Photography, Short and Sweet

For a long time now I have wanted to take photos of my models. I have been using the shoot from the hip phone captures, or the images from my digital camera. What I wanted was a real honest to goodness photo like you see in the magazines. You know, the ones where everything in the frame is in focus. These photos are taken with an infinite depth of field. The problem is getting there.

I was able to make such photos using my 35 mm Pentax, but I used a pinhole diaphragm I made with a plastic disc. I cut the disc to fit behind my UV filter using a compass/dividers. This allowed me to create a circular form with a tiny hole in the exact center. It worked OK. It had one issue, however. You needed a LOT of light to take the photo.

Then a couple of years ago my son in law gave me his Nikon F100. He had purchased a new digital and the F100 is a film camera. I didn't mind at all. The only difference was the film. The camera had all the bells and whistles one could ever want. Autofocus, autoeverything. Trouble is, I had no clue how to use it. I studied the manual, but decided to just use the thing with the factory settings. Really could not learn how to use all those buttons, switches and levers. A whole lot to remember.

Some months ago, maybe two, I was going thru my old Model Railroader magazines. I came across an article written by John Allen in July of 1946. That changed everything. I don't know if you have ever seen any articles on photographing minatures, but they usually entail A, start off as a rocket scientist or B, modify the camera in some way. B seems to include tearing apart a perfectly good camera. I'm pretty sure that this would lead to a totally useless camera. No joy there. Mr Allen's article makes no mention of this. The article is about two pages long and relates how you can take photos with infinite depth of field. No modifications or degree in quantum physics required.

John describes how you use the camera settings, particularly the f stop, to increase the depth of field. He also created this chart of exposure times...

John Allen's Exposure Chart

So I grabbed the F100 and went out to the layout. I have two lenses for the camera, both automatic. One of them is a macro lens. This is sort of an all inclusive lense system that can zoom from f2.2 out to infinity. I chose this one first because it had the lowest f stop of the two. I set the camera for aperature priority (requires one button) and started taking pictures. This is the best I could get using f2.2 with the macro...

Macro Lens f2.2 Aperature Priority

It's pretty obvious this isn't what I was looking for. Everything in the foregound and the background is out of focus. I tried a few more times with the macro lens and always got the same results. For the last four frames I switched to the standard lens and set it a f3.2, again with aperature priority. Presto magico...

 Standard Lens f3.2 Aperature Priority

Aside from using too much light this is exactly what I was hoping for. To top things off, I didn't have to use John's chart. I let the F100 worry about the exposure time. The film I used was from Walgreens, ISO 200 (I think). The field of view is perfect...

Voila!

If there's one drawback, it's waiting for Walgreens to develop the film. I don't think I want my own darkroom.

Regards,
Frank Musick