The Heavy RB67, MetLife Meltdowns, and
Pacific Fog
Posted by Pat Hathaway | September 14, 2026
The coffee this morning isn’t Tarrazú, but a good old-fashioned French roast brewed in my own kitchen. I finally made it back to the California Central Coast, unpacked the silica-gel stuffed Pelican cases, and shook off the lingering tropical jet lag. The air is cool, the fog is thick, and unfortunately, Big Boy Dan is still my neighbor.
Dan’s Cowboy Collapse at MetLife
If you remember my last update, Dan was desperately crunching numbers for Sunday night’s NFL matchup between the Dallas Cowboys and the New York Giants. He was entirely convinced that the swirling winds at MetLife Stadium would ground the passing game and guarantee a Cowboys victory.
Instead, the Giants physically dominated the Cowboys. Dan watched in utter horror as the Giants ran off the final 5:16 of the game clock to seal a 28-20 victory. His highly “calculated” prop bets went up in smoke alongside his remaining bankroll as the Dallas offense failed to see the ball in the final five minutes. If you want the grim post-mortem on the Dallas defense, you can check the official recap over at the
NFL hub on ESPN. I told him he should have stayed retired after his PGA Tour catastrophe, but Dan is already talking about Week 2 spreads.
Loading the Anvil for Highway 1
With Dan sulking on my couch, I escaped to the garage to load up the truck for a proper road trip up Highway 1. I left the nimble titanium rangefinders in the safe and pulled out the undisputed king of landscape photography: the Mamiya RB67.
I call it “the anvil” because this fully mechanical 6×7 medium format camera weighs close to six pounds. You don’t casually snap photos with it; you mount it to a heavy tripod, crank the film advance, and peer down into the waist-level viewfinder. Composing a shot on a massive piece of ground glass forces you to slow down and study the geometry of a scene. You can dive into the rich history of why professional landscape photographers still swear by this mechanical beast over at
PetaPixel’s analog archives.
Big Sur in Monochrome
The plan is to drive up through Big Sur and Monterey over the next few days. I’ve packed a cooler full of film, mostly Ilford HP5 Plus and Kodak Tri-X. The dense Pacific marine layer that clings to the cliffs in the mornings is the absolute perfect environment for high-contrast black and white film.
To meter the light properly in that thick fog, you need an external spot meter. Trying to guess the exposure when everything is painted in shades of gray is a quick way to ruin a roll of 120 film. If you’re looking to build out your own medium format landscape kit, you can still source classic spot meters and cable releases through the analog section at
B&H Photo Video.
Before I hit the road, I finally digitized the last of my Central Coast 35mm test rolls from before the Costa Rica trip. I’ve uploaded the final high-resolution scans directly to the
California Views Gallery Hub. Take a look at the deep blacks and organic grain before I disappear into the fog up north.
Comments
BigBoyDan: The Giants got lucky, Pat. Dak just didn’t see the ball at the end of the game. Week 2 is where the real math starts paying off.
JudgeRoy: The Mamiya RB67 is a proper landscape tool, Patrick. I am relieved you have returned to serious hardware and the beautiful discipline of black-and-white California fog.
