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| Corner of Monroe and China Streets, Vicksburg, MS (30mm ƒ/5.6 lens, center filter, ƒ/8.0½) |
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| Corner of Monroe and China Streets, Vicksburg, MS (30mm ƒ/5.6 lens, center filter, ƒ/8.0½) |
When my friend first loaned me his gorgeous XPan panoramic camera, I took sample photographs around Vicksburg with Kodak Tri-X 400 film.
Over the years, the standard 45mm lens was the most common one for XPan photographers. This was already pretty wide on this format. My friend also has the amazing 30mm ƒ/5.6 lens, which has proven to be a challenge. You need textures or interesting features in the lower foreground to keep the scene from being too boring. I think the first example above is effective, but the second photograph may have too much plain foreground. Click any picture to see it at 2400 pixels wide, and all comments welcome.
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| Good stuff junk yard, Mt. Albans Road, Vicksburg (30mm ƒ/5.6 lens) |
This is the car junk yard on Mt. Albans Road east of Vicksburg. Readers may remember older pictures from here.
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| Corner store, Mt. Albans Road (45mm ƒ/4 lens, Fuji Acros film) |
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| Gorilla pawn shop, Washington Street, Vicksburg (45mm lens, med. yellow filter) |
The 45mm ƒ/4 lens has amazing resolution across the frame.
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| Cherry Street at Clay, 30mm ƒ/5.6 lens, yellow filter, ƒ/11 (Fuji Acros film) |
This little store at the corner of Cherry and Clay Streets housed the Wells & LaHatte appliance business for many decades. The business has moved one block away and the little wood building is for sale. The extra wide 30mm ƒ/5.6 lens is an amazing optic, but I found it works best when stopped down to ƒ/11.
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| Mt. Heroden Baptist Church, 1117-1119 Clay Street (30mm ƒ/5.6 lens, yellow filter) |
Standby for more panoramic scenes in Vicksburg and the surrounding area. Thank you for exploring with me.
4 comments:
I'm not going to spring for an Xpan, but your examples have certainly inspired me to try some wide compositions.
I generally do not comment on the aesthetics of your photographs, since that is so subjective, but those first two photographs are lacking something. I agree that there is too much uninteresting, blank pavement in the foreground. Ironically, my second favorite of this group is the last, which also has a large amount of foreground pavement but works as a composition much better because the street is parallel with the photo's perspective, looking straight-on at the corner building.
For my two cents' worth, my order from favorite to least favorite would be photo 3, followed by 6, 5, 4, 1, and, finally, 2.
My suggestion to fix the composition of the first two photographs would be to go forward into the median strip or right in front of it and take a shot with the plants and lampposts prominently in the foreground, with the view centered between the lampposts and looking up the hill at the row of cars. I think that might make for an interesting photo.
Thanks, W. White, I appreciate your observation! You are right, the first two frames did have too much pavement. In the first one, I thought the patch of poorly-applied asphalt in the foreground might break up the scene a bit. I did go closer to the median and try that composition, but it had two problems:
1. The cars became prominent objects that draw the eye (but this might be fine in 50 years if anyone cares about boring early 21st century transport).
2. I missed some of the buildings.
The 30mm ƒ/5.6 XPan lens is a difficult one to fill properly. I wish it had even a minor vertical shift function. Please stand by for more examples in the next few weeks. Thanks again.
I have really enjoyed getting lost in your wonderful photos and equally informative words.
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