OFF THE GRID : SEQUOIA NATIONAL PARK

Spent a long weekend in Sequoia with my wife hiking and living the van-life with zero cell service and Wi-Fi available only if we walked over to the Lodgepole market. It was strange at first. Then it was pretty great.

Lodgepole feels like the center of the park while somehow still feeling quiet and remote. We hiked Moro Rock, toured Boyden Cavern, stopped for roadside ice cream, and spent a lot of time looking up at some very, very large trees.

I brought the Zfc and a handful of lenses - mostly a Tamron I picked up for travel, along with a few vintage lenses for good measure.

I’m not really a landscape photographer, so this was a bit of a different exercise. There wasn’t much of an agenda beyond wandering around and photographing whatever caught my attention. The park’s marked trails meant I couldn’t always get the angle I might normally look for, which was actually part of the challenge.

And then there was the road sign: CAUTION ICE CREAM AHEAD

Obviously, we stopped.

SHOOTING VINTAGE: THE LENSES, THE LOOK, AND THE HUNT

NIKKOR H.C 50MM

There's something that happens with a vintage lens that modern glass doesn't do. It's hard to describe without sounding like you're overselling it, but the end result is just different. A little dreamy and a little imperfect. The kind of look you'd otherwise spend a lot of time trying to recreate in post.

I've been slowly building a small collection, and at this point it's as much a part of how I shoot as anything else.

THE HOLY GRAIL: NIKKOR P 105MM

THE LENSES

My most-used is the Vivitar Series 1 28-105mm: a zoom with character. It doesn't behave the way a modern lens does and that's exactly why I reach for it. The Series E 36-72mm sits on the other end of that spectrum: more controlled, still vintage in feel but a little more predictable. Both use the “push-pull” method of zooming in/out which can be very tricky to do while manually focusing at the same time.

Then there are the primes. The Nikkor H.C 50mm f/2 is from the 1960s and it looks like it. The Olympus OM-System Zuiko Auto-S 50mm f/1.8 is newer to the collection and quickly becoming a favorite. It’s got a smoothness to how it renders that I keep coming back to. And the holy grail Nikkor-P Auto 105mm f/2.5/ That one took a while to find. It has a reputation for a reason, and getting one in hand was quite satisfying.

THE HUNT

Most of these came from eBay, which sounds unglamorous but is actually where the good stuff lives if you know what you're looking for. Three of the four came from Japan. Japanese collectors take exceptionally good care of their gear. Glass condition, aperture blades, focus smoothness - all of it tends to be better than what you find domestically. There's a level of care in how these lenses are stored and described that you notice immediately when they arrive.

VIVITAR SERIES 1 28-105MM

NIKON SERIES 3 36-72MM

WHY IT MATTERS

This isn't really about being practical. It's about the whole experience. The way the lens feels in your hand, the way it renders light, and the slower calculated pace I work at when using these. The finished image carries some of that.

OLYMPUS OM-SYSTEM ZUIKO AUTO-S 50MM

Tim VanGilder is a commercial photographer based in Mission Viejo, California.

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