During the recent full moon, I decided to go out early in the morning to capture some images. The moon was setting at 6:39 am and the sun rise was around 7:15. So I went to a point in San Francisco that has a view of Marin Headlands which one can get to by crossing the Golden Gate Bridge.

I made the choice of capturing the lighthouse and its surroundings with a zoom lens set at 200 mm. The lens was closed down to f22. The shutter release was set to bulb and opened for 20 min at an ISO of 100. Now for a digital sensor to absorb light for that time may produce unwanted effects, but I tried it anyway. There are others who crank the ISO up to 800, 1600, 3200, etc., but I wanted to try it at 100.

This is what showed up. The image is cropped about one third of the whole picture. Even at 200 mm there is more water, land to each side and sky. The moon was full and shining from the left of the picture and setting over the Pacific Ocean. There is no lightening of the picture, but there was a flaw to the far left of the cropped area is a magenta blotch. The num-nut photographer forgot to cover the eyepiece while the 20 minute exposure was happening. The other time I've seen the magenta blotches is using a ND filter that does not have infrared filtering. With something like a 10-stop ND, infrared waves still penetrate and make some things magenta. If you are converting to black and white, not a big deal.

Well that's it for now. Just try to go out there and try different things. Most of all, have fun. Hope the one or two of you reading this enjoy it.

Last week I was out practice shooting with a medium format camera. The morning was crisp, the sun low in the sky and some beautiful clouds in the sky. I went about shooting with the thought that the camera had ISO 400 film in it. So the meter was set to measure light levels at ISO 400. A roll of 12 shots reeled off and I got home to unload the camera. To my dismay, I found the film to be ISO 100. Oops.

In film development, I have been using Xtol with the T-max film and develop for 10 minutes. To push the development 2-stops, I increased it to 13 minutes, 1.5 min for each stop. What came out was the black and white set in "Recent Work". I like the look, but don't know if that's what properly exposed 100 film would look like with regular processing or the same with 400 film. Here is one of the images. I guess I'll have to go and shoot 100 film correctly and compare.

Everything is about learning. Here are a couple of links to websites worth a visit if you are interested in photography. You may be one of two people reading this and familiar with them already. The Art of Photography is hosted by Ted Forbes and the site is full of videos, about 100+, all about photography. It is an excellent place to learn. Luminous Landscape has tons of articles about photography gear and other aspects of the art. Hope you enjoy them.

The Art of Photography

Luminance Landscape