Antique & Classic Cars Blog

Aware of the hardcopy Locals in Motion pieces Jim Bohen and I do on the local car scene, Bo Vescio invited me up to Rogers to check out his shop, Vescios Customizing and Restoration. When time permits, pro photographer Tom Witta from the paper will join me on a shoot, but this time I didn’t give him enough notice.

My 10 megapixel Olympus Stylus digital is a smart little machine and usually up to the task. This shoot was an exception. There are lots of cool projects underway here that I hoped to show everyone. Yet the camera started seeing spots. A first guess for why was a dirty lens (or lens filter).

But the spots moved, changing size, number, and position in the frame. I cleaned the lens (filter–it’s not removable) to little avail. The spots still appeared randomly, typically in shots that involved a dim foreground with a bright light in the background.

This is a restoration shop, so there is sanding dust in the air. Still, the behavior is hard to explain through either floating particles or something in a fixed position on the lens. Too bad, because there was a cool ‘68 Charger in the works that we wanted to pair up beside a new one for a contrast shot. None of those photos was spot (or rather spot off)–though a couple in the 50 or so taken look half decent in small size.

Lots of smart people peruse these posts. Anybody had a similar experience?

Fortunately, there’s a dog on the premises and adding a nice dog always helps a photograph…. ‘Course the crew’s a photogenic lot too–where’s Monster Garage, Minnesota edition?

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 23rd, 2008 at 6:52 pm and is filed under Car parts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.