Re: bracketing & fun early this week

[Jim Brick <jim@brick.org>]

At 08:53 AM 9/13/97 -0700, Roger wrote:
>
>OTOH, I bracket willingingly, albeit by necessity, with full shutter 
>speed excursions. Even chromes take nicely to this, by a lot of 
>peoples' standards, gross bracketing technique. Before, with the EOS 
>1n, I honestly could seldom see the differences in 1/3 stop bracketing 
>and just barely discern 1/2 stop brackets.
>
>Usually do bracketing, however, for macro and close stuff where I'm on 
>the pod with plenty of time to work out the variables such as whether 
>to bracket by shutter speed or f stops or both.
>  
>--
>Roger Beamon
_____________________________________________________________________

Until I got the R7's, I used an R6 and bracketed via shutter and f/stop to
get 1/2 stops. It was easy to forget which you moved last and on macro
work, or on a fully extended tripod, you couldn't always see the f/stop
ring... even if you look in the viewfinder to see it I found that,
depending upon what was going on, I could get confused as to where I was in
a bracketing sequence. Must be my age! I used this method for years and it
usually worked without a problem UNLESS I was up against the wall on DOF
or, because of external stimuli, I forgot where I was in the sequence. I
have found the R7's 1/2 shutter speeds to be a godsend. Fast, cannot loose
your place (a mindless process), and doesn't have the possibility of
loosing any DOF. I agree that 1/2 stop bracketing is borderline, but it is
indeed discernable on Fuji Velvia (99% of my work is on Velvia.) I liked
the 1/3 stop on the R4sp (I used it in 2/3 increments) but alas, it only
works in the automatic modes, not manual. And everything before the R6 did
not have MLU. Therefore I now only have R7's.

We (Jennie -my wife- and I) spent the first part of this week in Napa
valley shooting grapes, vineyards, picking, crushing, etc. It was
interesting as we really weren't well informed about the process of making
wine. We found a small winery that welcomed us and allowed us to photograph
everything they do. We were out in the fields at 7am for picking, back to
the winery around 9 for crushing. It has been years since I've had to use
my cameras in the hand held mode taking pictures of people working. I had
to push Provia to 200 to get enough DOF in the vineyard (wonderful overcast
sky at 7am). I'm not used to shooting at f/4 or f/5.6 ... I didn't know my
lenses worked down there! :-) I made a few shots with my 15mm and 180mm,
but 99% of the time, I had my 24mm on one R7 and my 35-70 on my other R7.
Basically giving me 24-70. I know Ted, Donal, and others, work a lot with a
couple of cameras hanging around their neck, but it's not my normal MO. And
of course, bracketing was out! I took an incident reading (overcast sky
meant it was the same everywhere) and shot at what the meter said. I
re-checked every 15 minutes as the sun was getting higher. Even though it
was overcast, it got a little lighter as the sun got higher. With the
35-70, I started at 1/60 @ f/4 (7am) and ended up at 1/125 @ f/5.6 (9am). I
kept the shutter speed at 1/60 with the 24mm which got me to f/8 at 9am.
All exposures were right-on. I guess you can tell, we had a good time.

We are going to follow this batch of wine (Zinfandel) from start to finish.
The winery bought this crop from a private vineyard.  Was almost exactly 2
tons of grapes (3900 lbs) which will produce approximately 100 cases.
Fascinating and fun. We'll go back for the pressing.

Jim :-)