I’m a professional photographer based in Amsterdam, and while I love photography and photographing our family moments, I do not love lugging my giant Nikon and zoom lens everywhere I go. I don’t love having my work backpack with me on fun trips, and it quite literally ruins my outfit and personal life.
Enter my secondhand Fuji Film camera with a €60 manual focus lens. The whole set up was around €500, and while that seems like a lot, it’s truly nothing compared to the price of professional gear. And it fits in my purse. So, here are my photos from the Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama. This was my first experience using completely manual focus on moving targets, so enjoy the blur!
Space and Rocket Center
The IMAX Theater
(We sadly did not watch the Odyssey in IMAX, we watched a 45 minute informational on black holes. Still cool though!!)
Photography Tips
I’ve learned that being able to actually see if something is in focus or not is actually difficult to do in the dark. Older manual focus cameras have difficulty focusing in the dark, and it turns out, so do I. The best tip is to really get familiar with the focus ring’s distances on the actual lens. You’ll be able to intuitively know how far away your subject is after practicing a bit.
Another tip for photographing in dark rooms, use your flash and set your shutter to 1/2 or 1/3 of a second. You can get some nice light trails in the background by dragging your camera but the flash freezes your subject. It’s not a technique I use in my professional photography at all, but I have a lot of fun with it in my personal work.
Operation Paperclip
Also, because we live in a complicated world, here is some information about Operation Paperclip and Wernher von Braun, one of the top scientists at NASA after WWII.
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