Well, you always ought to be prepared.
Wednesday at 2 pm I learned that not only would we be permitted to
photograph this week's operational missile test shot, we were expected to do
so by our customer. We had to be on site with cameras by 0230 Thursday
morning when the Range internal roadblocks were to be set. I raced out into
the desert in my rent car to catch Scott, our company photojournalist, who
had been uprange shooting and videoing troops setting up the fire unit (his
cell phone wasn't working that far out). I met Scott just inside the gate
to the northern part of the Range and we both headed up to the launch site,
an hour and a half away, to survey the site. I'd shot at that particular
site before but we didn't know how the support vans had been emplaced this
time. Not anticipating that assignment, neither he or I had brought a full
set of equipment. We needed multiple cameras with motor drives and wide
angle lenses (20 or 21 mm). Between us we had 3 OMs, none with winders; a
Hassleblad Xpan panoramic camera; a motored n*k*n wonderbrick; a 21 mm
Zuiko; and nothing wider than 28 in n*kk*r glass. We quickly picked our
places and views and headed back south at 4 pm. As soon as the cell phone
got a signal, we began calling shops in Las Cruces - no time to get to the
wider range of shops in El Paso. The camera repair shop with a case full of
abandoned repairs had nothing wide enough in n*kk*r glass, but a portrait
studio with a sideline camera shop had an OM-2N with Winder 1 on
consignment. We drove into town, looked it over, and bought it (at a pretty
good price) on the company credit card. So, by 6 pm, we had our plan in
place and had a usable Winder 1 on my OM-4T with a Zuiko 21/3.5, an Xpan (1
frame/s built-in motor) with a 40 mm panoramic lens, and a back-up n*k*n
thingie with a 28 mm. We had my travel tripod and a heavy pro video tripod
with double screw platform. No remote cords, but the debris hazard wasn't
too bad at this site so Scott would stay with the cameras and fire the shutt
ers by hand. I would be on station 40 miles away in a warm range control
room Thursday morning, so we were all set.
The shot went off more or less as planned the next morning about an hour
after sunrise (the desert is cold that time of morning in March). Scott got
good exposures on all three cameras by enlisting my safety engineer to fire
the wunderbrick; and handed all the film over to the Range lab.
The pictures? I haven't seen them yet, but I've been informed that the lab
ran the Provia from my OM-4T in their C-41 processor.
Gary ("it's not rocket science") Edwards
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