Moonlight in Wisconsin. Minolta 58mm f/1.4; Kodak Portra 400 film; F/11 for 8 minutes.

Nice image Joe, and of one of my favourite accesories, the trusty cable release! The wood texture is very tactile.

Oh - I forgot to mention the minolta extension tube, the shortest one in the set. Alpha: that was a good question, but no cigar. Now that IS the case in this attached image - another nightshot that was exposed for.. was it 4min or 8min?.. Anyway, in this one I walk right through the shot - up the driveway, through the door, then back out the door and down the drive (It was FREEZIN' out!). But when it come to the cable release picture: I ALWAYS use a thick, black, silk scarf draped over the lens and body while I open the shutter, set the release, then let go of the cable release (and stop it from swinging, if neccisary). ONLY after I've assured that everything is stable (don't forget all the mass swingin' around with the mirror and focal plane shutter) do I slip the silk cover off of the camera to begin the exposure. I even slowly step away from the camera after I begin the exposure. From my experience with aurora and astral photography, as well as my more recent moonlit shots, and experiments with small aperatures and slower films; I've seen how minute vibrations really makes the sharpness suffer. I took some 1sec exposures at a freind's house recently. When we went over the processed roll, we agreed that those shots lacked sharpness. It wasn't focus - we noticed when we stood on the spot where the tripod was, we could feel the refrigerator (just on the other side of the wall) vibrating. We're going to try it again with the fridge off. I'm even thinking about putting a big block of copper between my tripod head and camera for increased mass, and hopefully lower frequencies of resonance. Joe

OH! ..And I forgot another thing: for the cable release on the old ladder step shot, I used some of that 'bas relief' stuff I was talking about in a recent post. This is the ladder to which I refer. Joe

Ha! I was just reading that tute a minute ago (yep, finally got around to it!) I'm going to experiment with some of that stuff tonight (and some other interesting things) Love that ladder Joe. BTW, when are you going to practice that bold text you like in your posts?

OK, let's see here: I'd go like this for bold, like this for italic, and like this for underline?

DECENT! Thanks, PC. Joe

Excellent Joe! :-)>

These are great Joe.....I especially love that ladder shot! Now whose gonna tell me how to do the really cool text stuff thingies!? I wanna be exciting in print too!