[Leica] RETROSPECT 13

[Don Dory]

I'm sorry that you were the cause of seperation.

On Fri, Mar 6, 2020, 10:10 AM Bill Clough via LUG <lug at leica-users.org>
wrote:

> Hi there –
>
>
>    One year after the Atomic Energy Commission detonated a nuclear “device”
> a quarter of a mile beneath the salt flats southeast of Carlsbad, N.M., the
> press was invited to enter the chamber created by the explosion.
>
>
>    Knowing we would have to photograph the inside of a sphere, I borrowed a
> Leitz 21mm from a local doctor.
>
>
>    It was something like 90 degrees in the shaft that led to the chamber.
> Adjacent to the chamber was a separate area where all the cameras had to be
> placed for 30 minutes because the temperature inside the chamber was around
> 130 degrees. The antechamber allowed the cameras to adjust to the heat. A
> camera brought from the shaft directly into the chamber immediately would
> fog up.
>
>
>    Each photographer was allowed only 15 minutes. The AEC folks feared
> dehydration.
>
>
>    The hero of the assignment was an AEC photographer who illuminated the
> entire chamber with Sylvania Sun Guns. It was all indirect lighting; not
> one Sun Gun was in sight.
>
>
>    I set up the tripod, took a light meter reading and realized it was like
> photographing the interior of a cave. There was no sense of scale. I asked
> the technician assigned to monitor – and to assist – each photographer if
> he would stand on a rock and look up. After studying the overhead for
> possible falling rocks,
>
> he agreed.
>
>
>    The photographer who was in line behind me was no less that LIFE staffer
> J. R. Eyerman.
>
>
>    Later, when LIFE published his photograph, I was delighted to find he
> used the same man doing the same thing on the same rock.
>
>
>    I shot both color and black-and-white. After the slides were processed,
> someone stole them.
>
>
>    That’s not quite the whole story. A year after the assignment, I ran
> into the doctor at the local Leica camera store.
>
>
>    “It’s the strangest thing,” he said. “Every element in that 21mm
> separated. The repairmen at E. Leitz say they have never seen anything like
> it.”
>
>
>    I never told him.
>
>
>
> http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/Bill1941/RETROSPECT/Project+Gnome+Crater++1962+-+00204.jpg.html
>
>
> –Bill
>
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