As usual, a few more photos on my blog than I show here:
http://www.richardmanphoto.com/blog/?p=3098
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Nov 2nd evening, I really wanted to use the XPan as long as possible. First I put in ISO1600 Neopan film. Unfortunately, the lens are slow unlike the Leica lens (the Leica photos from the same night
can be seen here). At their fastest speed of F4 and F5.6, the XPan lens are 3 stops slower than the F1.4 Leica lens, meaning that the XPan lens needs as much as 8 times the light level. Eventually I put on a flash (which I never do with the Leica), but only got at most one or two keepers from using the flash. I can try using a bigger flash next time or just use my Leica (or give up
).
This really is an experiment for me. Very few people shoot street photography / photojournalism with a Hasselblad XPan, and fewer still use a flash. I wouldn’t say the flash is a success, but only that it has potential. The panoramic frame is so wide that a successful image must either have a good main story situated in the environment or that there are multiple good supporting sub stories around the main story. It’s difficult to take good street photos even with a regular camera and using the XPan makes the difficult genre even more challenging (i.e. it takes more than a picture of someone walking down the street to make a good street photograph), but I am going to keep working on it. I hope you enjoy the effort.
Nov 2nd apparently was also Dia DeLos Meurtos, so a few people were celebrating the “Day of the Dead” as well. I sat with the Buddhists a bit, doing Za Zen, and there were quite a number of kids there, before the night ended.
