Epiphany or where was Captain Obvious when I needed him
Got my GW680 from KEH the other day. Though rated Ugly looked pretty much like most of my gear. Cosmetically worn. But the glass was clean, the rangefinder on and the shutter seems about right. So being a slow and methodical tester I immediately loaded the camera with film and shot stuff around the house with the flash. then opened a window and shot a picture of the bare tree in my back yard. Bear with me, I would not think of shooting through a window and not losing image quality. Then still in my shirt sleeves I ran out outside to the center of an island separating the boulevard on my tree lined residential street in a small town and hand holding shot off two more pictures. The prints I made of the test roll showed the exact same condition I had on the boulevard shots of this summer. I wasted time and money trying to solve a problem that was obvious. On all the cameras, lenses, mounted on heavy tripods and shot with cable releases and mirror lockups. The foreground images would be sharp but as the distance increased they got softer.
I was shooting through layers of air, most of which are not that clean anymore .
One photographer remarked that three days after 9/11 he was surprised at how deep a blue the sky was. For three days after 9/11 there was no commercial aircraft flying and spewing out tons of particles into the air .What goes up must come down .
The filter hasnt been made that will cut through that. Infrared maybe, but the look is not the same. .Ansel Adams barely touched on the problem but then he didnt have the local pollution we are experiencing today.
Got my GW680 from KEH the other day. Though rated Ugly looked pretty much like most of my gear. Cosmetically worn. But the glass was clean, the rangefinder on and the shutter seems about right. So being a slow and methodical tester I immediately loaded the camera with film and shot stuff around the house with the flash. then opened a window and shot a picture of the bare tree in my back yard. Bear with me, I would not think of shooting through a window and not losing image quality. Then still in my shirt sleeves I ran out outside to the center of an island separating the boulevard on my tree lined residential street in a small town and hand holding shot off two more pictures. The prints I made of the test roll showed the exact same condition I had on the boulevard shots of this summer. I wasted time and money trying to solve a problem that was obvious. On all the cameras, lenses, mounted on heavy tripods and shot with cable releases and mirror lockups. The foreground images would be sharp but as the distance increased they got softer.
I was shooting through layers of air, most of which are not that clean anymore .
One photographer remarked that three days after 9/11 he was surprised at how deep a blue the sky was. For three days after 9/11 there was no commercial aircraft flying and spewing out tons of particles into the air .What goes up must come down .
The filter hasnt been made that will cut through that. Infrared maybe, but the look is not the same. .Ansel Adams barely touched on the problem but then he didnt have the local pollution we are experiencing today.
