Photographing the Comet

[gmrobinson@mmm.com]

Perhaps my experiences will be helpful to those interested in photographing
the comet.  I drove way out in the country last Sunday night to escape city
lights and found a very remote country lane far from car headlights and
farmhouse lights.  A flashlight is virtually essential.  I used old
reliable, Leica M3 which is auto-nothing, because it does not have a mirror
and other gadgets to interfere with its operation.  I set the 90 mm lens on
infinity and aperture wide open (f 2.8).  It was necessary to shine a
flashlight towards the front side of the camera to illuminate the frames to
properly position the comet on the film.  I used a locking cable release to
make a wide variety of time exposures.  An exposure of one minute using
Tri-X film gave an acceptable image of its two tails although it
overexposed the head and resulted in star traces.  400 Delta gave poor
results.  Binoculars help pass the time while waiting on completion of the
exposures.

I developed the Tri-X with D-76 diluted 1:1 for 10 minutes at 68=B0.  The
negatives are very difficult to print because of the tremendous spread in
image density.  An extremely bright comet head against a black sky with
fading tails is a tough combination to print. I used Ilford MGIV as the
paper.  Multigrade filter 5 gave the longest tails against a black sky, but
produced a very grainy picture.  Filter 0.5 was terrible; the tails could
hardly be seen when the sky was printed black; of course a light gray sky
will show the tails nicely.  Filters 2 and 3 seem to be an acceptable
compromise.  By the way, you will be amazed at the number of stars in the
pictures.

Glen Robinson