Night Stalkers

 I live in the typical California urban neighborhood, the homes are about 16 feet apart, separated by a 5 foot, wooden privacy fence.  (I use the word "privacy" loosely.)  Anyway, my neighbor was describing unusual nighttime activity occurring on his back fence, the noise of an unseen animal, and a barely seen figure looming in the dark.  

I have a Stealthcam which I've used on trails around our neighbor and have captured images of deer, coyote, and bobcat in the canyons.  I decided to set up the camera on my fence looking toward the area where my neighborhood has seen and heard the unusual activity.  I wasn't convinced that coyotes or bobcats were lurking about.

I've seen coyotes strutting down the street, oblivious to the humans who have taken over his space.  They've rewards us by killing our small pets; we've lost four cats over twenty years at the teeth of the coyote.  I saw on my Ring camera two of them chase a poor cat to our door then savagely kill it. 

So, after two nights of filming the dark, I checked the SD card and was rewarded:

A bobcat peering into the lens of my Stealthcam.

The bobcat sauntering down the fence line toward my neighbor's residence.

The familiar possum walks the fence.

The ghost of the neighborhood.

Using Film

 

Film… do you remember?  Yeah, film. The stuff encased in a cassette that you put in a camera, expose, and then have it developed in a lab.  Analog, not digital.  You use a camera to take a picture, not a cellphone.  And you have to wait till it is developed to see what you captured. 

I have a number of old film cameras in my collection which I used to use back in the pre-digital days.  They sit on a shelf in my office; a small fridge is stuffed with unexposed film.  I occasionally look at both and think, mmm maybe I should go back to doing some film work.

The other day, I just happened to see a You-tuber discussing using a film camera to make some interesting images.  He was a Noblex panorama camera; a rotating-lens pano camera in both medium format and 35mm models. 

I had a poor-man’s rotating-lens pano camera, a Zenit Horizon 202, 35mm camera which I bought twenty years ago to take wedding photos which would be different than the usual images which were normally given to the bride.  I especially liked the images taken at the beach, the bride’s veil flowing behind as she and her groom strolled the beach.

Shortly after buying the Horizon, digital photography began sweeping the photo world and all the great film cameras were being shelved.  Including all of mine. 

The Horizon has a fixed 28mm f2.8 lens; there is no focus to deal with as it is set to infinity.  This can be a problem if you are shooting a subject close-up.  The only way to deal with minimum focus is to set the aperture at various f-stops which will allow you different depths of field.  F16 will yield a minimum of three feet to infinity focus.   There are six shutter speeds on the camera.  So, it is truly a manual camera.

So early this week I went out with the Horizon, went to the Oceanside, California pier and shot three rolls:  two black and white, one color.  I had the images processed and scanned at North Coast Photographic Services in Carlsbad, CA. 

Several things:  I used a hand-held light meter to make exposure readings to strive for some accuracy.  Remember, there is no digital screen to review your work.  Due to the cost of film and processing, you don’t take “lots of images” of the same subject to get the best one; you find the subject, you decide on composition, and you make the exposure. 

Secondly, the “horizon” must be level if you want a decent image.  There is a bubble level built into the viewfinder to help level the camera.  It really helps your compositions.  (Of course, you can break the rule for a unique image.)  Also, there are some banding issues and artifacts which occur to the film, including some “light leaks,” which can be worked on in Photoshop.

On a roll of 35mm film, if you remember back to those days, you have a rectangle of 24mm x 36mm on the film surface.  With the Horizon pano camera, the image is twice as wide and uses “two rectangles” of space for one image.  (NOTE:  If you have a lab process your film make sure you tell them not to cut it in strips as it may cut through a pano image!!)

I love doing “street photography,” looking a images of ordinary things happening around me.  Here are some samples from my photo shoot (I plan on using the camera more in the next few weeks):