Photography

Doing photography at work reminded me of a friend who worked as a corporate photographer back in the 1980's. I guess he may still be a professional photographer. I lost contact with him years ago.

He told me about a job he was hired to do, in which he rented a helicopter to fly over the city of Houston. He was using a Hasselblad camera with an adaptive eyepiece, which let you aim it like a 35 mm camera. As they approached the part of Houston he was hired to photograph, he wanted to take some test shots. With the harness secure, he leaned out the open side door of the Jet Ranger helicopter and looked into his camera. He did not see anything, so he looked around his camera to see his lens falling away. The lens was not locked onto the camera. He told the pilot over the headset what had happened, so they circled back to see where the lens had hit. They found it on top of one of the buildings, with no damage to anything other than the lens itself. He was so glad it did not go down to the streets, where someone could have been killed by it if it had hit them.

The bottom line, he said, is always to ensure your equipment!. Zeiss lenses are not cheap.