It’s ultimately about producing the
best image quality, but the system also
requires him to slow down and work a
bit more methodically than a DSLR or
mirrorless camera would. Still, he bristles
at the idea that the XF is a studio camera.
“No,” he says, “I don’t think that at all. In
fact, I think it’s kind of made for landscape
photography. I would go as far as to call it
a tripod camera, but even that I’ve started
to prove wrong. It used to be that medium
format cameras needed to be tethered, and
they were very, very slow, and they didn’t
have autofocus. But it’s fully sealed; I’ve
had it completely soaked. It goes for a good
amount of time on a charge. You have all
the conveniences. You certainly have aut-
ofocus, but you have focus stacking, you
have bracketing. Everything is built-in; it
really works well. You just have to carry it.”
Perhaps the IQ4’s most notable feature is
that it’s achromatic—meaning it produces
a grayscale image. So from the moment he
switches it on, Koegel is seeing his com-
positions as they’ll appear in his finished
prints: in beautiful black-and-white.
“So why this camera?” he asks. “Part of
the answer is, sure, it is incredible image
quality, incredible resolution, and I do
make prints. And that’s one of the rea-
sons I got the IQ4—because everyone
wants large prints. Having the ability to go
50x50, I’ve even done 50x100, that’s why
I’m doing it. Otherwise, it’s not worth it.
“But the other reason is very huge.
What made me pull the trigger is that it
is a black-and-white-only camera. I had
a 5-year-old Phase with 39 megapixels,
and now you can get more in a mirrorless
camera. I had that for a long time because I
loved the tech camera. I wanted to be able
to have the tilt and shift, and I liked that
camera, and in order to run that camera I
needed a digital back. I was happy with
that, but it was a color back, and I had
to convert to black-and-white. And then
this black-and-white-only came out, and
I just felt like, ‘Wow!’ To me, it clears the
path. Because if what you’re trying to do
is black-and-white, color is a distraction.”
To many, ignoring color information
at the moment of capture may seem like
a limitation, but to Koegel it’s a benefit.
“I’m not sacrificing that at all, actually,” he
explains. “It just means that you’re going
back to more of a film-like workflow. I do
put on a red filter before I take a picture, and
we can argue what’s more convenient. Sure
enough, sometimes you want to darken the
sky quickly, and you can do that with the
blue slider. I can still darken the sky; I put
on a red filter, and if that isn’t enough, I
go into Photoshop to make a selection and
darken the sky. I’m really not sacrificing
any information. The color doesn’t give me
more information. I think that’s a little bit of
a myth. In fact, I’m getting more informa-
tion because I’m just capturing luminosity.”
“Coming back to [the idea of] photog-raphy being an experience to me,” Koegel
continues, “the workflow is ‘I want to end
up with a black-and-white picture, so why
not take a black-and-white picture in the
first place?’ It’s a limitation, right? Like I’m
limiting myself because I see a beautiful
sunset, and I can’t get that color. How-
ever, I can do very good black-and-white
pictures, so let’s just focus on that. That’s
what I mean. It takes away the cloudiness of
‘Let’s take a color picture and then convert
it to black-and-white and see how good
it looks once I convert it.’ It gives me the
least friction.”
With the XF system, lens options are
limited compared to DSLRs, but Koegel’s
needs are minimal. “I get a lot done with
the 40-80mm zoom,” he says. “And I have
a 150mm. If I’m in a place like Iceland
where you do have so much expanse of
the landscape, then it’s kind of nice to beable to use some compression. I’d want to
have a lens that gives me the compression
ability because that’s not something you
can really get afterward. For 90 percent
of what I do, the 40-80mm does a really
good job. And it keeps things simple.”
The downsides of the XF and IQ4
include size and weight, as well as price.
And while the RAW image files are huge,
Koegel says his MacBook Pro running
Capture One is more than capable. “I like
to work on laptops when I’m on a trip,”
he says. “That’s one of the things I like
about digital is that it actually can provide
you with some motivation in the field.
You shoot it, you’re excited about it, you
come home that night and look at it right
away. I love that about digital, and I want
to be able to do that. Especially if I go to
a place that I know, I liked it so much I
want to go back the next day, it’s nice to
see what you’ve done and then evaluate
for the next time I go there, what would
I do, or did this work, or whichever.
“The good thing is that Capture One—
which I use because Lightroom doesn’t
read my RAW files—is lightning fast,”
Koegel continues. “Faster than Lightroom.
I have the 15-inch MacBook maxed out,
and if you max it out, you can fairly com-
fortably work on these files. It’s doable,
even on a laptop. Very, very doable.”
“I know they say it’s 15 stops of
dynamic range,” he says, “which is
the same as what they say about some
DSLRs, but what this camera does is,
I take a picture, and if I underexpose it,
overexpose it, or basically any mistake I
make, I can correct. And I can crop, and I
still have a massive file. It becomes very
forgiving. It sometimes makes me almost
feel a little bad because there’s so much
ability to recover from mistakes that you
wouldn’t get on other cameras.”
“The only ‘unforgiving-ness’ is the
sharpness,” Koegel adds. “That’s the
thing that you can’t miss. It looks sharp on
screen, and it still looks sharp on a 16-inch
print, but when I zoom in I know if it’s
not in focus because I’ve seen how sharp
it is when you do get it. That’s the biggest
challenge: to be sure to get it sharp.” OPSee more of Marc Koegel’s work at
marckoegel.com.“WHAT I ENJOYABOUT BOTHBLACK-AND-WHITEAND LONG EXPOSUREIS THE FACT THAT ITTAKES PHOTOGRAPHYAWAY FROMREALITY. IT’S SORTOF TWO STEPS OFABSTRACTION.”outdoorphotographer.com November 2019 53