NOTE: All of the following occurred in less than a minute...
I was at a choir concert this past weekend when a gentleman walked up behind and whispered, "Nice Camera, are you a photographer?" Of course he said this while I was shooting, and while the choir was performing. He had startled the heck out of me, as he approached from the right and behind, so I had NO clue he was coming. To his credit, I was at the back of the church, and he was VERY quiet so he only disrupted one person other than me.
I turned to him, admittedly a little annoyed, and before I could say a word, he said sheepishly and somewhat embarrassed, "My camera battery just died. What are your settings?" At that I must have had a rather odd look on my face because he held up his camera (an old Canon AE-1 Film camera) and said, "My battery tells me what my settings should be, and I set it. I just need to know what the settings should be."
Finally realizing what he was asking, I quietly asked, "What is the speed of the film you are shooting?" "400" was his reply. I glanced at him rather shocked because I was shooting at 800 using a 2.8 aperture, a full stop of Compensation and I was only getting shutter speeds around 1/150. (Frankly right on the edge of acceptable hand holding speed for me).
I set to 400, asked him what his aperture was, and he looked at me like a deer caught in headlights. "I'm not sure", was his reply as he held up the camera for me to inspect. I looked at the front of the lens, where I saw 4.0 - 5.6(?). I told him, "You are going to have to set your lens as wide as you can, NOT zoom in and you are still going to be lucky to get anything other than a blurry mess, but I'll set it if you want me to."
He wanted me to and handed me his camera. At 400, set wide with a 4.0 aperture, shutter speed was down to like 1/20. (I don't remember the speed that I set him at exactly, but it was ridiculously slow.) I told him, "I'm not being rude, but you are not going to get clear photos with those settings, your shots are going to be VERY blurry."
"That's OK... I just NEED to take some pictures. Thanks bud." and he walked away. He seemed a little annoyed as well, not with me, just annoyed and embarrassed.
So, I watched him for few minutes. The very first thing he did was zoom in (changing his aperture to 5.6 if he zoomed in all the way which I am sure he did). I listened as he shot. CLACK...............click. I almost wish I could see those pictures, but I understood why he didn't really care, when I saw his wife (I assume that's who she was) nagging him about the shots... "Did you get her? Did you get her?" "Yeah, Yeah, I got her".
After the concert a guy who was sitting near them came up to me and told me she had nagged at him for 10 minutes to take pictures. He tried to explain that they wouldn't come out. He apparently told her, "this film is for outdoors" and her reply was "Film is Film, now take pictures". He apparently resisted until she insisted, "OK if you don't know how to do it, Go ask the REAL photographer over there".
I am so glad that gentleman who was sitting nearby shared (as Paul Harvey says) "The REST of the story". I almost feel sorry for the guy!
