Our Equipment

Cameras and Lenses

Most of Lance's work is done with a Hasselblad 501CM and 80mm, 150mm, 250mm, and 2x Zeiss lenses. He uses 2 film backs for quick support of multiple films. Lance occasionally uses a polarizer filter, but uses no other filtering. Lance uses 10mm, 21mm, and 50mm extender rings for macro and near-macro images.

There are a few of Lance's images taken with other cameras, including Canon EOS and Pentax K1000 35mm equipment, and Hasselblad panoramic cameras.

The majority of Windflower's work was taken with a Canon EOS Elan IIE, using Canon 28-105mm or 100-300mm Ultrasonic zoom lenses. She uses an EOS Elan camera body for backup and also for having multiple types of film available to shot with. To enhance the capabilities of her lenses she uses a Sigma 1.4x tele-extender for added focal length, and Kenko extender tubes for macro and near-macro work. She occasionally uses a polarizer filter or a warming filter. She also uses a UV filter for high-altitude work or simply for lens protection in the field.

Tripod

Both Lance and Windflower always use tripods, except when prevented by unusual circumstances. Lance uses a Gitzo G1227 tripod with a Bogen 3054 triple axis head. Windflower uses a Gitzo G1228 tripod with a Gitzo 1376 ball-head. Windflower and Lance get excellent upper body work-outs when in the field with their tripods.

Film

Both Lance and Windflower predominantly use Fuji Velvia film. They also occasionally use various other films, such as Kodak Ektachrome E100GX, E100SW, E100VS. Windflower occasionally uses Kodak T-Max for black-and-white work. Lance uses Kodak Technical Pan for some of his black-and-white photographs.

Some earlier photographs were taken with various Kodak Ektachrome films, and Kodak Kodachrome films.

Computer

We use a home-constructed computer using an Intel Pentium 4 3.2GZ chip, Intel mothboard supporting RAID 0/1, multiple hard drives with 1TB of on-line storage, and 3GB of memory for editing of our large images in Photoshop.

We use a Dell Inspiron 8100.

with a 1.5 Gz chip, and 512 MB memory for all business.

Scanning and Digital Processing

WWe use a Nikon Coolscan 9000 scanner to digitize images from our slides. Images are scanned at 4000DPI and then processed using Photoshop CS. We make extensive use of layers to allow us to fine-tune images over time from a master scan.

We use batch scripts and javascript scripts within Photoshop to produce our website images from the master scans.

Why Not Full Digital

Digital photography is rapidly advancing. The latest generation of professional 35mm digital cameras equal or surpass the capabilities of color film, the long-term cost is lowers, and the convenience and flexibility is greater. These capabilities are not available for medium-format cameras. The cost of digital backs for medium format is still quite high, and it is not clear how long these units. would hold up under the sometimes extreme conditions that cameras are subjected to in the field.

The power and convenience of digital processing of images in Photoshop and other tools is amazing over traditional darkroom processes. Techniques that would have taken days or weeks to master are now much easier to accomplish on the computer. Trouble images that would have been difficult to manipulate in the darkroom are usually much easier to work with in Photoshop.