Before switching over to mirrorless cameras I did all my landscape, wedding, and portrait photography with Nikon gear. For landscape photography I had a wide angle zoom, would usually bring something longer like my 85mm lens (heavy but sharp), and had a very special lens I would sometimes use, sometimes do hikes up hills with, and always loved. It was the amazing Nikon 400mm f2.8 lens. I started using it with the help of a great ex-girlfriend in 1997. It weighed 14 pounds, had a slightly older autofocus system that worked lightning fast, and most importantly, was the sharpest lens I’ve ever used. In short, I loved that lens.

I loved it so much it even earned its own name, the “John Holmes Super Lens.”

It basically lived in the trunk of my car, ready for use at any time. I used it for every conceivable type of picture. From sports, to weather features, to portraits, to mugshots, and even landscape photography. It was a great lens for landscapes. Tough to hike around with, but great once getting to the destination.

A good many of my personal favorite landscape pictures were done with John Holmes. Looking at my pictures, they’re mostly done with 28mm or longer lenses. I sometimes enjoy looking at the ultra wide something-in-the-foreground-leading-to-something-in-the-background-with-nice-sky-above pictures. But to be honest, those pictures exist front and center of every website devoted to outdoors photography.

My favorite photographer, Ansel Adams, didn’t have any ultra-wides because they didn’t exist back in the day. For a long time the 24mm lens was as wide as you could go. Now I’m seeing 12mm lenses out there.

Seriously? Doing a picture with a lens that wide to include everything in the scene takes away any creative choices you might make. Just point the lens at something in the ground, a couple rocks in the water, with a pink mountain on the other side of the lake with some nice sky above and a reflection in the water. This picture exists on every single website.

Here’s an Ansel Adams take on the idea. Done in black and white and what looks to be around 50mm. Not everything, just a piece. Not in color because color would ruin the idea. Lines, shadows, and shapes with the prickly branches filling the lower right hand corner for balance and to fill the slightly brighter spot on the water. In a word: perfectly done. A wide angle, and being stuck seeing the world in a wide angle point of view would remove the possibility of imagining this picture. An ultra wide would have those pointy bushes filling the frame somehow. The picture would’ve been lost while playing around with the lens.

John Holmes allowed me to see pieces of the whole. Isolate the most interesting part of a scene. Use something in the scene to make the picture stand out in a cool way. Here’s the Golden Gate Bridge shot just after the sun went down and the lights went on. I wanted the car lights to be streaks and so had to wait for the light to drop enough to force a long shutter speed. This was all done on film, not digital, so I had to hit it just right.

John Holmes went to live with a person in Iowa, the place where it began the journey we had together. I really miss having a super long lens. These days I’ve started experimenting with the smaller Fuji cameras and the longer lens costs 1/3 as much as a new 400mm f2.8. So we’ll see if I can get back to seeing the world in super telephoto more often.