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The Iceland trip
When I travelled to Iceland for the first time exactly one year ago, I already knew that I have to come back and visit this incredible country another time. This year, summer, July - it was time to head there again to explore some angles of the islands that I haven’t seen before.
With three very good friends that are also photographers we finally headed there last week for 7 days. This trip was all about producing high quality content but simultaneously enjoying and appreciating the moments to the fullest. When thinking about Iceland and its thousand huge waterfalls and canyons you might instantly think about bringing a wide angle to capture this best. In addition to my SAMYANG 14mm 2.8 MF I brought In cooperation with SAMYANG a new lens to this trip - the 85mm with AF for my Sony A7III. This enabled me not only to capture the whole scenery (with my wide angle), but also details that I wouldn’t be able to capture otherwise. But more about that later.
After landing in Keflavik we picked up our rental car and immediately headed into the highlands to a very special place called Kerlingarfjöll, which is a geothermal area with numerous hot springs. At this time of the year the sun barely sets behind the horizon, so there is some daylight even at night. We arrived at our first photo spot at around 9pm after a long drive on gravel roads - but I can tell you - it was more than worth it. When we arrived there we couldn’t believe our eyes as it looked like entering a different planet.
This was just the first spot out of hundred spots we have researched for our trip to Iceland. This is how our map looked like:
Kerlingarfjöll, based in the highlands
needless to say we couldn’t make all of them, a reason to come back.
On the next following 6 days we visited a lot of places that couldn’t be any more different. As said we immediately headed into the highlands after our arrival, where we spent the first days.
This are some impressions from the highlands, that left me speechless:
Landmannalaugar
I already saw those places on social media a lot of times, but seeing this in real life just totally blew my mind. Those highlands, especially in Landmannalaugar looked like a perfect perfect
painting. I have no words for this. We just stood there for hours and enjoyed the moment. The SAMYANG 85mm gave me the perfect opportunity to capture more details here - definitely the best SAMYANG lens I have tried so far, it's very sharp and the colors are really on point.
The next days of the trip brought us to massive waterfalls
valley of waterfalls
black sand beach, Vik
Skogafoss, captured with SAMYANG 14mm 2.8 MF
black sand beaches
Svínafellsjökull
and glaciers.
Basically you can capture beauty everywhere you go in Iceland. The roadviews are insane all the time - we took photo spots every few minutes.
With my SAMYANG 85MM AF I also tried a lot of portraits as the focal length and the amazing 1.4 aperture are ideal for that. What can I say, I have barely seen any lens with this amazing sharpness, true colors and bokeh. I will take it to every trip from now on, as I really like to capture detail shots on trips
portrait I took with the 85mm
Can’t wait to try more of the SAMYANG collection and go on more trips like that. The Iceland trip was definitely a time that I will remember forever.
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Written by Michael Schirnhofer (@intohimoni)
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