A year of 65:24 format on the GFX
What I learned along the way
The wall stretches over several hundred kilometres and seems almost infinite in the 6x17 black and white photo. The concrete walls that separate Palestine from Israel also seem almost as infinitely high from the perspective of the viewer. A crippling feeling of oppression starts to overcome.
Josef Koudelka, the legendary photographer from the Czech Republic, took those photographs over a period of several years with his Fuji G617 along the border between Palestine and Israel. ‘Wall’ was captured exclusively in 6x17 format by Koudelka. Each photo extends over 2 whole book pages. Thanks to the medium format film, very detailed panoramic photos can be presented over the stretch of this book.
How is it possible to create such impressive shots with this image format that also move you deeply?
I set about channelling my inner panorama photographer. With rather moderate success at first and a steep learning curve. I have recorded my findings and experiences after a year of panorama photography in this article.
The setup
Apart from the body, it has changed more often over the year than I would have liked. In the end, however, I ended up with the following.
GFX 50R
I used my Fujifilm GFX 50R as the body in ‘65x24’ panoramic mode.
Minolta 45mm F2
With an open aperture, my variant shows a stronger vignetting and a greater drop in sharpness at the edges of the image. By stopping down, the sharpness increases and the vignetting decreases. Thanks to the narrower ‘65x24’ image format, the problems mentioned above are negligible, especially as they can also be easily fixed in post-processing.
Minolta 35mm F2.8
The Minolta 35mm F2.8 is one of my sharpest manual Minolta lenses. With an open aperture, you can take sharp photos with little vignetting. This, equivalent to a 28mm lens in full frame terms, has been in use the most recently.
Minolta 28mm F2.8
This lens, which is only a few millimetres wider on paper, falls into the category of ‘good use when stopped down’ in terms of sharpness and vignetting. Like the 45mm F2, the flaws can be easily corrected in post-processing. With the 24mm (in full frame terms), it can still capture a significantly larger image section than the 28mm.
GF 35–70mm F4–5.6 WR:
The ‘budget lens’ among the GF lenses does not have to hide behind its more expensive and larger siblings. It impresses with its perfect sharpness and compact size. I used this lens with a Tiffen Black Pro Mist 1/8 mainly to take out some of the digital sharpness.
The first steps
Once the setup was in place, it was finally time to take some cool and exciting panoramic photos. Well… at least I thought so. However, it wasn’t quite as easy as I thought (and probably anyone else could have guessed). Coming from a 2:3 or even a 3:4 aspect ratio does present a few hurdles in the adjustment phase when you switch to 64:25. For example, many supposedly interesting compositions no longer appeared so ideal at second glance, as one of the two parts above or below the image section, which contained important information for the overall composition, was often cut off.
At the beginning, the biggest hurdle was therefore finding compositions that looked interesting when viewed horizontally and would even profit from shooting them in a panoramic format. Landscape photography naturally lends itself perfectly to such formats. Distant horizons suggest a feeling of endless expanses to the viewer. I have used it several times for this purpose and was able to achieve more consistent results right from the start. However, my photographic heart beats for urban spaces. So now it was time to establish myself there as well with the initially alien-looking format.
The focal length dilemma
I started with the Minolta 45mm F2, which seemed ideal due to its compactness and 35mm focal length (in full-frame terms). Having used 35mm lenses on other systems for many years, I was able to estimate how wide my image section would be right from the start. So the initial focus was on finding compositions that would benefit from a horizontal panoramic orientation. After my initial familiarity with 35mm, I switched to the slightly wider 28mm and 24mm (in full frame terms) relatively quickly, as I realized that I wanted to incorporate more elements into my compositions.
I actively refrained from using the GF 35–70mm during the discovery phase, as the learning process was more straightforward for me, as I wasn’t given an ‘infinite’ number of focal length solutions.
The findings
In landscape orientation, the viewer is invited to let their gaze glide across the photo, whether from left to right or right to left. As a photographer, you can take advantage of this fact by placing your composition lines along these lines of sight. By placing interesting subjects along these lines, the viewer is invited to linger longer on the individual subjects and and it also supports him to develop the image in a targeted manner.
These lines do not have to be so concise and always visible at first glance. Sometimes, the targeted use of light and shadow can guide the viewer through the picture.
Another strength of this format is to convey space and expanse to the viewer. Interesting results can be achieved with the use of negative space. This refers to the deliberate use of ‘empty pictorial space’, which is intended to give the viewer a sense of the size of the space, as in the following examples, and can thus support the story told by the picture.
It is also possible to compose an image without direct composition lines or negative space by using centred subjects. All other subjects line up behind or next to the centered element and thus can fill the picture space in different ways.
Conclusion
After this year, I can count the 64:25 format among my favourites. Not only did the format impose a significant restriction on my photography, it also gave me new opportunities to rethink compositions. It also brought me into contact with other focal lengths that I had actively ignored up to that point.
Until this year, the 35mm was my go-to focal length. The use of 28mm with the panoramic format daily has permanently changed my view of compositions and I now prefer the 28mm over the 35mm. In the future, I also want to try focal lengths like 50mm in a panoramic format. Coming from 28mm, this will probably be an extreme leap, but as I have learnt this year, it can only take me forward.
