Horsepower: equine versus 4×4

I’m still refining my slitscan technique, which means I’ve been visiting the Saratoga Casino and Raceway on a regular basis each Sunday.  No, I’m not praying to the spirit of St. Dan of Patch, although if such a saint existed, I’m sure many would pray for a winning exacta.

Through trial and error, I’ve found some success with this slitscan technique.  As long as the action is moving from left to right as I wind the film in my modified Nikon EM camera, all will work.  The pictures will be nice and sharp, the backgrounds will be banded and blurred, and Chuck will achieve a winning picture.

So last Sunday, I took some more pictures at the track.  A while back, someone gifted me some rolls of Arista.edu ISO 400 black and white film.  Apparently Arista.edu is a cheaper version of another B&W film called Fomapan.  Although Arista.edu comes from Europe, it’s based in the Czech Republic, so it’s not the same film as my beloved-and-soon-to-be-completely-unavailable efke.

Doesn’t matter to me.  Free is the cheapest I’ve ever paid for film.

Load ’em up.  Lock it in.  Take the picture.  Got this race.  Got that race.  Lost money on that race.  Don’t worry about it.  You’re taking pictures, Chuck, not talking bets.

Oh look, here’s the paver truck that, as it drives around the track, drags a rake to smooth out the track surface.  I’ll get a picture of that – oh crud, one of the horses entered my shot, it was running counterclockwise back to the paddock area.

But when I got the film developed… I got this.

Wait a minute.  How come the truck is in focus, but the horse isn’t?  Trust me, this lens does not have THAT shallow a depth of field.

And I know that horse was running from right to left.  No way was it competing in a drag race against a truck.

Just that moment – right then and there, it dawned on me.  The horse was running right to left, but as it crossed my camera lens, the image appeared on film in reverse – and since the horse and film were running parallel with each other, the resulting image appeared smeared and ghosty on the film.  It crossed my camera path at the same time as did the paver truck, which came into frame pretty clearly.

Nice.  Double shot of horsepower.  Happy accident.

Now granted, I shot this on a rainy day – in the grandstands – and since it was a rainy day, there was a pane of glass between the grandstands and the rainy track.  So there’s still some more variables that must be reigned in.  But this could work well for me – having something going from right-to-left at the same time as someone travels left-to-right, while I crank this camera to capture all the images…

Tell you what.  If this happens again to me… Not only will I be prepared…

I’ll look forward to the opportunity.