Me, circa 1986, proudly showing off my pre-WWII German 800mm f5 pre-set lens. Man, I thought that was hot stuff. First I bought it then tried to make a business plan to rationalize the decision. I figured I'd go shoot surfers and sell prints. Those old long board guys at Tourmaline Beach should be able to ante up ten or twenty bucks.Well here's the deal. It's a pre-set. That means the aperture doesn't stop down automatically. That means wide open at 800mm it has a tissue thin depth of focus. Which means no moving targets. (That steering wheel thing is for focusing and really needed two hands.) If it was stopped down to where it had a foot or so of focus (say f22 or so) then it was hard to see through and shutter speed was up to 1/60th with ASA100 film. I finally got a technique down to focus in front of the surfer, then shoot when he passed through the focal plane. So I did make some acceptable pictures.
Trouble was, those old long board guys were cheap as hell and I sold one fucking print.
I did get some decent photographs of the moon.
Trivia quiz: What's the right exposure for photographing the moon? Got the answer? Post it as a comment.
(Sorry about the crappy picture. It was scanned from a flyer I used back then and isn't worth trying to clean up on PhotoShop.)
posted by D. Brian Nelson at 10:35 PM
4 Comments:
The moon is, of course, lit by direct sunlight. So the exposure is the same as for any subject on Earth in direct sunlight. That's f/16 at 1/ISO.
I remember going out for the newspaper I worked for in the late 60s with a 400mm preset lens on a Nikon F and shooting street photos from a block or two away. It was fun. I did one photo page just on the shoes that people were wearing.
I stopped doing "street photography" many years ago after I started calling it "spirit stealing" in recognition that the native americans were correct in their concern about the effect of being photographed. I came to believe that a person's image is sacred and should only to captured with their knowledge and consent. That belief eventually led me to shooting nude models.
Moony f16
As others said, sunny 16 applies. Regards,
Me again. I like the moon, although it's bloody difficult getting nice pictures of it. I've had pretty decent results using f11 and 1/250 at ISO 400.
Best regards,
James.
PS. I agree with Dave regarding street photography and the "spirit stealing", but that's precisely what I love about it. There's a short story of Georges Simenon about a guy who used to record human voices, like others use to steal other people images; even though in the end he was killed, the story depicts in a very suggestive way the ideal of street photography. We're thiefs, all of us... in the street or in a hotel room. :)))
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