constantly need a high number of prints, the overall costs for a printer don't make up for the costs of sending my files to a well respected online print lab. But this may change. Furthermore, I'm not yet sure which technology to chose. Dye-ink based devices such as the Canon i 9950 produce stunning results but the longevity of the prints is moderate at best though claimed otherwise. Pigment ink -based printers are not so much suited to high glossy paper which I like most. Bronzing and gloss differential are issues here as well as less vibrancy ot the colors in comparison to dyes.The well known Epson 4000 printer can suffer from clogging if it is not used daily or at least once a week. Furthermore, if different papers are required, swapping inks and ink consuming self-cleaning procedures are necessary for most Epson printers, which is a cost factor. So far, the HP BD 9180 looks to me as the best overall compromise but I will at least wait for a decision until the recently announced new Epson printers are available and tested.
Digital HDAV presentations are composed with the Wings Platinum Software using the Canon XEED SX50 digital projector which provides a SXGA+ resolution (1400 x 1024). The software is produced by the Austrian Company AV Stumpfl. So far, slide shows have been presented by the Rollei twin MSC 535 P projector.

last Update: Sept 2007