Just Like The Old Days

I wound up getting involved with some folks who ride old Harleys, as in 2000 mile round trips. And yes, there are problems, but when someone has to pull over, everybody jumps on it. We all bring a certain level of skill to it - your loyal webmaster is the rookie. Some of these guys can pick up a bolt or nut & tell you exactly what year & model it came from. Hell, they can probably give it a sniff & tell you where it was made. Getting in the middle of this small crowd was an amazing experience. I've been riding for 50+ years and I don't think I've ever had more fun.

With all this cool rolling stock I decided to honor the history by getting some old "period correct" cameras and see what I could do. I had to guess at focus, f-stop & shutter speed, I discovered the "Sunny 16 Rule", meaning when the sun is shining, set your aperture at 16 and shutter speed at whatever film you're shooting. Coudy, dusk or dark? Good luck. If you want to get a better depth of field; smaller aperture, slower shutter speed. The rest is good guesswork. One of the cameras is a bellows 6X6 (120 film) Franka Solida II, right under here.

The upshot is, one in ten photos actually looked passable, JUST like the old days, so I had to shoot a lot of film to get any decent photos. I try to set my shots up with backgrounds that don't betray the fact that I'm shooting photos MANY decades after the bikes came out of the factory. Even the imperfections add to the historic character of the photos.

I haven't shot any photos since around 2012. I've been in hiding a while & ghosted a lot of fine people, it's time to make amends, fire up the machine & get back in the saddle.