The Sprocket Rocket loves light. I mentioned this before. So Labeauratoire [kromiəm] 500 plus bright sunshine (and bright color) at the 4th of July parade should be just about perfect…
And it was!The first frame came off in Bulb Mode. I checked my settings when I got out of the car, and made sure all cameras were ready to shoot, but the Sprocket Rocket levers are a bit flimsy and easily changed, and it got jostled to the B mode in the walk from the car to where we stopped to watch the parade.
Then, when winding after this one, I wasn’t paying attention and missed the white dot, so I lost a frame to the ether… An expensive mistake, given that Labeauratoire sells his [kromiəm] 500 in 20 frame rolls at $20 for 3 roll, giving me 8 full frames and 2 halfs in the Sprocket Rocket, but oh well. It was worth it, I think.
Vertical pans still don’t work that well, but I couldn’t resist. It was really a beautiful morning, if humid and a little bit hot, and I hoped to capture some of the environment, and I think that worked: the spherical aberration is largely invisible and there’s plenty of interest at all levels of the frame.
I mis-framed badly, though: I hoped to get the “float” (the lady with the flag, riding in the bed of the pickup) more in the center of the frame, and really didn’t want the flag to get chopped off by the sprockets, but oh well.
The parade was fun, and there was a little bit of everyone there: rich, poor, black, white, brown; old and young. It was just like the post office, or Jury Duty. Good times.
Two rolls down, and one more to go… I partied hard at the July edition of the #summerfilmparty! If you want to join in for the August edition, have a read of the rules, and get ready to for shoot week, August 7-13 (I think).
