Vol. 15 No. 3 March 2004

Refocus That Please - by Bill Moll

This month’s program will be Club Competition Night. For the first time in many years, the competition will be a theme competition. After some discussion in January, the club decided to make “Georgia” the theme. The images can be people, scenery, buildings, events, etc. depicting Georgia. This will also provide a good start on a proposed new club slide program. Having the “Georgia” theme opens up the possibility of getting showings around the state to promote 3D in general and the ASA in particular.

After the competition, Ted Baskin will give a workshop on Sputnik cameras. Ted has worked with the cameras extensively, providing repair services and light-leak repair kits. If you have seen his slides, you know that he does good work. Medium format provides 4 to 5 times the slide area of a Realist slide, so the images can be awesome.

Ted writes:

“Invite anyone who has a Sputnik to bring it. I have a simple shutter speed tester that I bought from Calumet for those who'd like to have the shutter speeds tested.

You may or may not be surprised, but the speeds on these cameras vary greatly. Of the ones I've seen that fired at the advertised 1/125th sec, none of them had both sides going that fast. In some cases, the difference is so great that the fastest speed is unusable. The fastest one I've seen where both sides fired at the same speed was about 1/110th sec. Most Sputniks will fire around 1/80th sec at their fastest setting. Luckily, most will fire at the same speed up to the 1/60th sec setting, although they really fire at about 1/50th sec on that setting.

Right now, I have no idea how to adjust the speeds to make them work as advertised, but the information obtained from testing the speeds will help everyone get more accurate exposures.”

The meeting is the 2nd Friday of this month – March 12. Dave Horton will provide the refreshments. We will meet at 7:30 PM at the Congregational Church @ 2676 Clairmont Road (about 1 1/2 blocks south of I-85) This is the Church up the winding road, through the woods. If you have any questions, call Bill @ 706-859-7726.

There were 21 people at the February meeting for the PSA Traveling Show and Steve Hughes’ slide mounting demonstration. After the demo, we discussed what other workshop programs would be useful and came up with several good topics. I am still reconstructing files from a computer crash and will discuss those topics in next month’s newsletter.

Refreshments:

March Dave Horton

April Bert Arps

May Les Heyward

September Dodo Griffith