I photographed this roseate spoonbill taking a bath in Myakka River State Park, Florida. I remember this shot very clearly because my tripod broke into two pieces just after I pressed the shutter (Gitzo accused me of abusing their tripod when I sent it in, but all I did was spread the legs for stability. The composite metal of the base plate broke in half. This is why I’ve never used a Gitzo since then -- not because of the failure of the metal but because of the company’s attitude.) In the 90’s I was still shooting with the Mamiya RZ 67 (a medium format film camera), and the fastest shutter speed it had was 1/400. That’s why you can see streaks of water drops and blur in the feathers. I was shooting as low to the ground as possible to gain this intimate angle. Even though this picture was taken about 25 years ago, and the settings weren’t recorded, I know I used the fastest shutter available to me -- 1/400 -- and given the film speed I used for all of my wildlife photography -- 100 ISO -- that means based on the light, the lens aperture would have been between f/5.6 and f/8. I used Fujichrome Provia transparency film.
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