AWNINGS ORANGE COUNTY

[Minolta Tamron 19-30/28-300 Fuji ISO200 > CVS develop > Epson V300 scanner 4800dpi CAE AEC -2 clipping-adjust > mogrify Q96 jpeg]

The first time that I did this I actually put up a little guide next to the chart, to show the exposure. I can see that that was a great idea. Basically with any roll of film one needs to burn a good part of it figuring out which evaluative exposures will work and which won't. Anything that gives you valid whites and grays on this chart is a good exposure. As you can see by the following shot you can still get good color even when the scanner software thinks that the film is black.

Not hard: shooting from 0ev to -3eV in half eV steps will cost you 6 frames and 5 minutes of time. Plus you get at least an extra half to full stop of leeway with a stop increase in film speed. Again: try shooting your new digital camera at -3eV at any ISO and see what happens. Try -2eV. Just for fun.

I should point out that one must remember one flaw when using this method, the film exposure depends on the balance between light and dark as much as it depends on the metered evaluative exposure. So if the scene is half white and half black that obviously will meter hotter than this, and you will lose a stop maybe two stops of film exposure. And that can easily cause the film to underexpose in the shadows, and that's what happened to me a few times. In fact I'm guessing that a whole series of shots that I took over water under overcast conditions at -3eV simply didn't expose the film.

HOWEVER that is still significantly different from getting shots that are virtually black or that have something approximating the proper exposure due to pushing but are all full of pushed-up shadow-noise. So the rule for film is similar to the rule for digital, but the difference is significant: with digital you want to shoot to the right at high ISO to minimize noise. With film you want to do that at low ISO to get a good solid exposure. At middle to low ISO it is not so necessary to shoot to the right likewise with medium to fast film, but in any case you want to be sure that your camera isn't fooled by the scene into shooting faster than it ought to. This is at least a half point for digital over film, unless you have a VR lens that will work in both cases in which case it's almost a moot point. With digital you can keep popping shots until you get what looks like a good exposure on the display, but it still won't tell you what it will look like on your monitor. The shot could still be noisy and shaky, maybe even poorly-focused. You can't tell on a 3" display any more than you can tell at VGA on a Flickr page, the magnifying-glass won't tell you how the shot looks at full-image. In the end the LCD is good only for detecting gross IQ problems, if the IQ problems are not gross you're probably going to want to make something of the shot anyway, unless you are cherry-picking among similar shots and that's where the magnifying glass is helpful. A film guy can't do that, obviously, so they have to either get it right blindly, accept a reasonable blind effort or give up on it altogether. Not having the distraction of a display a film-shooter has to trust his shooting knowledge and is more likely to get a good stable shot that's underexposed instead of a good exposure that's shaky. Especially since they can't change ISO nearly as easily, short of throwing-away unexposed frames. So to ensure that they get a good exposure that's also not shaky, a film shooter will head for a convenient rest much sooner than a digital shooter, set it to maybe -1/2eV evaluative and take the shot. Digital guys have to either trust their LCDs or admit that they are like a siren over the rocks, leading them into disaster. But do you not wish that you did not have to check the LCD after *every* shot? And still you cannot see if something unwanted has wandered into the frame unless you actually look it over.

The one good thing about not having an LCD is that you are either there shooting or you are not. You do the best that you can and leave, and that's only a significant problem as you have to travel farther to get your shot or the shot is fleeting. Sure you might have to come back later and retake the shot, but that's the same as with digital. The light might suck, the weather might suck, the scene might not be quite right, who knows. And the shot might just never show up again, even if you are there with expensive gear with plenty of storage you might get just one chance. Having an expensive digital camera is no guarantee that you will get a great shot. However it *is* a guarantee that you will spend a lot of money. So you can spend $200 on film gear and $5 on overnight development and maybe reshoot some of them with film the next day, or $2k on digital gear and check your shots on the camera and on the computer before the next day, and still have to reshoot them and then still not get them simply because either your gear or tech

Glastonbury Fayre 1971 was the West Country's Woodstock.

We look back at the ideals which inspired the original free festival at Worthy Farm Glastonbury way back in 1971.

The Glastonbury Festival ticket for 1970 reads: "?1 - at Worthy Farm - includes a jug of milk from Michael Eavis."

This ticket is not one that today's young festival-goer would recognise, but such was the deal at the time. In the halcyon days of the 70s Underground, events such as this were provided for love.

The Underground was the hippy movement which espoused a radical, alternative society. This was their reaction to the perpetual threat of nuclear disaster and environmental Armageddon - the outcome of new, anti-ecological and technological developments and cheap pesticide-led farming.

They sought an alternative future centred on self-managing communities, integrated living systems and alternative technology - orchestrated by rock music.

1972 was to be the year ah article - A Blueprint For Survival- appeared. It as a bleak "alternative" publication attacking farming methods. The Last Whole Earth Catalogue detailed all the tools needed to survive the oncoming holocausts.

At that time as well, hefty rock music was played at surreal outdoor gigs. In 1973 a big party in the woods ("bring guitars and groovy brownies") It was the forerunner of the Ashton Court Festival. This was all unadvertised - you searched out the source of heavy bass music resounding from PA systems over the suburban Bristol hillsides, or you got the news on the Bristol Underground grapevine. .

The musicians of artists were all underground "freaks", and the performance or gig was done for love. During the previous half-decade of music festivals, the Isle of Wight Festival represented what the Underground disliked most about excessive commercialism. Andrew Kerr decided it had a rip-off ticket price, and sold expensive, unwholesome fast food.

So in 1971 Andrew, and Arabella Churchill (who still runs the Glastonbury Festival's Performing Arts and the Children's Festival), threw the first truly free festival - at Worthy Farm, the year after the "?1 and free milk" one.

Glastonbury Fayre 1971 was the West Country's Woodstock.

News soon spread of this wonderfully idealistic Glastonbury Fayre venture on the midsummer solstice near Glastonbury. Its model was the traditional medieval free fair with spontaneous music, dance, poetry and theatre. 1971 was financed by a few people who supported Andrew's ideal that it was to be totally free, and sited on what they believed was one of the earth's energy points so that it would generate happiness.

(Glastonbury was a cult centre which attracted thousands of New Age "pilgrims" who believed it to be thefuture English Jerusalem).

Everyone-like-minded organisations, helpers and performers - was excited and wanted to be involved in a festival which encapsulated all the Underground's ideals.

There was one stage - the original pyramid, constructed exactly one tenth the size of Cheops' original at Giza, Egypt, and made with scaffolding and plastic sheeting. After it was built, Andrew doused under its apex with a diving rod and found that coincidentally he'd placed it on a blind spring, which he believed to be connected to geomantic force lines linking Stonehenge and Glastonbury.

The hamburger stalls rolling in expectantly to do business were turned away by police at the gate. Instead, Sid's Free Kitchen was set up to dispense free macrobiotic food.

A commercial hot-dog stand discovered three days into the festival had its trade ended by an on-stage announcement from the macrobiotic contingent that there were free hotdogs for all that night - result: cheers and the demise of commercial sausage-selling.

One of those gate police going off-duty remarked to the folk in the Release Aid tent: "Well, I'm off now but I'll come back tomorrow with the kids." During the six-day event, which was crawling with LSD, the on-duty police racked up only two arrests - and one of those was for the theft of a tent.

Organisations representing alternative or spiritual lifestyles had set up tents and wares and were visited by Anglican parsons, Roman Catholic priests, Dominican friars, Franciscan monks, Hare Krishna followers, Sufis and many seekers after truth. And of course there were the music fans, about 12,000 of them.

There was no compere - bands, acts and people with something important to say made their own announcements. Acts fell over themselves to perform on-site; onstage around six bands a day were volunteering unpaid sets - Traffic was the headline; Marc Bolan, Hawkwind, Fairport Convention, Arthur Brown's Kingdom Come (Brown walked out in front of the stage with three burning crucifixes - the middle one exploded - and performed his Wastes Of The Galaxy routine), The Edgar Broughton Band, Brinsley Schwartz, Accrington Stanley, Quintessence and Soft Machine's