Herman Krieger on his 'bent
TOP reader Herman Krieger recently took a tour on his Bike Friday recumbent of the Ruth Bascom Riverbank Trail System along the Willamette River near Eugene, Oregon. Of course, being a photographer, Herman took his latest camera along: a modified Ansco box camera with what he thinks might possibly be the world's thinnest prime lens! Here it is:
In order to make use of TMax 400 film, he didn't want to be stuck with the camera's native 1/25th shutter speed and aperture of about ƒ/16, so he used black electrical tape to decrease the size of the circular shutter slit and and reduced the size of the aperture behind the shutter with a taped-on washer. The changes hot-rodded the camera's performance to about 1/125th at ƒ/22.
How'd the pictures "come out"? Well, see for yourself, although if you're a fan of Herman's work the captions might seem shocking (there isn't a pun anywhere). There are three sets of photographs. In all three, the river, skies, clouds, trees, and what looks to be splendid weather figure prominently—as do bicycles, which appear in a preponderance of the pictures.
Herman Krieger, Mile Post Two, East Bank Path
The box camera negatives were scanned and sepia-toned in Photoshop. "Other than that," Herman says, "there was minimal sharpening or manipulation of the images."
As for me, I'm taking Saturday off again, and I hope to emulate Herman on a section of the Fox River Trail if the weather's nice. Hope you have a great weekend, wherever in the world you are. See you on Sunday.
Mike
(Thanks to Herman)
