Fairfield Heights, IL
Years ago I learned not to do a critical task like reloading sheet film holders in the evening at the end of a long day. So here was the scene at my room in a Super 8 a little before six AM on May 23. I'd shot 7x17 film at two theaters the day before, and since I only have three holders that size (2 sheets each) I had to reload to be ready for the next day's theaters. The Harrison Changing Tent (developed originally for the Hollywood film industry to load big 70mm movie film cassettes) is made of high tech materials that are not only light-tight, but anti-static as well. I have less trouble with dust reloading in the tent than in my darkroom back home. The support rods give you lots of room to work once you've gotten your arms in through the sleeves. The problem is that you have to get in and out of the tent multiple times—unload the holders into a download box, open up, clean the holders, put back in the tent with a box of fresh film and reload. Now repeat with the 8x10 format. It takes a while.
If you're stuck with a second floor room and there's an elevator, it helps if the place has a cart, though it only holds about 3/4 of the stuff I have to bring inside each night.
3 comments:
having never traveled with a digital camera, what sort of extra gear has to travel with it? thanks....
Lyle, a bit, actually. I had two Lumix G3 cameras (plus a third one, borrowed from a friend as backup during the trip) with Lumix 14mm, 20mm, 7-14mm, and Olympus 45mm lenses. Of course I needed a computer, which was a 13.3" MacBook Pro. I bought two brand new 500 gig WD compact hard drives for the trip, one to be "captures" and the other "captures bak". Each day I downloaded the two camera cards to the hard drive, renamed the files in a format that dates them in the filename, while preserving the original file name in exif data to cross reference with my handwritten notes. Then ran a backup program to make the second drive identical to the main one. The amount of work I was doing would have filled the MacBook's internal drive in a hurry, and bogged it down even sooner. Both camera batteries got recharged each night so it was convenient to have two chargers, though many hotel rooms have a severe shortage of open electric outlets. Sometimes a heavy shooting day made one of the cameras go to a spare battery so I had to remember to charge that as well. It's all a lot of "overhead" on top of driving and shooting and finding a place to stay.
The 7-14 was my primary lens for digital coverage of the theaters, though the 20mm saw some use for this. A serious tripod was essential for this work. I used a Gitzo that comfortably handles 8x10 inch cameras. The thing is that the camera is so light that all stability has to come from the tripod. Because of the subject matter, a 2-axis bubble level for the camera's hot shoe was essential: everything about the structures at a DI theater is irregular, and often intentionally tilted. Finding level visually is a fool's errand.
Wikipedia on Edward Weston:
"The 8 × 10 he preferred was large and heavy, and due to its weight and the cost of the film he never carried more than twelve sheet film holders with him. At the end of each day, he had to go into a darkroom, unload the film holders and load them with new film. This was especially challenging when he was traveling since he had to find a darkened room somewhere or else set up a makeshift darkroom made from heavy canvas."
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