Miranda Models on White Sheets

Digital original, 6 image stitch

One of the first comments a friend made when I told him I was considering replacing my medium format system with a digital SLR for my second-line camera was "Oh, but a digital camera wouldn't produce those luminous highlights you are so used to!" Happily, I can report that I have more than proved my friend's concerns were unfounded - even before I owned the EOS 10D, I suspect it wouldn't be a problem, based on some earlier testing. Now that I actually own the camera, and can experiment and test, I have learned well the lengths to which the camera can be pushed.

Digital original, 5 image stitch

As much as I enjoy the magic of working with new models, there is a great advantage to long term relationships with models, including their tolerance for testing. In this case I wanted to see how functional my image stitching technique (which I have been quite successful with outdoors) would be in a more constrained space. Miranda was more than willing to put up with the longer poses this approach requires, given the trust in the end results that had built between us, over the many sessions we've worked together.

Digital original

Stitching images aside, the session flowed quite well; it was my first chance to use a new 17-35mm Sigma zoom lens (the first zoom lens I have owned in more then a decade), and I was quite pleased with its performance; several images relied upon the distorted perspective it provided at its widest setting (equal to a 28mm lens on a 35mm camera). As I suspected, the temptation to interrupt the flow of the session to share a particularly successful image with a model was nonexistent - in fact, I only glanced at the post-view image the digital camera provided briefly after each image, to check the exposure via the histogram view, before moving on to the next composition.