| Bristlecone Pine Forest, White Mountains, Inyo National Forest, Calif. This image was shot with the full moon providing the main illumination and starlight providing background. Dykinga used ISO 1600 on the Nikon D3 and a 24mm Nikkor PC. The result is a composite of five images. |
Jack Dykinga doesn’t treat his newest camera as a state secret, although it would be understandable if he did. After all, he calls it a “secret large-format camera.” And it’s made by Nikon. No, Dykinga doesn’t literally have a Nikon view camera. What he has are the same D3 and D3X as many other professional photographers. But through his ingenuity, Dykinga has developed a technique that he says rivals the results he long has achieved with 4x5 film. That’s especially remarkable coming from someone who practically swore off digital cameras.
“My issue with digital in the past,” Dykinga explains, “has always been that I’m going to stay with film until digital is better, or equal. And what’s happened now is that equalization. When you do three across, when I get that file size bumping into 300-plus megabytes, then I’ve got to ask myself. I’ve already made prints for a show at Mountain Light Gallery, of bristlecone pines at starlight, a 24x30 print, and you’d be really hard pressed to tell the difference between that and all the 4x5 shots hanging next to it. That’s where the rubber meets the road.”
 Atacama Desert, Valle de la Luna, Chile. The final image was created from 12 images shot vertically that were stitched together. |
Reinvention and transformation are nothing new to Dykinga, who began his career as a Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist for the Chicago Sun-Times. The next phase of life saw him working almost exclusively with 4x5 transparency film, shooting landscapes in the tradition of Ansel Adams for publications such as National Geographic, Arizona Highways and Outdoor Photographer. That conservationist photographer phase really made Dykinga famous, especially to OP readers and especially because of his work with large format. So it may come as a surprise to many that he has all but retired his view camera. That he has done it in favor of working with a DSLR is even more surprising.
“The ‘why’ is Nikon’s 24-megapixel camera,” he says, “combined with tilt-shift lenses for a seamless stitch, getting me into the 300-megabyte range—which is a pretty good file size. Considering that none of that information is wasted on grain, it’s a lot of bang for your buck.”
 Horseshoe Bend, near Page, Ariz.—A composite of five images. |
It’s thanks to these DSLR advances—massive resolution, low noise at high-ISO sensitivities and phenomenal optics—that Dykinga was able to even consider setting aside his 4x5, but the technical qualities of the equipment are only part of the equation. The remainder comes from the photographer’s knack for building a better mousetrap, which he has done to re-create the resolution of a 4x5 film image by stitching multiple digital captures together. Stitching is nothing new, but Dykinga’s technique is unique. He’s not just stitching to create high-resolution or panoramic images; he’s stitching to more accurately mimic large-format photography. He relies on perspective-control lenses to laterally move the image-to-sensor relationship without ever changing the camera position or the plane of focus. This makes use of the entire circle of light that a lens provides, turning a 35mm-sized sensor into something akin to medium format.
 Laguna Amarga, Patagonia, Chile—Five images across stitched together; the 24mm Nikkor PC was slightly tilted. |
“I’m maximizing the image circle,” Dykinga explains. “Nikon’s perspective-control lenses are like medium-format lenses in their scope of coverage. All I’m doing is moving the sensor around to capture all that the lens can provide. I take a picture and shift, take a picture and shift, in a very fast time—six seconds real time. I shift the lens to one side to check the corner on one side of the composition and then take it across to the other side. In Live View, I watch it and make sure I’ve got a really nicely composed image, and then I just maneuver the adjustment knobs and shoot with considerable overlap. Three frames across for each vertical. And, of course, therein is the seamlessness of it.”
 Lago Grey, Patagonia, Chile —Calved icebergs and small ice formations on shore with lenticular clouds; five images across, stitched together. |
Dykinga usually makes five or six exposures, with the camera oriented vertically, to create a horizontal finished image. “That, coincidentally, comes out to almost a 4x5 ratio when I’m using either the 45mm, the 24mm or the 85mm PC [perspective-control] lenses,” he says. “And besides those, I’m mixing and matching, doing whatever the subject demands. Some of them I’ve gone as far as 17 across, and actually rotating the camera, producing these really wide panoramas.”
Dykinga’s technique should be familiar to large-format photographers because he’s essentially applying the same techniques he has refined over years of working with a 4x5 view camera. He composes in much the same way, and he can even tilt the lens to move the plane of focus for near-far compositional effects.
“It’s like a secret large-format camera,” he says. “I actually can previsualize pretty well. Maybe that’s part of the secret—my background as a 4x5 photographer. I compose on the corners. So I would do the left side and then the right side and just keep moving it back and forth with the lens’ adjustment controls until I get what I think is going to be right, and then when the light is great I just blaze away. Sometimes I may have to tighten it up in cropping, but not often. I’m actually able to hit it pretty much most of the time.”
 As part of the recent iLCP RAVE in the Yucatán, Mexico, to illustrate ground water quality, Dykinga photographed this cenote near Mérida. Its tourquoise waters, stalactites and stalagmites were shot in horizontal orientation. Five images were composited top to bottom. With help from Alfredo Medina and several assistants, light was “painted” on the scene. All images: Gitzo tripod; Really Right Stuff BH55 ballhead |
Working as he does within a single focal plane, Dykinga is able to alleviate any need to move the camera and risk misaligned images and poor composites. It also means he can work really fast. So even though he’s making multiple exposures, it’s often much faster than a single long exposure with his 4x5 would be. This has caused him to reflect on the philosophical conceit of which moment is “more real.”
“That was always my argument in the past with film,” Dykinga says. “Film was going to be the pure one and get me the single moment. Well, the trouble is, it sort of falls on its nose when you figure you’re making a 15-second exposure. If I’m making a 15-second exposure and I can do the same shot with five images in six seconds on my Nikon, then that point becomes moot.
“People are still using the nodal point and the shift up and down in layers,” he continues. “It seems like it’s an exercise in superb engineering. The engineers are doing that, but it has very little practical use. Whereas this, if I can beat my time with a cable release, then it’s actually going to be a beautiful image, an exact rendering of what I was after, and I can also compose it very accurately. It’s really not that hard.”
Dykinga says the Photomerge tool within Photoshop makes the compositing very straightforward, nothing fancy. The key is staying within the same optical plane for all of the exposures. And that’s not the only benefit he gets from working with a lens with movements. Tilting the lens for near-far focusing also compensates for the smaller format’s inherently shallower depth of field when compared to 4x5.
Dykinga still picks up the 4x5 view camera on occasion, but typically only for fine-art work. While he’s gravitating increasingly toward his “secret” Nikon large format, he knows it isn’t truly as versatile as an actual view camera. But it makes for an impressive setup.
“It allows me to do the movements of a 4x5,” he says. “Not all, not quite—the infinite aspect of perspective control still makes the 4x5 very desirable. You can do a combination of two movements. But what it’s allowing me to do is produce a file size that’s very competitive now, and it’s moving in on medium-format digital. Those are 65-megapixel cameras, and if you have a 25-megapixel sensor and you’re moving it across with five exposures and maybe you have an overlap of a certain amount, you’re probably doing about two and a half times that. So you’re in the 65 MB range. It’s not 16-bit, but it’s pretty good. And it’s very versatile.”
Versatility is a very practical consideration for a photographer these days. Not only is traveling internationally ever more difficult with film and quantities of larger and heavier equipment, but the infrastructure that for years made large-format film the professional option has shifted considerably toward the digital realm. When your images are all about quality, those practical concerns become game-changers.
“It’s multifaceted,” Dykinga explains. “It seems like the labs are disappearing. And film availability is sometimes scarce. But I still continue to use film and my 4x5. If I’ve got a scene that I know is really going to go right to fine art, I’ll pretty much revert to film. So I’m still kind of juggling and marrying the two.”
The other concern Dykinga has with his new approach is technical, and decidedly digital. It comes by way of color fringing at the edges of the image due to the extremes to which he’s pushing his lenses. It has both a digital cause and a digital solution.
“Fringing is important,” he says. “Basically, the glass isn’t rendering all of the colors exactly the same. When the angle is bending the light way out at the edge of the frame is where it’s most noticeable. So when you pull the image out of the raw processor, you’d better address the fringing—especially these wide angles that have huge image circles. When you approach the edge of the circle, you’re almost assuredly getting red, green and yellow blue fringing going on. With these smaller-format cameras, it can be the difference between a sharp picture and a not-sharp picture.”
Most of the changes Dykinga has seen from his new approach have been quite beneficial. He even has begun to notice aesthetic changes that have followed the technique—things he always dreamed about with 4x5, but only now can he achieve.
“One of the things I find is that with 4x5 you’re sort of gravitating to shorter lenses and wide-angle approaches,” he explains. “And a lot of these pictures—the cactus, the desert, the Namibian sand dunes—these are all telephoto shots. It’s a good mixture, but what I find myself doing are these very wide panoramas with telephoto lenses, which allow me to bring up that background and get that effect I’ve always yearned to do with a 4x5. To do that with a 4x5, I would have to be using a 1200mm lens and a tripod and several Sherpas to carry it all.
“Some of the panorama shots,” Dykinga continues, “they’re shot with telephoto lenses, and a lot of those aren’t that sharp until you get down to about ƒ/13. Quality is always the driving force. Unlike wildlife or people, when you can actually shoot wide open because you’re going after that moment, you’ve got no excuse with landscape photography. You want maximum quality. That’s probably the original reason for going to this—to supply maximum quality.”
| Other Gear Options | ||
| Jack Dykinga is a longtime Nikon user, but you can employ his same technique with other camera makes, as well. The two key components of Dykinga’s gear are the high-resolution image sensor and the perspective-control lens. Canon calls its lenses Tilt-Shift, and it makes several focal lengths. Of course, Canon also makes several high-resolution cameras, including the full-frame EOS-1Ds Mark III with 21.1 megapixels. There also are a few adapters made that essentially fit between your DSLR and your lens, which gives you a range of view-camera movements. One example is the Arca-Swiss M-Line Two Single Lens Reflex (there’s also a model for medium- format shooters). The M-Line Two SLR is available for Canon, Nikon and Sony mounts. | ||
 Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III |
 Canon TS-E 24mm Tilt-Shift lens |
 Arca-Swiss M-Line Two Single Lens Reflex |
To see more of Jack Dykinga’s photography, visit www.dykinga.com.
Good article, but one nit … “Tilting the lens for near-far focusing also compensates for the smaller format?۪s inherently shallower depth of field when compared to 4×5.” — I thought that smaller formats had greater DOF. E.g., I have often found that to be a disadvantage with small point & shots and small videocams. That’s why IMO full frame 35mm DSLRs with video capability (e.g., Canon’s 5Dmk2) have had such a large impact on the video world.
The author discusss his technique, which involves shifting his lens L-C-R, but all his examples are 5 panels across. What did he leave out, or what am I missing?
One additional consideration is the computer used to merge the composite. Taking five 24mpix images and compositing them with photomerge takes a bit of CPU power. A 300mb file in Photoshop, add a few adjustment layers and you will quicky bump your head on memory limits. Once the computer starts swapping to disk, your performance will decrease substantially. Having a quad core system with a 64-bit operating system helps a ton when processing large files.
Jeff is right. We are all getting into these massive pixel machines called cameras, and we think our $499 PC from 2006 is ample. Be prepared to spend for PC power with the wat everything is going. I built a 64-bit PC with 12GB of ram and five hard drives last summer to deal with my 5D2 HD video… well guess what?? When I switch over to working with stills, Photoshop will eat WAY more that 4GB of ram if youy let it. I have the PC to handle it now, but it spoke volumes about what us photographers now need in our studios. Yet I still see a trend of photographers griping about having to upgrade. In all truthfulness, get over it. It’s part of the development of digital photography. HDR is emerging in several flavors and it’s not going away. You WILL need PC horsepower to handle it: i7 processor, minimum 6GB ram, 64-bit OS (required to use more than 3.3GB ram). OK, rant over! Bye!
remember when you could buy a decent camera and decent primes and use them for years on end now we are all caught up in the hardware game i have the quad core newer pc but remember when all that really changed was the film now we have all bought into the upgrade game the camera companies love we are afraid of taking the photo without worry about if the next piece of hardware or software is coming out this is called outdoor photographer not rich peoples outdoor photography so don,t look down your nose at people with lesser equipment or theory because i have seen the same photos in this article horseshoe bend for instance done over and over again by people not cosidered masters also if i see ( even though not shown in this article)one more image of antelope canyon or the wave i will puke get out there and do something original with what you have i will gaze upon it and it might be better than or at least more original than all the master hardware one camera is superior to another photos out there on that day.
Thankyou Richard for remembering what it’s like to look through the viewfinder of a “K-1000”, and to compose a shot using what is’t provided by a multi-thousand dollar camera and editing set-up. There may still be hope for those of us who like to try to capture what the eye really sees and not what some program has altered.
“… still be hope for those of us who like to try to capture what the eye really sees and not what some program has altered. ”
Huh?? Do you REALLY believe that? What EXACTLY does the eye really see?? A professional (landscape) photographer is often going to be pushing the technical limits of their digital cameras and post-processing equipment to achieve that extra edge in their photographs. Which is precisely what this article is about. This doesn’t mean that anyone else with a good eye and skill at using the camera at hand can’t capture an outstanding photograph. So stop the camera gear envy, get your photographic insecurity, and re-consider what photography to you is all about.
hey rodger; it does not say professional outdoor photographer on the top of this magazine I thought clark sounded like a nice person but than he does not have camera envy like you edgey guys.
Hey rodger at the top of this magazine it does not say professinal outdoor photographer or edgy or rich ,clark sounded like a nice person he said what beleived he does not have camera envy so why would you question his statement.
“The remainder comes from the photographer?۪s knack for building a better mousetrap, ”
Hardly a new idea and one I certainly wouldn’t give Dykinga credit for. People have been doing this for years.
I’ll ditto the above. It’s called flat stitching and there are a lot of people who have been doing it for years. Big deal.
Quote: “”All I?۪m doing is moving the sensor around to capture all that the lens can provide. I take a picture and shift, take a picture and shift,”
Actually it not the sensor that is being moved in this case, its the optical axis of the lens; therefore, alignment of each image will be slightly off. The proper technique is to keep the front section of the lens in the same position and shift the position of the sensor within the image circle by moving the camera body, off-setting it by the exact amount of shift applied to the lens.
He’s a sell-out.. It’s called he’s too old and out of shape to carry around a 4×5 system, so he switced to a much more convenient and easy format. Not to mention he’s getting paid to make the switch. 4×5 film photography takes technique and skill to master…of which Jack has, and he’s only hurting himself and most likely his career in the long run. Before, he was unique, now he will just get lost in the ‘digitard’ soup bowl of photography. Him switching to digital is adding to a much greater problem in the photography industry. It really is Sad..
If it works and the images look good, more power to him. I shoot 8×10 a lot because it works for me. The final image is the goal and the way to it are part of the process. I like the view camera for a lot of work and I like my EOS 1 series cameras for a lot of work as well. If the final image looks the way I or Dykinga want it to then we have done what we want. Whether Dykinga, David Muench, Ansel Adams, Brett or Edward Weston… it is the final image we see. The process is part of the deal and the tactile pleasure of working the way we do is important in different ways to each. We see the final image and if that conveys what the photographer wants, what does it really matter how they got there? It works, I like the images and more power to Jack Dykinga for putting out quality work.
Great technik. But it is also possible to have both large(r) format, digital and Tilt&shipft at the same time. German small scale manufacturer of excellent optics Wiese fototechnik makes a Technoplan-T 45mm T&S with mount for Leaf/Mamiya and the new digital Pentax 645 just released. Another step in image quality for thos who can afford. See: http://www.wiese-fototechnik.de/e/etop_n.htm
In my view, ‘digital imaging’ is the paint by numbers of photography. It’s easy, convenient, takes no skill or technique to do. I disagree with Dan Smith to a point on whether or not the final image is all that matters. Do art lovers buy paint by number paintings for thousands of dollars? No, of course not. They buy the skillfully painted pieces that took time and passion to become the final product. I shoot large format film because it’s a passion, and gives me some gratification. Anyone can point and shoot an automatic digital camera all day long..(which I’ve seem people do) and come back with hundreds of pictures of the same scene with different angles of view. They delete the one’s that don’t turn out or they don’t like and move on. No passion, no skill, no work.
He’s a sell-out.. It’s called he’s too old and out of shape to carry around a 4×5 system, so he switced to a much more convenient and easy format.
Jason, you obviously don’t know Jack (pun intended). I was with him on a 10 day trip down the Colorado River last fall. I never saw the digital camera, but I did see his ass disappearing in the distance as he left all the young bucks behind on hikes…and he was carrying his 4×5 kit, which I had a hard time lifting. If he is shooting digital, it is because he feels it is doing a better job in some situations. He would never dishonor the profession by taking the easy way…
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Hey rodger at the top of this magazine it does not say professinal outdoor photographer or edgy or rich ,clark sounded like a nice person he said what beleived he does not have camera envy so why would you question his statement.
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This picture looks rather unnatural to me. Shadows from the trees in the background go in direction, shadows from the branches of the main subject go in another. I suppose I missed the moment the Earth acquired another Moon. Special effects/technique for the sake of visual impact? Common, landscape photography does not have to degrade that far.
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I seen lots of pictures taken by different professional, but this one really capture my attention.. This guy is shows lot of talent….
Just purchased my first DSLR, I really cant wait to test out something like this!
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There may still be hope for those of us who like to try to capture what the eye really sees and not what some program has altered.
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[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirk_Sanford]Kirk Sanford[/url]
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