11/2 - Time Out

Leica M3, Zeiss Planar 50mm f/2, Kodak Portra 400

This was from the summer in my parents' backyard.  I'm not much of a ball sports player, but kicking a ball around sure is fun as hell.  The name of the game was for me to maintain control of the ball, and for my niece and nephew to chase me around until I got tired.

Photographing kids is tough.  They're unpredictable, constantly running in and out of the plane of focus, and never follow instructions.  Sometimes all you can do is wait till they're sitting down next to a plate of food, or until they've just plain run themselves out.  It's nice to catch them during their moments though.

I was using the M3 and I hadn't brought my light meter.  A lot of the stuff from the backyard that day was pretty underexposed.  I didn't want to give up too much depth of field or shutter speed, and it was 400 speed film on an overcast day, so I just went with it.  An extra stop or two would have helped, though.

Also today I took some time to write up this cheap workaround for dim rangefinder patches.  The XA really works a lot better now.