Hey all. Last night I got to go to that Halloween party I was talking about in an earlier thread.

As you may or may not know, I decided to go as Weegee. Complete with a Speed with a Polaroid 545 back and 40 packets of Polaroid 53.

It went REALLY well.

For the whole package, I had the Speed, a 135 Graflex, and an old Sunpak 511 flash. All told I could get about 12 feet of light at f/22. Which was fine. I shot of course with the front shutter.

This was my first time really shooting without the ground glass. I got my Graphics as a cheap way to get into LF and use them really as view cameras. So this was very new to me.

Following some advice I got here, I shot using the focus scale on the bed, and stopped down. I also used the framing bracket on the front and the little gun sight on the back. This worked really well. I just kept the camera at about 8 feet and shot from around 8 feet. Nothing was out of focus. And the Sunpak did REALLY well considering this was a taxing job. In fact it rarely had to recharge.

The best part of shooting was that I could give people a print right there, and they seemed AMAZED that the camera actually worked and was real.

All in all it was a great night and I learned a lot about shooting quickly and doing what I needed to do. I have a new respect for all the press shooters of the past.

Been wanting to get that snap brim hat with the "PRESS" card in the brim.

I'm gonna do it!