Long, long ago in another life I had to take a lot of 16mm film surrepticiously. The circumstances were often poor, the positions ridiculous and the conditions terrible. Sometimes one even tried to film in a mirror.

With those cameras and lenses we could control the f-stops, focus, and had a choice of films in little magazines. Obviously the shutter speed was fixed. I had lenses up to 16", a truly fearsome lens which was good for my purposes for almost a mile. That had to rest on a pillow or even held as steady as possible would jiggle a bit because of one's pulse. I had a home-made rifle stock type arrangement I could attach to help.

As I recall we had Kodachrome and Ektachrome for color film, and various black-and-white films up to a speed rating of 1000. That 1000 film was incredible. It looked as if your picture was composed of moving black and white basketballs. I never used it past some practice. Kodachrome was pretty and near true-color, but required bright sunlight with the subject in it. Ektachrome was faster, not as true color but had crisper images. We would get the magazines developed at the camera lab of a local TV station.

Getting the depth of field you needed was truly a challenge sometimes. And the light meters did not account for the light at the subject, but all the light. That wasn't necessarily helpful. Very often there was a lot happening and on your mind, and you still had to screw around with the film and lens.

The newer video cameras would have done a better job much more easily. Of course we had no interest in anything but the action of the subject, no artistic goals or abilities. But I did have a light meter.

In a pinch one could try to rapidly observe the size of his pupils in a car mirror but try though I might that wasn't a very good way for me. One of the guys swore up and down he made that work.

Arf