Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1997/03/29
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]LUGnuts: Just back from job in Arizona shooting boats for ads and brochures and one part of job was to do them from helicopter. We were flying sideways10-20 feet over boats, I was in harness and standing on the landing rails. I was shooting with N90ss (how DO you make that plural?) and would sit back in to change film, but still the wind was whipping around. I've found the N90s to be difficult to load. The leader must be very precisely placed--not too short, not too long--with in a quarter inch or no auto load. With the wind inside the chopper it was very difficult to get things loaded. The film would flip back, get squashed between the back and the body, etc. I could have handed body to assistant and use a new loaded one, but that meant I had to change both lens and the attached gyro. I did this once in frustration, but there is a risk of dropping lens or gyro. The Nikon F3 or the R7 would have been quick and positive to load, especially the R7. I wonder about the R8. Anyone had any experience with this?? Is there a way to circumvent the autoload?? How sensitive to length is it (no bawdy jokes please!)? Does the curling of the film cause problems? When you are paying $500/hr chopper time, and the boats can only run so far before you have to turn around, a few seconds makes a huge difference. Just FYI: For metering, with sun behind me I used incident reading (camera matrix meter gave 1 1/2 stops under because of white boats). For against sun with sparkles on water, opened up one stop (which corresponded to meter reading). Every frame perfectly exposed. Was shooting at 1/125th and with gyro and boats at 40mph, the boat wakes are blurry and the water sparkels look like star trails and the boats (with occasional exceptions) are sharp. Cause for serious celebrations at light table. With sound effects. Donal Philby San Diego