Hillsborough Memorial Day Music Festival

At the last Pre- Pandemic Memorial Day Celebration, I made photos of the annual Hillsborough Parade, and I manage to capture a golf cart carrying the honored Veteran Of The Day while on route to the Music Festival. That photo was a nice contrast to the one of some youngsters planting flags at the Golden Gate National Cemetery in San Bruno two days earlier. Those two photos ran as a pair on the front page, and summed up the spirits of both remembrance and celebration.

Now any photo that includes an army vehicle, a child, and a flag will always be a safe photo to submit. The top photo was one of the first I made at the festival itself, and it combined all of the key components, plus the tiniest hint of a smile on my young subject's face as he accepts the small flag. The shot is overexposed, but otherwise reasonably composed. 

With that shot "in the can", I decided to try to make a photo that emphasized some of the other activities enjoyed by the guests. I went looking for something different, and found that one of the local high schools had a robotics club, and they sent along their creations for a "show and tell".

My young friend can be seen controlling a small robotic rover using the smart pad he's holding. It's a fun shot, but in retrospect, doesn't have any Memorial Day context to help the shot along. I actually thought that this photo would be selected by my editor to run as the Parade Photo. It was ultimately rejected. Incidentally, the small rover is small enough to fit in the palm of an adult's hand.

The robotics club also brought out a rover that could scoop up two balls that were rolled to it, and would then randomly launch them in the direction of the crowd. I put the camera in burst mode, and was able to capture a sequence of shots of the ball (or balls) being caught.

If the photo was printed large, there would be lots of recognizable subjects that could potentially please a lot of families. This photo was the second rejected photo, most likely because it failed to bring the Memorial Day theme forward. Fun yes, relevance no. For the record these two photos were forwarded to the Robotics Club for their use, a good tactic for getting cooperation from those people who could actually do things to  help the process along.

I'm glad the first shot was made, as it gave me a "money shot" that I could always submit if nothing better came along. I still wince a bit at the exposure, but the photo told the Memorial Day story, loud and clear.

Too Old To Play With Toys?

My camera was also red. Photo Source: click here.

New Lens Fever: Playing with my "Muse Of The Minute" Fuji 24mm F 8.0 lens was the most fun I had since playing with my last new lens a few weeks ago. I made 30 exposures in an hour's time, which is a pretty good take for one morning. The Fuji lens gave me the same burst of enthusiasm I had when I took my (then) new Sabre 620 roll film camera to the Fleishhacker Zoo on an elementary school field trip in 1959. When I carried it, I was now a Big Boy, just like my photographer father. The camera was loaded with a twelve-exposure roll of black and white Kodak Verichrome film, so I was careful to pace my picture taking so I wouldn't "run dry" too early in the day. If memory serves me, I was the only kid who brought a camera, which made the event very special.

Finally my roll of film was developed. When I examined the negatives, I recognized one shot: a photo made while looking down into the sea lion enclosure. I imagined the animal would be much larger, but due to the distance, it was too small to be significant. I was as disappointed as any ten-year old had a right to be, but it taught me a valuable lesson about distance and image size. It had never occurred to me that the image might not even be in focus. 

The Relevance: That Sabre's lens had something in common with the Fuji's: It was set so that everything from six feet to infinity would be in focus. Also, the aperture was sufficiently small to insure "sharp" focus within that range. The Sabre had an undocumented exposure time, probably around 1/100 of  second. Verichrome was very forgiving when it came to overexposure. Based on the Sunny Sixteen rule, the brightest possible daylight exposure would be just right for the Sabre's fixed exposure time and aperture setting. On the other hand, the Fuji can take advantage of Aperture Priority exposure automation to precisely determine the proper exposure time. Coupled with the Fuji body's ability to select the ISO sensitivity, you can fine tune the brightness of the final digital image when necessary.

Photo Source: click here.

The fun factor that is factory infused into the Fuji lens started me thinking about similarly sized body cap lenses. While I'm not retiring my Fuji body cap lens any time soon, the idea of these super-compact lenses started me thinking about others that might be available. Fickle is my middle name.

My newest lens is a Pergear 10mm F 8.0 Fisheye lens. At about $80.00, it costs about as much as the Fuji 24mm F 8.0 did when I bought it before the pandemic. It has the same compact form factor as the Fuji lens, but is significantly wider (10mm vs. 24mm) and has a unique lever that allows "focusing" as close as 0.3 meters, or about one foot. It's also an APS sensor fisheye lens, so the images will be full frame, not round, and will render the typical curved straight lines at the edges of the frame. Now this will be my third super-wide manual focused Fuji X-mount lens, so I already have a feel for working at close distances.

Rockstar 10mm F8 II Fisheye, Gizmon Wtulens 17 mm F16 Wide Angle,7artisans 18mm F 6.3 mm UFO Lens, Funleader 18mm F8 Full Frame Pancake Lens

An Embarrassment Of Riches: There are four other body cap lens available from Chinese manufacturers that are similar in size to the Pergear. All can be had for less than $100.00 if you shop around. It seems that EBay is the sales platform of choice, as they represent too small a market for most major retailers to carry in inventory. All of these lenses indicated they would be shipped directly from China. I ordered my lens from Amazon, and the delivery was promised delivery in 5 working days.

Meanwhile...

Fuji 24mm F 8.0 has a minimum practical subject distance of 2 meters.

Minimum Subject Distance: For what it's worth, the Fuji 24mm F 8.0 appears to have a minimum practical subject distance of 2 meters. This image demonstrates that closeup photos aren't an option. Hopefully the focusing lever on the new Pergear, which has a .5 meter minimum distance setting, is accurate.

Cross Stars: On June 7, I caught a bit of sunlight filtering through the clouds, and grabbed a quick shot using the Cross Star option on the Fuji. The sun is just outside of the frame.

More will follow when the Peargear lens arrives.