These Chili Peppers are RED HOT!

I'm not really a studio photographer, but I decided to try some studio-type shots with my F3. The F3 is well made for this work with a shade to cover the eye piece I switched the lens from the Nikkor zoom to the 50mm 1:1.4, though, because the zoom's close focus distance was too far for my available space. I decided to try some long-exposure work -- twenty-second plus -- and work on multiple exposures and faux smoke. The multiple exposure shots all turned out poorly. The faux smoke shots turned out okay.

So if you'd like to achieve this effect -- only better than this first experiment, take a flashlight, tape a string or piece of tinsel onto it and, in the dark, move the flashlight over the camera. This should be a flashlight no bigger than a two AA-battery-size Maglite. The flashlight also needs to have an adjustable beam to achieve different effects.

Make sure your lens is CLEAN and your film washing and drying space DUST-FREE. On some images, I had to remove a number of white spots. On others, I didn't have to. On a few, I left the spots in place so you can see how important it is to have a clean setup for this. The white spots on my images are from dust that got on the emulsion during drying.


20 seconds, f11


8 seconds, f8


20 seconds, f11


20 seconds, f8


20 seconds, f11


I didn't record the polar bear exposures. But pretty soon, given global climate trends, this will be the only way to photograph polar bears -- plastic toys.

Around Town with a Nikon FM

I was very excited to get these shots back from the Nikon FM. Since I did a little work on this camera to repair it, I had concerns as to if it would return good results or not. Fortunately, it did. The lens, a Nikkor-S 1:1.4 is the fastest lens I own and I've come to see the appeal of a fast lens. The viewfinder is bright and focusing is a lot easier than with a slow lens. Also, I forgot my notebook on Tuesday, so I don't have any aperture or shutter data to share. However, using 400 ISO film on a sunny day, I can say I had very few shots below f5.6.










1/10th of a second quicker on the shutter, and this could have been a great shot.


This shot was straight from the camera with no post-processing or cropping.


Another shot straight from the camera. This is a great birding lens.


A self-portrait. Focus wasa bit off, though.