Though Hal has already left Frankfurt, Germany, again and is on his
trip the United States, he took some pictures here in my home town.
But let me tell you, this wasn't easy. After having spent five weeks
being sent back and forth between Austria and Germany, Hal finally
arrived here late afternoon on Tuesday April 19, 2005. Despite the
postal troubles all his papers were in order and I expected no more
problems.
But Hal was quite a bit in low spirits after that long travel
interruption. Then I made the mistake of telling him that he has just
missed a spell of sunny spring weather AND the annual spring fun fair,
where I had taken other cameras on some trips out. So his mood wasn't
improved and I was stuck with a Mopey Hal. On top of it all it was
soon getting dark and I tried desperately to think of ways to drive
Hal into a picture-taking frenzy -- hell, I had waited long enough for
this camera to arrive and wanted some action.
Then I had a great idea: why not take out the depressed camera to a
local GOTH club? That should be right down Hal's alley! Fortunately
there are quite a lot of goth nights here in the Frankfurt area, even
on a working day. So I decided to shoot a quick test roll with Hal the
check his vitals and make myself familiar with this camera.
As I wrote in my previous post, I have a plastic lens hood that fitted
the filter thread of Hal's lens and seemed to be the right size for
the focal length. So I put the hood on the camera (and possibly
doubling its value) and suddenly Hal looked quite a lot like a
valueable professional camera. To the untrained eye he even might have
looked Contax-esque. Sweet!
As dance clubs are always too dark to shoot with film, I acquainted
Hal with Metzy (a Metz mecablitz 45 CT-5). If you ever need something
to compensate for your anatomy, this is the flash unit to buy. Nothing
screams louder "professional photographer" than the 45CT-5 when
mounted to any camera. And it is powerful enough to light dark
underground clubs with black-painted walls and ceiling by bounce flash.
Thus sufficiently equipped, I took Hal to the goth club. This whole
rig -- camera, lens hood, flashgun -- looked impressingly enough that
everyone assumed that I had the right to take pictures, although I did
not know anybody there. In the course of the evening people would ask
me whether I work for a magazine or do photography for a living. Hal
of course loved the attention. I metered the bounce flash a couple of
times, and then Hal and me were about to have a fun evening.
Some Technical Details and Background Information for
Late Reader:
All pics posted by me where shot with the Halina Paulette electro of
the "Hal wants to travel the World" project initiated by Andrea
Ingram. This camera is equipped with a Halinar Anastigmat 45mm f/2.8
lens that stops down to f/16 and focuses down to 3 feet. The shutter
goes from 1/250th to 1/30th second and has a "B" setting. I used a
roll of Fujifilm Neopan 400 black-and-white film in the camera. All
shots were illuminated by the aforementioned Metz 45-CT5 flashgun
which was bounced at full power straight up against the ceiling.
I always take notes during picture-taking. I write down all
relevant details and find these notes helpful for the evaluation of
the photos. And it gives me a good chance in discovering mistakes of
shutter speed/aperture/distance settings because I made it a habit to
check everything immediately after taking a picture.
All pictures were taken with the shutter set to "B". I had hoped that
I could do some "drag the shutter" on some pictures, but most of the
time I forgot this and therefore the shutter speed should be
relatively fast. Not that this mattered in the poorly lit dance club.
My biggest mistake that evening was that I failed to spot the frame
lines in Hal's viewfinder. Although I did not totally forget
everything I knew about parallax-correction, somehow I assumed that
this wasn't relevant for me, because Hal's lens sure is wider than
what I see in the finder (I had this experience with the frame lines
of my Canonet 28). As all shots were focused pretty close, this lead
to disastrous results. You will see what I mean.
HAL WANTS TO TRAVEL THE WORLD - Diary:
Feb 26, 2005:
Andrea's first posting about the Halina Paulette and a PICTURE
Feb 28, 2005:
Andrea shows more Halina PICTURES and an idea is born...
Mar 10, 2005:
Hal has arrived at Roman in Vienna, Austria
Mar 11, 2005:
Hal's PICTURES of Vienna
Mar 20, 2005:
Hal fails to show up in Germany
Mar 31, 2005:
The long wait continues
Apr 12, 2005:
Hal returns to Roman in Austria
Apr 19, 2005:
Hal has finally arrived in Frankfurt, Germany
Apr 26, 2005:
About the quirks and defects of the Halina Paulette camera
