The assignment last Tuesday for Photo 1 was simple, make 5 different prints, all utilizing different lighting arrangements. I could use flash, available/ambient lighting, etc.

I decided I would have a photo shoot with my two friends, Niki and Kelli. I didn’t have to do people, I didn’t have to use a background, I didn’t have to have fun, but I did.

The lighting was simple. I had two lamps, with either a 100W or 40W bulb in. I used one for a main light, and the other for a fill light. I also had a piece of foam core that I taped tin foil to. This was my reflector. I used a black sheet for a background (borrowed from Kelli’s house mate). I used whatever model was free as an assistant to hold the light.

I learned a couple things. I should have used either a sharper lens, or brighter lights, or even a set of studio strobes. The Konica lens I was using is very sharp stopped down, however at wide open, it loses a lot of the sharpness I wanted. If I had a full set of strobes, things would have been very nice, as I could have even used better film. IE: FP4+ at ISO 125 instead of HP5+ which I was shooting at ISO 400. The prints look decent, but are grainy. The finer grain of a slower speed film would have made things look much nicer.

All in all, it turned out great and Niki and Kelli were great to work with.

See some of the results in my photo albums page.

So, the clouds ruined my show of the Eclipse. They were just too darned thick to see the copperish glow of the moon.

In other news, anyone have a seamless black background? Looking to practice some lighting, and I just can’t find anything that’ll work out. I’d prefer black, grey is my second choice and white would be my final choice.

I’m sure many of you know about it. And I’m sure there are many of you who don’t. Tomorrow night is supposed to be a full lunar eclipse.

What exactly is a full lunar eclipse? Its where the Earth is right in between the Sun and the Moon. They form a line if you will. What we see on Earth is the bit of sunlight that’s passing through Earth’s atmosphere then reflecting off of the moon. Since our atmosphere will filter out much of the sun’s blue light, we will see a copperish red moon. Supposed to be very pretty.

I’ve never actually seen a lunar eclipse, so tomorrow I’m going to set aside time to go see it (and photograph it).

I played around tonight photographing the moon. I learned one thing, I need a longer lens. 300mm on a 1.5x crop camera (450mm equiv) is just not enough! The following picture is at 100% crop of the full image.

My Pentax K100D Super w/ Tamron 70-300mm F4-5.6 Lens
Exposure was ISO 200, 1/250s @  F8.0

Photographed with Ilford HP5+ pushed to 800ISO
Using Konica T4 w/ 40MM Hexanon @f1.8
Printed traditionally then scanned using a flatbed

This is my photography student camera. It is an old Konica AutoReflex T4. It is also the one that I recently replaced the leather on. Well, I guess its never been really leather, more like vinyl.

I apologize for the lack of sharpness. I took the photos inside on a counter top. I didn’t like the ones with the flash, and even with Shake Reduction on, photos at 1/10 of a second are still not quite as sharp as they could be.

If you’re like me, and have a fetish of collecting old vintage camera equipment, you need to check out cameraleather.com.

I purchased my Konica AR T4 with some pretty terrible leather around. It was peeling off in the front and had shrunk over time, revealing gaps at the edges where dirt has managed to stick it self in the adhesive. It wasn’t a pretty sight.

Fifteen dollars later, and I had a replacement leather kit on the way to my door. Removal of the old stuff was easy. I removed the self timer arm using the instructions on their website. I then peeled off the old leather and used an exacto knife to finish scraping off the old adhesive.

After a thorough cleaning with some 409 and a paper towel, I proceeded to place the new leather on. Some careful lining up, and the stuff was laid on perfect. Its also thick and rigid enough that its very difficult to get wrinkles in it. Be careful though, as this stuff sticks to anything, and is a PITA to remove if you get it on crooked.

All in all, it was well worth my $15 to give this camera a new refreshing look. (If the original black isn’t good enough for you, they have a very wide selection of leathers you can apply.)