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Seven hours of my feet.
18 photos with the Speed Graphic.
72 Photos with the 124G.
96 Color photos with my M3.
128 B&W photos with my M3.

Longest single outing I think I’ve ever had, and the first where I got to wear an actual badge saying “Official Photographer” and I’m surprisingly not as a sore as I expected. I’ll probably regret tomorrow though.

As promised, here are my results from the Duluth Classic bike race. Full set of keepers can be viewed in this set on my flickr page.

More photos by clicking here.

So it seems that the course for third stage of the Duluth Classic Bike Race goes right in front of where I am living. I had no clue until about 9:30 this morning when I looked out of my front window and seen a massive swarm of bikes going past.

I loaded up some grafmatics for my Speed Graphic and slung my M3 over my should and went to investigate. I’ll post my results when I get them processed.

Last week I caught wind of an Iraq War protest being held a block away from where I work, and was conveniently starting right when I would be leaving the office. I grabbed my M3, a pocketful of hp5+, and attended the rally to do some rogue photojournalism.

The entire set can be seen on my Flickr page. This set to be specific.

I recently purchased a Classic Softrelease from Tom Abrahamsson at rapidwinder.com for my M3. As-is the shutter release is very smooth, and quite easy to release, but I wanted it to be even more effortless. Would be especially useful for when I’m shooting with gloves in the winter, or want to set off the shutter by just giving the camera an evil glare.

Browsing the various forums for user feedback on Tom’s release, the negative comment often came up that the release makes it really easy to take pictures when you don’t want to. For example, like when the camera is in a case. Many people just deal with it as a trade-off for , and others couldn’t stand it, and stopped using the release all together. I knew I wanted the large surface release, so I ordered mine to see if I was one of the people who could deal with it or not.

Shooting with the release was a dream. It gave my M3 exactly the feel I was looking for, but as time passed, I noticed I had to often cock the shutter before taking a shot. I processed the first roll that I shot with the Abrahamsson release and started counting. One, Two, Three . . . . Seven misfired frames on a roll of thirty-six! And possibly more that were taken uncapped with the camera in focus hanging around my shoulder that I can’t distinguish from my normal sloppy street photography.

19% wastage seemed a bit unruly, but I really like the feel, so I wasn’t going to give up on. The immediate options were to not cock the shutter after shooting each frame, or to remove the release for transportation. Neither solution was something I wanted to pursue.

So, sitting here late at night I found a small hair tie left by one of my female friends. I looked at it, then I looked at my M3. A light bulb flicked on, and I believe the problem has been solved.

With the hair tie wrapped under the release three-four times, I physically cannot apply enough pressure to the button to have it shoot a frame. Yet, it connected very loosely and can easily be removed in one second. I threaded it through the ring on my strap lug, and it will always right there, ready to prevent my camera from shooting when I don’t want it to.

I’ll try this for a few weeks and report back.