Landscaping in Assynt

Last week I made the 670 mile drive up the entireity of our little island to spend some time in an area called Assynt, which is in north west Scotland. I've long been attracted to this part of the world since visiting on my motorbike some years ago. It's quiet, remote, and beautiful, with scenery, weather and atmosphere that has a major wow factor. It has everything including ruined castles on picturesque lochs, big oddly shaped mountains, stormy cliffs, lighthouses etc etc. Here's a Google Map to show you where it is, centered on Loch Assynt.With some very good photographer friends, we rented a large 4-bed house in Inverkirkaig which is in a little bay 2.5 miles south of Lochinver. A super spot, I'd recommend it if you want to spend some time in the area as it makes an excellent base from which to explore. With only 10 houses it's tiny, and don't think you'll get any mobile coverage. We did have decent wifi in the house though.Now, importantly, onto the gear I took with me for the trip. You'll be familiar with my acquisition of a Sony A7R recently. This camera was bought with landscaping in mind - small, lightweight, with many lens options and huge sensor resolution. I wanted to put the A7R to the test on this trip and resolved to have all my kit in a small shoulder bag except for my tripod. Here's the kit I took with me:Why two 50mm lenses? I recently bought the Canon 50 1.2 specifically for ultra-shallow depth of field pictures and wanted to try it out. The vast majority of the 50mm pictures I took were with the Leica Summarit. Why take the RX1 as well? I always like to have a backup camera with me, and the RX1 also provided me with a fast 35mm lens option to fit between the 21mm and 50mm lenses for the A7R.All this fitted into a Billingham Haldey bag shoulder bag with the padded insert in place. Also in the bag were some spare batteries for the two cameras, a torch, lens cleaning cloth and a few other bits. The A7R battery never ran out in a day's shooting but it did get close. I wasn't taking many pictures, probably no more than 100/day including bracketing and so on. I'd advise having a spare with you. Having everything in one small bag was extremely convenient. I always knew where everything was, and unlike a rucksack whcih you need to take off your back and put on the floor to get any kit out, I could happily swing the bag round, get a new lens on the camera or whatever, and keep walking.I had my trusty Giottos carbon fibre tripod with me. It was too big to go in the bag, which is a good thing as I often used it extended like a walking stick to avoid plunging into the boot-sucking bogs that I spent most of my time squelching across to find good locations.From a clothing perspective, I can't speak highly enough of my Fjallraven gear. It's quiet, very waterproof, and very comfortable. I had one of those squishy quilted down jackets underneath my main jacket for extra warmth. We had every sort of weather, often at the same time, so good gear was essential and I was warm & dry underneath it all. My Sealskinz Sporting Gloves were also very good, letting me keep my hands warm & dry whilst having index finger & thumb free on each hand to adjust the camera. They would have been found wanting if the temperature had got much below freezing but in the conditions we had they were fine. And lastly, I had a pair of Salomon Quest walking boots which are lightweight and 100% waterproof - another recommendation.One other bit of kit I bought prior to the trip was a new (second hand) car. With the kids having left home, it was time to trade in the old reliable but heavy and slow Subaru Forester and get something more interesting. I still wanted four wheel drive, but a bit more power. I opted for a Golf R which has both four wheel drive and 270bhp, and plenty of space for kit. Safe to say I had quite a good time on those empty, twisty, fantastic Scottish roads. Super car.Anyway, onto the landscape photography thing. For those interested in landscaping, I highly recommend On Landscape, which is a web site dedicated to top end landscape photography (ie nothing like my own!). The good stuff is paid content and the small subscription is well worth it. Assynt is a wonder world for landscape photography. It's so rich in opportunities that I was initially flummoxed about where to go and what to do. The first day was spent on a recce around the area, just driving around to see what was where and to mark locations on the map for further investigation. Needless to say we couldn't restrain ourselves and took a bunch of pictures on that first day.With snow on the hills, February proved a good time to go. In summer you have the triple problem of midges, dull monotone hillsides and (slightly) more benign weather. Winter is much better, with changeable conditions (!!), snow, interesting clouds and so on.I have to admit to an unhelathy "lone tree on an island in a loch" fascination which meant spending far too much time at Loch Assynt where we had spotted a number of likely locations such as the one at the top of this post. The trouble is more being spoilt for choice and not wanting to miss anything so having to resist the temptation to hurry around, instead taking some time to focus attention on getting fewer, better (I hope) pictures.We did the dawn thing on 3 mornings. Largely it was disappointing, with the sun and clouds refusing to cooperate with each other. Admittedly I was going for the "spectacular big landscape at dawn with amazing light" picture which is a bit cliche'd, but it's very nice to have a few of them in the bank before trying more sophisticated stuff. Of course, on the morning we left the light was stunning and we just missed the main show, but ended up taking 2 hours to get on our way as we kept stopping to take pics like the one below.As the week went on, the group of us fed on each other's creativity. Each evening after dinner we'd go through our hastily edited pictures and talk through why & how we took them, what we saw that attracted our eye, how we edited each shot and so on. This proved to be very interesting and thought provoking, and I personally evolved during the week from going for the big stereotypical landscape picture to a more considered and detailed approach - the "other shot" as it were. The other photographers on the trip are very accomplished and it was fascinating to see what they made of exactly the same scene that we all took pictures of.It was during one of these rather drunken evening show & tell sessions that I spotted a post on Facebook from a friend of mine who was over in Aviemore doing some mountain survival training in the Cairngorms. The post read something like "I can see the Northern Lights!". No way I thought, but I wandered out of the front door and over the bay was the most sensational display I've ever seen in the sky. It was my first aurora experience, and it was a definite "wow" moment. I rushed back in and shouted something like "f'ing hell northern lights nothern lights f*** f*** wow!" etc. Cue massed rushing out of photographers and bags of gear and tripods as we headed 50 yards down to the beach.Having recently taken some starry sky pictures, I knew that 30 seconds was too long an exposure as it resulted in small star trials rather than pinpoint stars, so I went for 15 seconds, slotted the widest lens I had on (the 21mm Olympus) and set it to f/3.5 as I couldn't go any wider, and then fiddled the ISO on the camera to get something decent. My first frame was too dark so I upped the ISO to 2500 on the A7R. Bam! Amazing. With that exposure, the camera captured far more light than the naked eye, so while the scene was stunning enough just to look at, the shots on the camera were even better. We spent about an hour and a half just snapping away. Unfortunately due to a combination of too much beer, too much excitement, and not wanting to miss anything, I wasn't thinking straight and didn't think to head for Ardvreck Castle on Loch Assynt (30 mins away) or Stoer lighthouse (45 mins away) to get a real focal point for the pictures. Now they would have been amazing - a real opportunity missed in retrospect. Such is life. But what we did see was more than enough and I feel priviledged to have been there. And to think we could have so easily missed it. And it paid as well, with pics in the Mail Online and Daily Record which should cover a tank of petrol.After seeing that, we were all pretty dumbstruck. The following morning we had a "hmmm...what next, nothing tops that" atmosphere in the collective. W-O-W!To finish off, some words on the performance of the camera gear. The A7R turned out some extremely detailed pictures, especially with the Leica M-Summarit 50mm lens on which is very very sharp. With lots and lots of pixels, I was able to make up for not being able to get into the right position (due to a large loch or cliff in the way for example) with some cropping giving me lots of flexibility. The resolution of the A7R is very good indeed, as is the dynamic range. With the "zebra" overexposure indication set to 100%+, the viewfinder would indicate blow-out of highlights but the RAW file would have plenty left, so don't rely too much on zebra for any more than a general guide, and instead use the histogram which is much more accurate.I found I used the inbuilt level indicator a lot as well. I'm awful for not getting things straight so this was very handy, as was the tilting screen for those low-down shots. If the screen tilted in portrait mode as well it would be even more useful. I did think I'd use the remote control feature more, using my phone as a big viewfinder to get the composition & focus right, but I barely used it at all. This was mainly due to the likelihood of dropping something and generally being too fiddly. I did end up losing my phone in the heather in the middle of nowhere but much to my astonishment I found it 3 hours later, still working despite enduring a number of rain showers.With only manual focus available, I ignored focus peaking which just isn't accurate enough, and used the zoom facility to get focus to be perfect. With the camera usually on a tripod this wasn't an issue, and it's nice to know that the focus will remain where you set it between shots so the output is nice & consistent.All the lenses were great. The Olympus 21mm is ideal for landscape work, being crisp and clear across pretty much all the frame with the exception of the extreme corners not that the casual observer would notice. The tiny Leica 50mm is quite extraordinary, and it suits the A7R's non filtered sensor very well indeed. I shot it mostly at f/8 for the more distant landscapes where it is very very sharp indeed. Conscious of the shallower depth of field of a full frame sensor, I used focus stacking for a number of pics with a strong foreground and background, but post processing reveals shift in the image as the focus changes requiring some jiggery pokery in Photoshop to line everything up. The Konica 90mm 2.8 is an excellent, tiny telephoto option. Very well made, it lacks a bit of contrast (easily sorted out afterwards) and isn't quite as sharp as the Leica, but I doubt much is. I didn't use the Canon 50mm much, but it was nice to have in the bag just in case.The RX1, which I consider to be an exquisite 35mm lens that just happens to have a full frame sensor bolted to it, came into its own on several occasions when I just needed a 35mm focal length. Image quality is again very impressive.Onto the Lee RF75 (or Seven5) filters. Dinky and well made, they are much more manageable than the 100mm equivalents. With two adapter rings I could use them on the RX1, Olympus 21mm and Leica 50mm. However...I did suffer from reflections when shooting with the sun in the frame, and when using the big stopper I think there is a light leak around the rear of the filter holder. Yes, I've read the internet noise about light leaks and Lee big stoppers, and Lee say these are due to a) the viewfinder not being covered and/or b) the filter not being in the slot nearest to the camera or not the right way round. Neither of these apply in my case as the electronic viewfinder of the A7R doesn't leak light (I hope) and the filter was in the slot nearest the camera with the foam backing facing the holder. With the sun behind and to the side the camera, light can sneak in between the adapter ring and the inner rear corners of the filter holder and the filter itself, past the foam filter backing. Happily I figured this out before the trip, and it's simply resolved by just putting something around the filter/camera, in my case a wooly hat. [Edit] I've also read about the A7R body/lens mount light leak issue. I don't think this is happening in this case as this seems specific to using the big stopper with light coming from behind and to one side of the camera where the gap between the big stopper and the filter holder is exposed.And lastly lastly, my A7R has developed a fault. The rear horizontal dial intermittently goes crazy, operating without being touched. This is very annoying as I use it to set shutter speed and scroll through images on the card. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't - very frustrating. I suspect there's a microswitch in there somewhere which has gone doo-lally, so it's back to the shop with it to get it sorted out by Sony. If you're still awake after reading down to here, this video of the problem will send you over the edge.Overall then, Assynt - excellent place. Can't wait to go back. Great place, great company. I still have loads of pictures to go through and process, so what you can see in the gallery will be added to over the coming weeks. The camera/lens kit I took worked extremely well aside from the A7R playing up on the last day. It's lightweight and compact enough to not get in the way at all when scrambling up mountains and squelching through bogs. A fab trip, and one which I'll be repeating as soon as I can.