> Have you seen my wife Mr Jones? > Do you know what its like on the outside? > ... etc."
"Have you seen my AF280T, Mr. Jones? It's a lot darker down here than on the outside..." This reminds me of my own (touristy) mine experience. My wife and I were in Springhill, Nova Scotia (the site of the famous Springhill mining disaster of another song), and we went on a tour down into a coal mine there (the tour guide was a retired miner). [Obligatory Pentax content follows.] I took a couple photos of my wife at about 200 feet down, using only the light from the occasionally placed lightbulbs in the mine tunnel. I was rather unprepared for the shooting, having taken only an LX with an A 50/1.2 with me for the day's outing, and no flash. I think the shutter speed was probably about 1/4 or 1/8 second (400 speed film, f/1.2), as I remember it, and I tried bracing myself as well as I could against the wall behind me to steady the LX (blackening the back of my raincoat quite a bit). The prints ended up a little on the blurry side, with an incandescent cast, but they were "keepers" anyway - it was quite an experience, and they were the documentation. (Actually, this is one time when a couple of crisp photos taken by flash would probably mean less to me now than a couple of somewhat blurry and slightly yellowish images do.) I had a stiff neck for the rest of that day from walking around in tunnels below the ground hunched over. May God bless those who risk - and give - their lives for the comfort of the rest of us. Fred
