GFX 100RF  f/11 1/250

GFX 100RF  f/11 1/250

This elongated XPan format is great for painting-esque pictures.  One of my favourite Chinese painting is “Travellers Amongst Mountains and Streams” by Fan Kuan.

According to Wikipedia and Google ” 谿山行旅圖 (Travellers Among Mountains and Stream) is a monumental Northern Song dynasty ink-on-silk hanging scroll by Fan Kuan (c. 960–c. 1030). Regarded as a pinnacle of Chinese shan shui (“mountain-water”) painting, it portrays the overwhelming grandeur of nature, reducing human figures and pack animals to microscopic travelers navigating a vast universe.”

I especially liked how tiny the humans are in the painting.  It really resonated, about our place in the universe, about philosophy, about Zen, about the Tao.  These aren’t quite the exact scenery, but the near-religious experience of it immediately plunged me straight into the painting.

Also it was extremely rainy and wet all morning.  We started out at 5:30am, encountered two steep climbs, and then the rain poured down.  The mist came in from the sea really quickly, within minutes.  So there was only a very short window to capture these scenes.  Feeling overwhelmed and blessed.

Technical details:

I’m so glad I bought the 100RF, I have the full 100 megapixel goodness to use.  I would definitely print these out up to one meter in length at least.

In this case, and I suspect in 99% of the cases, the f/11 max aperture won’t matter.  f/11 is perfect for this.  Tried to get decent depth of field while still being able to isolate the “layers” of mountains. There was a bit of a headwind, so 1/250 to freeze the leaves.  No in-body stabiliser, no problem.  But weather resistant = thumbs up.  My iPhone, comparatively couldn’t withstand the rain.  Water got into the iPhone camera, but not the 100RF, so there’s that.

GFX 100RF  f/11 1/250

Here’s a color version.  Actually I might like it more.  At first my initial interpretation was to go for the ink-style look.  But seems like adding a bit of color makes it…well… less inky.