Acros; Day Two

I used the second half of my roll of Acros in the Retina I during a walk through the riverside woodland.  The sky was hazy and produced nice light in the cottonwood forest, but presented a challenge for the little viewfinder.  Most of the shots required an aperture of f8 or f5.6; that worked ok for subjects at a range of ten or fifteen feet, but anything closer got rendered sharply mostly by luck.  The Retina I has a very smoothly operating shutter release, so I was comfortable shooting it as slow as 1/25, but that still did not get me acceptable and predictable depth of focus. 

Had I given a bit more thought to my equipment and where I was taking it, I could have brought home quite a few more good shots.  For instance, I have a couple of accessory rangefinders that could have given me sufficient precision in focusing on my subjects.  An even better solution would have been to mount the Retina I on a tripod, allowing the possibility of shooting at the smallest aperture of f16.  At a focal distance of three feet that provides a depth of focus of about a foot, while at a distance of six feet the sharp focus zone has a depth of over four feet.   All of that information is made available on the dof scale on the bottom of Retina I.  Next time, I'll pay closer attention.

All of which is not to say that I considered the experience a failure.  I learned something, and I spent a couple hours wondering through the cottonwood forest admiring the lush mid-summer vegetation, oblivious to the cares of the world.  Then, I went home and spent about six hours processing the film, scanning the negatives, editing the pictures and writing up my ideas about the experience.  All good.