Where better to take my wide angle Hasselblad Xpan camera but to the Alps, this camera was made for views like these! Join me for a tour around the mountains of Bavaria and Tyrol, with some other stops along the way.
I have been dying to take my Xpan to the mountains, and for good reason too, this super wide angle camera is made for these kinds of vast landscapes. Traditional wide angle lenses are wide top to bottom and left to right, leaving you with a very large sky or foreground. The Xpan, with its distinct cropped "thin" view, is perfect for landscape shots, resulting in a truly immersive image.
About the locations
Being lucky enough to do a mini-road trip around Tyrol in Austria and Bavaria in Germany over Easter, I had plenty of opportunities to take in some fantastic views. The weather conditions, however, were a bit more challenging. But with some luck, we enjoyed quite a few breaks from dark cloudy weather, and my trustworthy Xpan was never too far away.
Locations include:
Garmisch-Partenkirchen and the incredible Zugspitze peak (standing at 2,962m!)
Füssen and the world famous Neuschwanstein castle
Reutte in Tyrol
Plansee lake in Tyrol
...and plenty of driving in between these locations
About the film
I packed a variety of colour films:
Kodak Ektar 100: a favourite for landscapes, and I figured its low ISO would suit bright colourful scenes
Kodak Portra 400: one of the best all round films in my opinion, also one that would be able to handle clouds and darker weather
Agfa Precisa CT100: very reasonably priced (and easy to find at local German drugstores) slide film, excellent for bright sunny days
About the shots
My aim was quite simple: find vast landscapes and point the Xpan at them!
I knew that the very changeable weather around mountains might work against me, but I figured I would go ahead anyways. I also shot quite a bit of black & white film too, but that is for a future post!
I took a ton of rolls, the shots below being my favourites. Interestingly, they have quite different colour shades in them, likely due to the film type (colour negative vs colour positive slide film) and the conditions under which they were shot. The most challenging was right on top of the Zugspitze, with extremely bright sunny spots with bright snow everywhere, a real nightmare for proper light metering. Luckily, most films have a good tolerance for this and will accept under or over exposure and still provide a decent image.
Enough geekery for now, here are the shots...(oh, and you are going to want to look at these on a decent screen, trust me. If looking at on a phone don't forget to turn it sideways for full wide angle viewing. All shots clickable for full screen viewing (recommendable!)).
View to infinity. The day before we went up the visibility was 0 km, and we enjoyed 150 km+. On a good day the visibility is up to 400km! There are 3 glaciers on the flanks of the Zugspitze. The views are breathtaking, as is the method to get up there. A 10min cable car with the steepest incline I have ever seen, it is truly awe inspiring.
Funnily, the border of Germany and Austria goes right through the top of the peak, so you keep on going from one side to the other (there is a restaurant on either side). 95% of the people heading up were skiers who then took a separate cable car to go down to the ski areas on the other side. There are multiple ways to get up the mountain with cable cars in each country as well as a train line that brings you up to one of the cable cars.
A view of the cable car with the mountain peak at the top of the image. If you look carefully you can see how the cable car cable takes a really steep incline up the mountain's face.
Straight down shot from the cable car.
No turning back. On the way up looking out onto the frozen looking Eibsee.
Crazy bright. I think this was shot on Agfa slide film. I really like how vast this scene is.
Possibly my favourite shot of the lot. This looks incredible on a proper sized screen (not a mobile phone!)
It is always amazing to me how quickly the weather changes around mountains. Taken a few minutes after the previous shot, it could be a different location completely.
Heading down.
Yes that is a cloud and it is both very large and very alone!
Incredibly sharp lens on the Xpan.
Reminded me of a James Bond movie. Kodak Ektar 100 converted to black and white shot from inside the restaurant.
Hotel in Reutte, Austria.
Normally I wouldn't get caught in this tourist selfie stick hoarding debacle, but we opted for the Zugspitze in the morning and arrived here early afternoon. And everyone is queuing for...
Neuschwanstein castle. Not the best shot, but I didn't fancy staying on the very unsteady wooden bridge with loads of people for too long. Pity as it was a nice day, for some reason this came out underexposed. However, there are so many better photographs of this postcard iconic shot, I could just buy one of those, you get the idea...
More on this famous castle here. Over 1.5 million people visit the castle annually, with up to 6,000 per day in summer.
p.s. yes, it is a pretty special castle indeed.
The view looking away from Neuschwanstein castle.
A different view of the castle. Sometimes the best thing to do is hide from all the selfie sticks and find a more interesting angle to shoot...
The very calm Alpsee.
Schloss Hohenschwangau. It seems this whole area is just full of this type of architecture. Very pretty, but I cannot imagine what this place is like in the height of summer.
Talking about different perspectives. The mountains of Plansee lake as seen reflected off accumulated ice in the middle of the lake.
Plansee lake. Very hard to meter for this shot with bright cloudy sky and dark foreground.
The remains of Ehrenburg Castle in Reutte, Tyrol.
The Highline 179 bridge, the world's longest pedestrian suspension bridge (403m long with a max altitude of 114m). To say it is not for the faint hearted is the understatement of the year. The whole bridge sways as you move along it, needless to say I didn't get very far out on it! Amazing engineering though.
A view of the castle from the bridge.
Looking out from the castle with the town of Reutte in the distance.
And back to this place - I couldn't get enough photos here. We were also lucky weather-wise the morning we chose to go up. I'd love to come back in the summer, I bet the views are quite different.
Looking down on the the Austrian side of the Zugspitze.
Another favourite photo to finish it all off.
Overall observations
I won't be forgetting this trip for a while, as you can see from the shots. I was also thrilled to have the Xpan with me, as it really excels with these kinds of vast landscapes. I have always struggled with "normal" wide angle lenses, as they don't always capture how vast it is. My experiment with different film types seemed to work OK, but next time I will probably stick to one film to have more consistent results.
Life's all about experimenting, and so is film photography, so no regrets there. And if you like the outdoors, I can't recommend this part of the world enough. Just one word of advice, if you do go to Neuschwanstein castle, make sure to do it first thing in the morning, and even then be prepared to deal with the dreaded selfie parades. The place is a bit overrated in my opinion, but it is within reach of so many other great spots in the Alps.
I hope you enjoyed the latest edition of Wide Angle Living, see you next time!
Neil
