The Beach Umbrella

Back in July, I was in Cape May for a beach portrait session.  Cape May is a bit of a drive, plus I have to figure summer shore traffic, so I left a little early.  No problem, though - I’d get there with some time to look for some photos to take.  I packed my Hasselblad and a couple of rolls of 220 along with my portrait shooting gear and hit the road.

With the summer being what it was this year, this was the first time I had been down the shore.  It was nice to walk along Cape May’s elevated promenade and to breathe in some cooler ocean air.  The idea in my head was to look for some very Cape May-ish, very beach-ish photos.  From the promenade the bright colors of this beach umbrella just jumped out at me!  I made my way down onto the beach to where I could ask the two very nice ladies under it if I could photograph their umbrella.

The trick with the Hasselblad 501c is that the shutter speeds only go up to 1/500.  That becomes a little problematic when you are trying to capture a shallow depth of field, especially in a bright summer beach scene.  Enter the ND filter!  The ND filter I use is a two-stop filter, which means it “blocks” two f-stops of light from exposing your film.  Now comes the math, this is the side of photography that I love!  I was shooting Portra 160 film.  I prefer Portra 160, but more than that, I needed the slower film speed to try to keep the shutter speed as low as possible.  I metered my scene in shutter speed (1/500) priority for my initial readings and I was getting f8 for 160 ASA film.  Once I set my metered settings on my Hasselblad lens, I just need to open up two stops for the ND compensation, bringing me to f4, which is where I love to shoot!

(Be sure to expand my “projects” menu to the left to see more photos…)