Re: X vs. M or How to waste a day

["Henning J. Wulff" <henningw@archiphoto.com>]

Donal Philby wrote:

>Just because there have been too few war stories these days (Ted, Fred,
>where are you?) I thought I would tell you how an old fashioned camera
>can waste a day.
>
(snip)
>After much hand wringing, swear words, attemps to blame my assistant,
>studying the roll film back and then checking flash sync through the
>camera, I finally discover that the flash is syncing intermitently.
>Finally discover that the X/M switch is just ever so slightly moved
>toward the M (for bulb).  Normally this is taped, but tape had aged.
(snip)

Photography allows you endless ways to screw up.

Another way that I recently rediscovered (after a few years avoidance) was
with a Mamiya 645. (This is off-Leica, but most of my commercial stuff is
done with formats that Leica doesn't cater to).

The Mamiya is a great aerial camera for the kind of things that I often do.
The camera handles well, and I have a stack of film inserts pre-loaded that
allows me to change film in seconds. The film I use mostly is Kodak GPX
negative material, and the final use is mostly 8x10 and occasionally larger
prints for developers, architects, contractors and real estate people.

The lenses I use include 55, 80, 110, and 150mm. The Mamiya lenses have a
stop down lever on the lenses, which slides with fairly heavy pressure.
Before I go up I apply duct tape generously and tape infinity focus, f-stop
and this lever, and let the camera decide the aperture on automatic. This
works fine for these sort of things, and I've done it since the 645 Super
came out. (This doesn't work for the old 645 with Auto prism, but that's
another foul-up story).

Anyways, I went up on a sunny and relatively haze-free day after waiting
for over three weeks. By now I had nearly 20 jobs to do, so I spent quite a
while up there. I live and work in Vancouver, BC, and all the jobs were
within about 20 miles of the local airport except for one, which was about
75mi away, is usually the haziest, and was the most important to get done.
I shot over 50 rolls of 120 and everything seemed fine.

The next day I got the contacts back, and had a look. All the jobs were
fine except the one up the valley 75mi away! 95 percent were slightly, but
just enough, unsharp due to motion blur. I tried to recall what was
different, and I realized that that was the job I had used the 110 lens on,
and only that job. I looked at the lens, and realized that the stop-down
lever had shifted, due to the tape getting unstuck. The camera meter had
gotten the info that the lens was set to 5.6, was 2.8 wide-open, but was
only receiving light equivalent to f/5.6. So instead of shooting at about
1/500 to 1/1000 sec, I had been shooting at 1/125 to 1/250. It had made all
the difference.

Fortunately the client is of long standing and we've worked around it so
far with the negs that were OK. Fortunately GPX is fairly forgiving of
over-exposure! This was mid August. I'm still waiting for another day of
adequate aerial conditions.


   *           Henning J. Wulff
  /|\     Wulff Photography & Design
 /###\      henningw@archiphoto.com
 |[ ]|     http://www.archiphoto.com