This is one of the shots I took Sunday at the Vancouver Strobist meet. No, Joe McNally was not anywhere near this shot (long gone at that point). But I like this setup anyway. My buddies Steve and Ian went high with an umbrella for key and another one low for fill against the backlighting of the window. However, I think when I shot this one I might have somehow missed the key light.

I snuck this shot in laying in the back of the crowd of photographers watching Steve and Ian sweat over the positioning. I put a 150mm onto the Mamiya 645, adjusted the exposure to its maximum sync speed of 1/60th and prayed I got it right. When I hit the shutter and the motordrive on the Mamiya went clank - WZZZZZZZZZZ to move the film to the next frame, all of the digital shooters (which is to say: everyone but me) swivelled around going: what the hell was that? Yep, that's me with the dinosaur machine. I got a few questions about shooting with the Mamiya that day but I'm not going to convince anyone to drop their DSLRs.

To me, this shot is mostly ambient from the window, which I think is beautiful. The fill obviously helps otherwise she would be blown out. That whole day I tried to practice hugging in that Mamiya so I didn't lose any shots to jitter because it was just 1/60th. Yes, I know the flash would freeze it, but still. (Also, I can't compensate with the ISO since I am locked in at 160 with the Kodak 160VC film. Some films you can rate differently but I don't think that is the case with this Kodak, though I might be wrong. I'm still very new to film.)

Compare that shot above with this one I made with the 30D.

Every bit as beautiful, but the 30D shot is 2336 x 3504 pixels while the Mamiya shot at the top is 5152 x 6960 pixels. Obviously, on the screen, it's a bit of a non-factor, but if it came to printing ...

More shots to come.