A comprehensive review of how Fujifilm successfully brought medium format quality to wildlife photography.
The Legacy of Long Glass
Medium format telephoto lenses have long existed in a realm of curiosity and legend. Their history reads like a collection of rare artifacts, each with its own extraordinary tale. Carl Zeiss crafted their remarkable Superachromats for Hasselblad V mount – engineering marvels that could focus infrared and visible light on the same plane. Pentax ventured into this territory with their colossal 800mm f4 for the Pentax 67 system, while Mamiya offered a more practical 300mm f2.8 for their 645 system.
But perhaps no lens better exemplifies the historical challenges of medium format telephotos than the mythical Zeiss 1700mm f4. Weighing over 500 pounds, this behemoth was essentially a 16-inch diameter refracting telescope, complete with servo-controlled pointing and focusing systems. Only two were ever made, standing as monuments to both the possibilities and practical limitations of medium format telephoto design.
Previous attempts at medium format telephotos have of...
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Dan Wells, "Shuttterbug" on the trail, is a landscape photographer, long-distance hiker and student in the Master of Divinity program at Harvard Divinity School. He lives in Cambridge, MA when not in wild places photographing and contemplating our connection to the natural world. Dan's images try to capture the spirit he finds in places where, in the worlds of the Wilderness Act of 1964, "Man himself is but a visitor". He has hiked 230 miles of Vermont's Long Trail and 450 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail with his cameras, as well as photographing in numerous National Parks, Seashores and Forests over the years - often in the offseason when few people think to be there. In the summer of 2020, Dan plans to hike a stretch of hundreds of miles on the Pacific Crest Trail, focusing on his own and others' spiritual connection to these special places, and making images that document these connections.
Over years of personal work and teaching photography, Dan has used a variety of equipment (presently Nikon Z7 and Fujifilm APS-C). He is looking for the perfect combination of light weight, ruggedness and superb image quality.
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