The Selfie Challenge

For a compilation of the morning walk images, click here.

Covid-Era Selfie. August 10, 2020. 25mm F 1.8 lens.

I find selfies to be an amusing way to view the effects of lighting, both indoors and out. Since I have temporarily eschewed the convenience of auto-focusing lenses in favor of the strict regimen required for manually focused lenses, capturing in-focus selfies has proven difficult.

The origins of this system date back to the early days of photography. Way back when, a photographer had only a distance scale on the lens barrel and the ability to accurately judge distance to achieve "sharp focus". I use this term literally, since so many photos taken with folding cameras seldom displayed the sharpness that many of those cameras, despite their relative simplicity, were capable of producing. The savvy photographer would keep a tape measure handy for measuring that critical subject to film-plane distance.

While on my morning walk, I came up with a simple technique that addressed nearly all of the problems associated with manually focused selfies. It dawned on me that if I could consistently position the camera at a distance matching the distance on the lens barrel, I could make reasonably sharp selfies.

To start, let's use a measuring device you probably already  have: your neck strap. 

In this photo, I've hooked the strap on a convenient screw I found in a nearby apartment building. Pulling the strap tight (not taught), I focused on the screw. This will establish critical focus for this specific subject-to-camera distance, which can easily be duplicated. Here's how I did it.

In the left hand photo, I used my right hand to position the neck strap just below my eye and then moved the camera away from my face until all of the slack from the strap was removed. Finally, I dropped the strap from my face and made the exposure with the camera held in my left hand. With practice, you too can portray yourself as the dour curmudgeon of a photographer as seen on the right. Incidentally, I made the shot in aperture priority mode with an ISO of 1600, and as small an aperture as I could get away with. 

While you may not wish to make selfies in this manner, it's a technique that could possibly come in handy. If there is somebody out there using a manual focus film camera who desperately needs to make a selfie, this might just be the ticket.