Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/10/13
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Let's hear your "I can't believe I made such a boneheaded mistake" stories. This past summer, I got what may be my only chance to hear the author Ray Bradbury give a lecture in the historic Chautauqua auditorium. It's a wonderful space with a barnlike feel, and though it was dark, I was well prepared with a 90 Summicron-M lens and 3200 film. Naturally, I had fussed over focus and exposure settings in advance and when the man walked on stage, I quickly snapped off a number of shots, getting some fine ones by being the last one to return to his seat after a standing ovation. For the heck of it, I made a half-dozen more from my seat. The results? Disaster! The reason was readily apparent: The area at the back of the stage were a nice 18% grey--I had done my metering off a black velvet curtain! Mr. Bradbury appears as a ghostlike blob of featureless light stuffed into a suit--not what I'd call a flattering portrait. Oh, but the story gets better: The shots taken from a seated position? I held the camera vertically, finder-side-up, and sure enough, got a nice frame-filling image of the head in front of me. Reminder to self: The parallax correction doesn't work for nearby out-of-focus objects; maybe safer to hold the camera finder-side *down* next time, just to make sure. And you thought I forgot the lenscap :-) Jeff Somewhere in Boulder, Colorado