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Behind the shot: Tambora Sandwich
Today, I'd like to tell you a nice story about mistakes, drone crashes, coincidences and one very cool shoot in which I took a panorama of Tambora Volcano in Indonesia.
Recent VideosTambora is a volcano on the island of Sumbawa. In 1815, Tambora produced the largest volcanic eruption in recorded human history, which spewed 37-45 cubic kilometers (8.9-10.8 cubic miles) of rock, weighing about 10 billion tons, into the atmosphere. This left a caldera measuring 6-7 km across and 600-700 m (2,000-2,300 ft) deep. The eruption caused a volcanic winter, with 1816 being the second-coldest year in the northern hemisphere since around 1400. Now, doesn't that sound like something you'd want to visit?
But first, let's go back in time to a few days after the beginning of my trip to Indonesia in April last year. After taking a few days to do some formalities and get my work permit to allow me to guide my workshop a few weeks later, I used the rest of my time before meeting my participants to do a bit of shooting by myself. I took a short ferry from Bali to the small Penida Island (Nusa Penida), where I settled for a few days in the southwest of the island, where I could shoot some nice beaches with my drone. Unfortunately, this plan went south quickly when I crash-landed my (previously) trusty DJI Mavic II Pro into a tree, followed by it falling to the side of a cliff without any chance of recovering it.
"This plan went south quickly when I crash-landed my (previously) trusty DJI Mavic II Pro into a tree..."It always hurts losing a drone. Not only are they expensive, but I was now lacking one of the most important tools I have as a nature photographer, and I still had over a month of shooting ahead of me. Luckily, I had invited Noah, one of my workshop participants, to arrive in Indonesia 10 days early to do some shooting together, and he was scheduled to arrive a few days after I lost the drone. I immediately asked Noah for help, and he gladly agreed to have a new drone shipped to him and bring it to me when he arrived. And so, I got a sparkling new Mavic III Classic. The accident and its consequences would greatly affect the upcoming Tambora shoot.
Noah and I traveled to our first shooting location: Moyo Island, specifically the spectacular Mata Jitu waterfall. A short motorcycle trip from our lodge, Mata Jitu is a wonderful gem located in a valley. It boggles the mind to think that in the distant past, people found this waterfall hidden deep in the middle of the jungle without any aids or roads. The waterfall features cascading pools of turquoise water created over the millennia due to the minerals contained in the flowing water.
Mata Jitu Waterfall. The drone's stability allowed me to shoot a relatively long exposure while still maintaining sharpness. DJI Mavic III Classic,
F5.6 | 0.6 sec | ISO100
Mata Jitu is fed by a beautiful stream, which is so serene that it's almost always reflective. I took advantage and took an image of the stream and surrounding trees. For a longer exposure, I used an ND filter and a polarizer, which I positioned in a way that didn't hurt the reflection. The high humidity condensed on my front element, enhancing the magical feeling in the image.
Canon 5D4, Tamron 24-70mm F2.8 at 52mm
F8 | 15 sec | ISO100
After wrapping up the Moyo Island shoot, we took a 2-hour police boat (that's what we found, don't judge!) to the main Island of Sumbawa. We spent the night in a local hostel and prepared for the main event: the climb to Tambora.
Tambora Volcano is one of the most famous Indonesian volcanoes and one that produced the largest volcanic eruption in recorded history back in 1810. Before the eruption, it was a conic volcano, standing 4500m above sea level. Today, it's less than 2500m. Imagine an eruption so monstrous that it exploded through and destroyed 2km of solid rock. If you're not scared, you're not imagining hard enough.
Anyway, today the volcano is quite dormant, and you can easily climb up there, even scaling most of the way up with a 4x4, albeit in a crazy, hellish drive. The journey up the volcano begins next to the sea, in comfortable plains, but this quickly changes to denser and denser vegetation and alternating climate zones: fields, rainforest and finally, the barren wasteland you learn to expect when ascending a gigantic monster of a volcano. Our 4x4 was well-suited for the drive but kept overheating, which added some anxiety to the mix.
The entrance to Tambora National Park. Now that's gotta make you feel welcome! Our 4x4 making its way in the rainforest. Our Tambora camp. Much better than nothing!After finally arriving at camp, we turned in as early as we could since a very early rise was awaiting us. We were up at 2 a.m. to have a quick breakfast and start our climb. The night was rainy, and it wasn't at all certain we would be able to get up there or even see the landscape, which was a bit discouraging. But the weather gods smiled upon us, and 2 hours' trailless climb later, we were standing on top of Tambora with plenty of time to go before sunrise. The sky was luckily (and surprisingly) clear.
I hiked around a bit to get behind a large peak on the rim and prepared my drone for liftoff. When I sent it away, I could see a wonderful cloud inversion on the far side of the caldera. Having the Mavic III meant that I had the reception and battery capacity to fly almost 5km (over 3 miles) away and shoot the caldera with the cloud inversion surrounding the drone's point of view from below. This definitely made the shot and made me feel very lucky to have lost my previous drone, even though I had to go through a lot of stress to get the new one. All is well that ends well.
"Tambora Sandwich": 18-image, 3 row panorama
DJI Mavic III Classic, wide-angle converter
F5.6 | 1/50 sec | ISO 100
Tambora's volcanic crater is so gigantic that I had to get creative. I put on the wide-angle lens adapter and positioned the drone in the best vantage point I could find. This meant having the entire bottom of the image filled with the cloud inversion. I then proceeded to shoot a 3-row, 18-image panorama to cover the entire subject (with some margins for error).
Compositionally, it was important to include the clouds on both sides of the crater, as well as the bottom of the image. This is done to show the extent of the cloud inversion, which made even the huge caldera seem relatively small. In addition, note both the large cloud located slightly off-center to the left and the smaller clouds inside the crater. These subjects' positions in the frame meant I had to have more compositional weight on the bottom right as a counterbalance. Luckily, the cloud inversion was thicker on the right, in addition to the prominence added by the light coming from the right side.
Noah and I, tired but satisfied on top of Tambora. Coffee was well-deserved.Big thanks to Noah, who not only carried the new drone all the way from the US but also kindly allowed me to use his behind-the-scenes shots after my phone broke down during the trip.
Erez Marom is a professional nature photographer, photography guide and traveler based in Israel. You can follow Erez's work on Instagram and Facebook, and subscribe to his mailing list for updates and to his YouTube channel.
If you'd like to experience and shoot some of the world's most fascinating landscapes with Erez as your guide, take a look at his unique photography workshops in Svalbard, Greenland, Madagascar, the Lofoten Islands, Namibia and Vietnam.
Erez also offers video tutorials discussing his images and explaining how he achieved them.
Selected Articles by Erez Marom:- Landscape Composition - Balancing the weights
- Lava Frenzy: Shooting Fagradalsfjall Volcano
- Landscape Composition - Separation of Elements
- Parallelism in Landscape Photography
- Black Hole Sun: Shooting the Total Solar Eclipse in Argentina
- Winds of Change: Shooting Changing landscapes
- Landscape Composition - Negative space
- Shooting Kīlauea Volcano, Part 1: How to Melt a Drone
- Whatever It Doesn't Take
Nikon 28-400mm F4-8 pre-production sample gallery
Earlier this week, Nikon announced its new Nikkor Z 28-400mm F4-8 VR, a superzoom lens for Nikon Z-mount mirrorless cameras with a 14.2x zoom range. Ahead of the launch, we had an opportunity to shoot a small sample gallery around Seattle's Capitol Hill using a pre-production copy of the lens.
Due to the pre-production status of the lens, the photos in this gallery are out-of-camera JPEG images captured with a Nikon Z8 rather than converted Raw files, as is our normal protocol for lens galleries. We'll publish additional photos from this lens, converted from Raw files, once we receive a production copy.
View our Nikon Z 28-200m F4-8 pre-production sample gallery
Buy now:
Buy at Amazon.comUlanzi’s 52mm MagFilter Magnetic Filters offers interchangeable filters for smartphones
Lens filters for smartphones are not a new concept. Designed to give photographers more creative and technical control over their images, there are several types on the market today that can control how much light comes into the camera, reduce reflections and flare or add more vibrancy to your images with different color tones.
Recent Videos!function(n){if(!window.cnx){window.cnx={},window.cnx.cmd=[];var t=n.createElement('iframe');t.src='javascript:false';t.display='none',t.onload=function(){var n=t.contentWindow.document,c=n.createElement('script');c.src='//cd.connatix.com/connatix.player.js?cid=a1b625fb-cd44-410e-9479-699e835fd645',c.setAttribute('async','1'),c.setAttribute('type','text/javascript'),n.body.appendChild(c)},n.head.appendChild(t)}}(document); (new Image()).src = 'https://capi.connatix.com/tr/si?token=1cad57d1-aae3-42ce-aa46-cb49bb02d99a&cid=a1b625fb-cd44-410e-9479-699e835fd645';cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "1cad57d1-aae3-42ce-aa46-cb49bb02d99a" }).render("0f952e209d6147a793d43f13d9e1cfa2", (renderError, playerApi) => {window.playerApi = playerApi}); });Up until a few years ago, photographers wanting to add a physical filter to a smartphone would need to attach a clamped filter that sits at the top of the phone’s camera lenses or use a third-party smartphone lens with filters.
Although useful, clamps tend to be bulky and aren’t always the easiest to align with your camera. Third party lenses offer more accuracy, but good-quality options can cost in excess of $100, without the inclusion of filters.
Ulanzi aims to be different by offering a lightweight foldable adapter ring that snaps on to the center of your MagSafe compatible device or case, which the manufacture says leads to a quicker workflow and more accurate alignment of the filter to the camera lens on the back of the phone. On an iPhone 14 or 15 it works by magnetically attaching to the rear using Apple's MagSafe attachment system.
For users without an iPhone, there are workarounds through the use of third-party smartphone cases with magnetic ring plates that emulating MagSafe. WIth such a case, you can attach Ulanzi’s adapter to the ring plate and use the filters as normal.
As we reported last week, the concept isn’t new. Tiffen recently released a similar product with its MagSafe 58mm Filter Mount. Both products approach a solution to adding filters in a similar manner but differ in design. The Ulanzi opts for compactness with a foldable design.
The Tiffen comes with one polarizing filter (you can buy other filters separately) at around $40. In contrast, the Ulanzi’s version comes as a kit for $219 with an ND filter, a polarizing filter, one soft focus filter and a selection of color effect filters. There’s a storage case as well. Having multiple filters packed in may be enticing to users seeking to experiment with different filters and want the simplicity of having them all packaged together.
Buy now:
$219 at Ulanzi