The legendary Rubinar 300/4.5 - flowers
My mom is a wonderful photographer, her gallery of work far surpassing anything I’ll ever create. All I can do is… my best.
Taking a page straight out of her book, I bought a copy of the Rubinar 300/f4.5 lens, to take a shot at her style. It’s a mirror lens, originally intended for astrophotography (and other telephoto applications), however it has a magical way of rendering the out of focus areas. Full review and more information can be found on radojuva.com.
This particular style of wildflower photography requires a sunrise (or a sunset). The subjects you find in the meadow must be illuminated in a way that makes them shine like stained glass, being separated from their surroundings not just by being in focus, but also through color and illumination. That’s also where the Rubinar lens comes in - all specular highlights in front, around and behind your subject are converted into… magic, for a lack of better word. You’ll see what I mean.
When considering the images below, and God forbid compare them to the gallery I linked above, it’s important to consider one thing. I have it easy. The GFX100s has a way of mitigating a lot of the issues that my Mom, using a crop sensor Nikon DSLR, had to deal with when using this lens:
Thin depth of field - I get Fujifilms focus peaking when focusing.
300mm shaky image - I just set up to handle a 300mm custom lens with its IBIS - allows me to confidently shoot static subjects even at 1/20th.
Low ISO and dynamic range - Goes without saying, the medium format sensor is ridiculous in that respect.
Resolution - 102MB medium format allows for a lot of cropping and manipulation without any loss of fidelity even for large prints (I printed 2 of the below images out on A2 and gave them as gifts)
Exposure preview - having shot on the D7500 and the D850 in the past, I really appreciate being able to see the image I’ll get when pressing the shutter
The following images I produced during 3 mornings on a meadow in Altendorf, by the Zurichsee.
