On Wednesday, October 10, 2007 11:54, JOHN DUGGAN wrote:
> Hi all. Some totally on topic advice needed :-)
> In a few weeks I have the opportunity to take photo's in a mining
> museum.
...
The icing on the cake is that I have been given permission to take
> photographs underground (this is VERY rarely given...I have been trying
> to get this for years)
> Even as a mining museum it comes under various mines and factories
> acts. This means that No batteries or electrical equipment is allowed
> undeground (explosion risk) "wind up" mechanical watches only.
> This means obviously no digital cameras, No elecrically dependant
> 35mm film cameras. No metering systems no flash...and of course very
> little light underground.
> How do you take a photo of a black cat in a coal cellar?
>
> First ideas.. OM1n or OM3 or Leica M6..batteries removed. 24, 28 or
> 35mm lens.
> Tripod, fast film..but how fast? Black + white
> At pit bottom, and various places underground there is a low level of
> electric light..and of course I will have an electric head lamp - as
> will my guide.
>
> I intend taking a few Guided trips underground first to try to spot
> possible photographic opportunities before hand but any ideas or advice
> will be gratefully appreciated....I might only have one opportunity for
> this.
>
>
> Regards
> John Duggan,
> Wales, UK
Since you have physical access to the mine multiple times but photographic
access only once I'd break the planning into two parts.
One part would be figuring out exactly what shots want to take. I write them
down and maybe draw a map. The less on the fly thinking you have to do the more
shots you you can get in in a hour or so.
The other part would be determining the technical issues. I think that finding
out what light is available is the critical step. Given that any powered meter
is out and I'd expect multiple second to multiple minute exposures I think I'd
use film as an incident light meter for the parts of the mine that I felt had
some incident light. What I'm thinking is making a light proof envelope where
I could pull the film out and then push it in a timed intervals. If you where
going in second intervals it would be 1 second 2 seconds 4 seconds and so forth
or maybe 10 second units, that would make it 10 20 40 80 etc. I'd have to think
more on it to figure out how to calibrate this to the camera but it is the
start of a suggestion.
Next I'd find a cellar somewhere that I could experiment in and reproduce some
of the mine situations.
My final thought is that if I could I'd do every shot in parallel using two
cameras with exactly the same lenses and settings with the idea that I would
develop one set of film and see how it came out. From there I'd know if I had
to push or pull the other set of film to either get something better or at
least usable. I think an assistant would be very useful if for nothing more
than a pack mule and another light.
I did a little googleing for you. The most productive search term I came up
with is photographing "underground coal mine" . The quotes are important in
getting the search to return related sites and not a haze of other stuff you'll
want to play around with exactly what goes in the quotes.
>From this search I found this link
>http://www.westwatermining.com/library/wolftour.html
On the page I found this as a starting point for you
How I took the photos
I took my photographs using a steel-bodied 35-mm camera, from which the
batteries had been removed. The camera was mounted on a wood-and-brass
surveyor's tripod, for sake of steadiness during long exposures. The camera's
shutter was controlled with a squeeze-bulb made of plastic and rubber, that
would hold the shutter open for the very long exposures that were needed.
Kodak 400-ASA colour negative film was exposed at wide-open lens stops of f-1.4
or f-1.8 depending on the lens being used; exposures of light-coloured rocks
such as sandstone or siltstone were typically 5 minutes long, and for darker
rocks such as coal or mudstone they were 7 or 8 minutes long. I bracketted most
exposures by a minute either way, thus taking three shots of most scenes. The
film was processed normally, with no special 'pushing' or exotic chemistry.
Lighting was supplied by the same miner's headlamp that I used every day I went
down the mine. The only special care I took was to ensure that the lamprack's
meter showed the lamp's battery to be fully charged, and that the lamp's bezel
was kept clean and unsmudged. Since a miner's lamp either gives a little light
in a broad beam or a little bit more light in a narrow beam, I 'painted' each
scene with the lamp, keeping the beam moving across the scene, and dwelling a
bit longer on particularly dark parts of the scene, or on features which I
wished to accentuate in the photograph.
I hope this helps
Doug
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