[Leica] Flashing

["A.H.SCHMIDT" <horsts@primus.com.au>]

My younger son (20 years old) was invited to attend a ballroom function
,organized by the university he attends.
It was the first time for him to have to wear formal,  a Diner jacket,
pants and bow tie.
Of course my wife wanted some pictures of him taken. (me too, by the
way) All dressed up and ready to go.

Now, I'm not much good at portraits and people, but I decided to make a
special effort.
The weather forecast pointed to a fine and sunny day, so the day before
the event, I went out in to the back garden, to find a nice spot to do
the deed. I even cut a few branches, got my wife to cut the lawn and
made thing nice. All in vain. The Melbourne weather didn't play ball.
Next day, it rained. All day

When I arrived home this day from work, Junior was all dressed up, with
a foolish look.

Never the less, as a proud father, (every body says, he looks like his
father. The Lucky devil! ) I assemble my camera gear and we decided, the
photos had to be taken inside the house. A fair amount of furniture
shifting and moving together with removing and re hanging of pictures
was instigated,  then it was decided,  now is the time do have junior
put on to film, to be remembered for all time.

The equipment I used: A M3, a 90 mm Elmarit (early version) and a 50 mm
Summar (coated). also, I had a Sunpack electronic flash.

The session went ahead. with the normal directions like: " Look happy,
or you'll be in all sorts of trouble". (Lucky his older brother was not
present, otherwise only stupid pulled faces and body contortions would
have been presented.)

After about 10 shots, things slowly started to get on to peoples nerves.

What to do.  I told junior, who was really bored by now, to hang on,
bribed  him  with 20 Bucks for some extra booze  to spend at the ball or
after.

I went to my room, rummaged through some boxes in a rush. It was my old
Leitz flash gun ,
bracket and a few packets of  blue flash globes. PF 1 type.
The flash gun still had a 22.5V Varta battery in it, I made a test
exposure with a bulb and
it still worked.

With the new (old style) setup, I went back in to the lounge room to
resume the torture.

After the first shot, and replacement of the bulb, there was a complete
change of attitude.

The look of amazement of  a bulb flashing and then melting and having to
be replaced after each use, was astonishing. Of course he had never seen
a flash bulb. Now the session was interesting and fun. my son wanted to
replace the bulbs, also take pictures of me and my wife. It made all the
difference. Peace was restored.

Now to the prints. The first lot taken with the electronic flash, where
not to bad, the exposure seemed ok, but somehow impersonal and
unfriendly. Exactly like all  my previous flash pictures.

The second lot  where completely different. They where warmer and  had a
more gemuetlich look. Probably the happier atmosphere helped a bit, but
I believe the slightly lower colour temperature of the blue flash bulbs
must have helped to improve the final look.
I also wonder if the much longer exposure time, 1/30 sec compared to
about  1/2000 of a sec had something to do with it.  Maybe films like
the longer  exposure better, than the extremely short amounts of high
power light flashes.

Some of you may have experience or more knowledge of this. It may be
worth while to
hear some comments.

In the meantime, I looked for all my old flash bulbs. I found about 2000
of the, With a mixture of  Focal plane bulbs and standard X-type bulbs.

The final prints came out better than I hoped, and a couple are worth
while for keeping.

The 2 lenses I used,  performed really good. I managed to use both
lenses as wide open as f2.8. I could not go wider, because the limit of
the Elmarit is 2.8 and because with the Summar, the flash bulbs where a
bit to power full.

Regards, Horst Schmidt