Arlington, a Bridge and a Church

For the past three weeks, I’ve hoped to get a swank shot of the covered bridge in Arlington, Vermont – a bridge that spans the Battenkill River and also leads into an access road to a beautiful white-wooden church. It’s one of those quintessential Vermont images. Right up there with pennies in a stream and falling leaves of sycamore.

But I’ve been thwarted at almost every trip. Cars parked in the tiny parking lot between the bridge and the church prevented me from assembling a panorama shot. And hopes for blazing, beautiful fall foliage petered out when this year’s leaves developed muted colors. I blame global warming for that.

And with rain in the forecast today, I chose instead for a Sunday afternoon road trip. Hopefully things will work out.

One hour later, I arrived in Vermont. And with my Nikon Df at the ready, and a Nikkor 28mm f/2.8 ultrawide lens on the chassis, I decided I would try some HDR photography. I haven’t pulled off HDR shots in a while – HDR involves taking several photos in over-exposed and under-exposed captures, and then combining the images to create a high-dynamic response photograph. In theory, this should work out nicely.

In theory.

Let’s see how I did. Here’s my first shot, with the Nikkor 28mm f/2.8 ultrawide.

This I like. This I like a lot.

But I have an idea for something else.

Last Christmas, my girlfriend gave me a Pentacon Six-to-Nikon F mount adapter. This would allow me to integrate my Pentacon Six TL lenses onto my Nikon body and use them as manual-focus glass.

The adapter was in my Nikon camera bag, which was still in my car. Also in my car? Two of my Pentacon Six lenses.

So let’s see how the Pentacon Six lenses do on my Nikon digital.

First up? Let’s attach the ultrawide Carl Zeiss Jena Flektogon 65mm f/2.8 lens to the chassis and push an HDR shot through.

And this came out.

Looks great – except in the bottom center you can see one parked car that arrived in the middle of my photo shoot. Nertz.

No matter. Let’s see if I can use this other lens in the car – my 180° Zodiak f/3.5 fisheye lens. This time, I wanted to capture the bridge and the foliage tree next to it. Plus, that annoying car finally moved away.

Nice. Looks really, really nice. I could probably edit out the sign in front of the tree if I wanted this as a competition image.

Let’s try one more. I slapped the Flektogon back on the chassis, and moved the camera to a different angle. Come on, give me some love here.

I mean, that’s pretty impressive in and of itself. Again, I could make that sign in the right side of the picture disappear with some digital cloning if I so chose.

But … yeah … let’s try one more time. I took the tripod back up to my original shooting spot, angled my aim to avoid any cars in the parking lot, and tried one last time.

And got this.

I’m taking this one. This one goes in the short pile, and I don’t even care if there’s a tiny little white sign next to the covered bridge.

This one works for me. I’ll save this for 2026, for sure.

Trust me. It may have taken three or four trips to Vermont to get the photo I wanted …

But I believe I got the photo that I wanted.