Iceland is one of the most remarkable countries in the world.
It's the most volcanically active region on earth.
It's also extremely cold in the winter because it's so far north
although it does have a maritime climate.
It offers an unbelievable challenge to the photographer.
It has snow fields, ice caps, extraordinary geology,
and the most dramatic coastline you'll see anywhere,
and very, very high contrast.
It also has the magical possibility of seeing the aurora borealis (the northern lights),
one of the most amazing natural phenomena to be seen anywhere.
This country is a great opportunity to test the IQ260.
This is the Snæfellsnes peninsula in western Iceland.
To the south is Reykjavik and this is pretty much central west Iceland.
It's about as far west as you can go in Iceland.
The sun is rising over the highlands
of the Icelandic interior to the south-east of us.
It's just about to strike the ice field
that covers the whole of that ancient volcano.
I'm using a Phase One 645DF+ camera with the new IQ260 back.
110mm Schneider lens is just the lens for this composition.
It frames it as I want it to be.
As the sun is now hitting onto the ice field in the distance,
pink light is starting to come through into the reflections of the ice below.
Just been shooting out on the end among huge boulders of basalt
and dolerite and other types of volcanic rock
with huge waves pounding in.
A great test for the IQ260.
There have been several occasions when the big waves have dumped
huge amounts of seawater over me while I was standing with my tripod.
The camera seems to have survived fine, I'm happy to say.
It also reminded me that there is no way in the world
I could have shot this on a technical camera, a view camera,
a film camera or even probably a technical view camera with its back on it
because it's totally impractical.
This was a really nice opportunity to exploit
the capabilities of a medium format DSLR.
When you have these bright, white, sunlit plumes of sea water
with white snow covered mountains behind and then
deep dark shadows of black volcanic rock,
it really is a profound test, probably the ultimate
landscape test for any camera system.
This has a 13 stop dynamic range. That is the best there's ever been
and of course its very high resolution.
For a landscape photographer where fine detail, subtlety,
and tonal qualities are essential,
this could be a really exciting development.
Add that to genuinely exposure capabilities for the first time
in this kind of equipment of exposures up to an hour,
that makes a very exciting opportunity for me.
The first day was beautiful.
It was clear, blue sky pretty much all day.
It made for some great opportunities while being very challenging
as well with the high contrast.
One of the really enjoyable aspects of this trip has been meeting up with Tony Spencer.
Tony is a younger landscape photographer than me, very talented,
and he really specializes in the subarctic and polar regions.
He has a huge amount of experience of shooting the aurora borealis particularly,
and he knows Iceland really well.
After such a fantastic day yesterday, the weather has gone off big time.
The forecast is looking quite promising for the north of the country,
so we're going to move and see what we can find up there.
We're much more optimistic for tomorrow and the day after.
We set off through rain, sleet, and eventually snow, very windy.
It was actually a pretty exciting road trip.
We are now at Myvatn right at the far north of Iceland.
The weather is completely changed.
It's clear, there's not a breath of wind.
The photographic opportunities here are absolutely fantastic
and I can't wait for the sun to rise and see how it reveals the forms in front of me.
I'm using the IQ260 back on a Phase One 645DF+ camera,
the shutter speed is 1/8 of a second
and the aperture is f11 which is my favorite aperture to use,
the best compromize between diffraction and depth of field.
I'm using daylight white balance so I can see the color cast
of the light quite clearly.
I'm overexposing according to the camera settings by a stop
or a stop and 1/3 each time.
That gives the bright histogram that is ideal for a snowy landscape,
and it renders the scene much more as I'm seeing it.
If I were to go with standard camera settings, it would look underexposed.
The sun has risen above the distant hills,
I have golden light coming across the landscape,
skimming across the snow and the effect is quite fantastic.
We pretty much didn't stop shooting all day.
It was the most amazing light, beautiful conditions,
snow covered landscape.
These windblown snow patterns make a wonderful foreground
for this very white landscape.
Especially because the clouds are shaped rather like the edge of the snow formations,
there's some exciting compositional possibilities.
We also photographed at night with the geothermic features and
I found myself doing the kind of images I've never tried before.
Very experimental, very exciting.
Tony, you photographed auroras many times.
The IQ260 has this special long exposure mode,
it's optimized for an ISO of 140.
Do you feel that that still has potential?
Absolutely, I think in the first instance
there's far more scope to pull in post processing,
to pull back in the shadows and lift the shadows up
so that we can brighten the exposure probably a lot more
than we would with 35mm full frame images.
So, even an underexposure can still be pretty decent quality.
Yeah, I would think so.
You would be far better with a file from one of these
than you would be with a 35mm underexposed image.
The files from the tests we've just done are incredibly clean.
The exposures I just made at 140 at 2 minutes are completely noise free.
I've never seen anything like it.
- Yeah, they're looking absolutely fantastic.
I always expected Iceland to be a real challenge
for a digital back and so it has proved.
I've had to work in sea spray, it's been really cold, high wind conditions,
extremes of contrast, extremes of long exposure.
All of these things would challenge any digital camera
but the IQ260 has come through with flying colors.