It would be easy to forget to remove the lens cap after dark, especially if
manual exposure was used.
geo2
----- Original Message -----
From: Barry B. Bean <bbbean@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, June 13, 2000 7:03 PM
Subject: [OM] Night shooting on Auto - OM-4T
>
> Prior to shooting for this month's TOPE, I'd done very little night
> shooting. My low light shooting has been shooting sports or concerts
> with flash, fast film, or pushed film. Natural looking exteriors
> haven't been anything that came up very often.
>
> But I have had some success with my limited attempts at
> astrophotography (Leonids) by simply setting my OM-4T to Auto,
> underexposing, and letting the camera figure exposure. I ended up
> with a dark, natural looking sky, and good contrasty stars and
> horizon lights.
>
> So on my first attempt to shoot something for TOPE2, I noticed that
> there was a lot of heat lightning one night, drove to a remote bridge
> on the farm (with a great looking cypress tree framing the horizon),
> framed my shot, set to underexpose 2 stops, and let 'er fly. During
> the exposure, anywhere from 2 to 5 flashes of heat lightning would
> occur (sometimes different colors), so I was sure I'd get good shots
> (I was hoping a bolt would hit the cypress tree or a nearby
> irrigation rig, but no such luck).
>
> After shooting a half dozen exposures, I thought I should perhaps
> flash the cypress tree to get it better defined, and freeze motion
> (the wind was blowing pretty strong), so I started my exposure, gave
> it 3 or 4 seconds, and then fired a hand held flash (Sunpack 433D) at
> the cypress tree. Did this a couple of times, had lots of heat
> lightning activity on the horizon, and was sure I'd gotten SOMETHING
> useable.
>
> Unfortunately, when the roll came back from the lab yesterday, there
> were a dozen black frames in the middle of an otherwise normally
> exposed roll. ARRRRRGH.
>
> While it's possible that I shot the shots on another roll,
> accidentally left the camera on manual mode (wouldn't account for the
> 5-10 second exposures), or otherwise managed to commit a serious
> photo-pas, it doesn't seem conceivable that not even one of the shots
> left so much as a trace on the film. Further, the exact same camera
> shot some very nicely exposed night shots in Philly a week later
> (soon to be submitted to TOPE2) on the same settings.
>
> Anyone else ever do this? Did I make a serious mis-calculation? Any
> ideas on what could have happened?
>
> BBB
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