Rangefinder Magazine
October 2005

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Rf Cookbook by Michael Campbell
The Immaculata

I wanted to give my Fujifilm FinePix S3 Pro a run for its money and decided to photograph a church interior. The most impressive church I could think of in San Diego is on the campus of University of San Diego: the Immaculata. I used to shoot ceremonies there—the days when I was foolish enough to photograph weddings (before I discovered there are easier ways to kill myself).

As quick as thought itself, I sprang into my trusty Honda, whizzed down to the campus, and parked illegally, which is the only way to park there without a permit, (they don’t seem to want to encourage visitors), and snuck into the church. It appeared deserted. All the lights were off. I had never seen it so dark and thought to myself I had wasted my time as there was no way I could shoot in a gloom like the depths of some Acheronian forest. There fell upon my roseate lips a stygian hue, to paraphrase Wordsworth. But here I was, so I thought I might as well fire off a quick couple of snaps anyway.

I thought I could hear someone moving about in the dim hinterland at the far end of the church, so I crossed myself and tried to look suitably devout while putting up the old Gitzo and attaching my Tamron 14mm, frightfully wide-angle lens. It is a marvelous bit of technology. It looks like part of a fortune-teller’s crystal ball mounted on a Nikon bayonet. Because of the curved shape, it can’t use a regular lens cap and instead wears a sort of little soft hat like the ones falconers put on Peregrine falcons to make them think it’s nighttime. I put the lens on the S3 camera and whipped off its hat. “Time to wake up!” I told it.

I had no time to do fancy exposure evaluation stuff, even if I had known what to do. Frankly, the whole thing looked like a nonstarter from the outset, but, like Napoleon, I can commence and persevere without hope of success.

I simply put the camera on Auto everything and pressed the shutter, several seconds later I heard the soft “kerrchunk” of the mirror resetting, and I sensed something important was going on inside the camera. Suddenly on the LED a beautiful, clear, colorful image popped up. I could see so much more detail in the LED than I could see squinting at the real thing. It was such fun I did it again, same thing: amazing.

Back at the ranch, I loaded the image into the G5 and found an amazing amount of detail, the light was all entering the church via little stained glass windows, and the S3 did a terrific job of keeping detail in the glass and the neighboring stonework as well as in the wooden pews.