Redgate Beach and the Hasselblad H4D-60

More from the Hasselblad H4D-60, this time from Redgate Beach in Margaret River.  On the way down to Walpole a couple of weeks ago (see previous blog entry) we spent a couple of days camping on the Blackwood River (see next Blog entry) just south of Margaret River, and afterwards a night in town.

The weather had come over very overcast with rain on the way and it didn’t look like the sunset would perform for me that evening.  None the less I took a quick drive down to Redgate Beach for a wander anyway and had a play with the new toy.  I still didn’t use the tripod, just shooting handheld because its so easy to do with this camera.  But look at the dynamic range!

Shooting Handheld with medium format

The problem with shooting handheld with this type of camera (medium format) is the very shallow Depth of Field, and the ultra high resolving power of the sensor shows up any slight issue with focus or camera movement.  The old rule of thumb that the lowest shutter speed to use with a lens is one over the focal length (i.e.:with a 100mm lens minimum shutter speed of 1/100 second) is no longer valid, well it was never really valid with medium format film anyway, but even less so now with the increased resolving power of digital.  So now its more like 3 times 1 over the focal length… at least.  Thats if you want sharp images anyway.

So both these images are shot hand held, but with sufficient  shutter speed, so there is a region of crisp sharpness, but not much Depth of Field, which actually works quite well with these images (which is why they are here). Don’t forget to click the images to get the full effect.

The sunset was incredible of course, nature is so unpredictable, isn’t it great!  I’ve gotta start using a tripod…