Midnight Mass 2011

[farlymac]

This last Christmas, I was able to go to Midnight Mass at Saint Andrew's Cathedral, in Roanoke, VA. It had been a while, as I'm usually in Indiana for the holidays. The decorations seemed just right, and the hour of music before mass was excellent. I wanted to get a photo of the nativity set that was built by the Vietnamese members of the parish, but there were a lot of folks hanging around in front of it after the mass, so I thought I'd get a picture later. Hopefully it's still up, as I didn't make it last week, being a bit out of sorts.

I took these with a Canon Sure Shot 120 Classic, using expired Fuji 400 X-TRA. I kept the flash off, and hoped the shutter speeds wouldn't be too long. Saw a lot of other folks with their little digital p&s's and cell phones flashing away. They probably got a lot of the backs of people’s heads, and not much else. I'm surprised at the color in these, what with all the artificial illumination. It's not far off from what I saw, but the blue in the altar nave doesn't really shine like it should. Not a bad trade off though. I did use some increased contrast in PSE8 to get rid of any 'snow' in the scans (CVS on a Kodak CD). The 120 Classic is a fine camera, and I hope it lasts a bit longer. It had some issues when I got it, and some new ones have cropped up since then. I had it in my shirt pocket one warm day, and when I pulled it out to take a shot, there was moisture condensed all over the back of the camera. Normally, this wouldn't mean a thing, but the Canon has a control dial on the back, and I think some of the moisture got in there, and scrambled a circuit. So the self timer, and date function no longer work. The timer I'll miss, but the date function I can live without. I've other cameras that still have it if I ever need to use that feature. And the dater doesn't work very well on the slower speed films I prefer anyway.


St Andrew's Midnight Mass 2011 #1 by br1078phot, on Flickr


St Andrew's Midnight Mass 2011 #2 by br1078phot, on Flickr


St Andrew's Midnight Mass 2011 #3 by br1078phot, on Flickr


St Andrew's Midnight Mass 2011 #4 by br1078phot, on Flickr


St Andrew's Midnight Mass 2011 #5 by br1078phot, on Flickr


St Andrew's Midnight Mass 2011 #6 by br1078phot, on Flickr

PF

 

[pggunn]

Beautiful! Impressive results from a little point and shoot with expired film, and I enjoyed your commentary too.

 

[gb hill]

Beautiful cathedral. The film did very good. I like this look you got from the 400 Fuji color film. I shot this with my Bessa R & kodak UC400 no flash. Like you I wasn't too sure how it was going to come out.

 

[Austintatious]

Wonderful shots with the Canon 120 Phil ! It seems to do quite well indoors with no flash.
Question... did you zoom in on any of these or were these at the wide end of the lens?
Zooming in will usually cause the camera to stop down quite a bit, making it more
difficult to shoot indoors.

Charles

 

[farlymac]

Wonderful shots with the Canon 120 Phil ! It seems to do quite well indoors with no flash.
Question... did you zoom in on any of these or were these at the wide end of the lens?
Zooming in will usually cause the camera to stop down quite a bit, making it more
difficult to shoot indoors.

Charles

If I recall correctly, these were mostly shot at the wide end. The last shot of the altar definitely was zoomed a little bit, and they are all crops from the originals.

Thanks GB and PG. I was somewhat confident in the outcome because of the long minimum speed on the 120 and decent maximum aperture. I was tempted to shoot some 800 speed stuff, but was not looking forward to all the grain. Might be okay in b&w, but not color.

PF