Originally Published in The Minox Memo
Series 2, Volume 1, Number 2. Spring 2002

MINOXING THE GAMES

Charles F. Trentelman
Editor in Chief


Minoxing the Games Charles F. Trentelman Editor In Chief he question was inevitably tinged with a hint of suspicion.

"What is this, sir?" You know, spoken in that firm-polite way cops have of talking when they think you're homicidal and don't want to set you off.

"A camera," I would say. But they are holding a small metal object about the size of a cigarette lighter, with no openings.

"Can you turn it on please?" Did he just step back slightly? Did he just look for his supervisor?

"Sure," I always said brightly.

"You pull it open like this, that little dot is the shutter, this is the release button, it goes off like this" and another frame of my carefully hand-cut film would die in the interest of national security. So it went, day after day. Covering the 2002 Olympic Winter Games in Salt Lake City and around Utah with a Minox was always interesting. My job as a newspaper reporter took me to Snowbasin Ski Resort, near Ogden, site of the downhill Alpine events.

One of the most intensely guarded human gatherings since the Manhattan Project, the games brought together a few thousand superbly trained athletes and many more thousand rent-a-cops to run security who had no idea what they were looking at most of the time, but every day us news media types had to empty our pockets, shake out or zippers, open our many bags, raise our hands and try to explain to them that the hundreds of mysterious objects we carried were not bombs or nuclear devices, all while thousands stacked up behind us.

It was a daily ritual. I swear the magnetometer was set to detect news reporters, not metal.

My Minox was easy, actually. Everyone believed it was a camera when I told them it was. Why? I have no idea. It looked like nothing they'd ever seen. It never buzzed or flashed or produced a picture. They just took my word for it.

I guess I could have said it was a digital tape recorder but then they might have wanted to hear it work. I toyed briefly with saying it was a cigarette lighter, but no, I couldn't demonstrate that either. So I always said "It's a camera," and wasted another frame. That always seemed to work, although they never asked to see a print.

Why my measuring chain got through I'll never know. They'd never read James Bond, I guess.

Fun and Games at the Mag and Bag aside, the Minox turned out to be the ideal camera for the task. I was heavily dressed against the cold, carrying a laptop computer, and didn't need another bulky object to haul around. Even my Leica M seemed more trouble than it was worth.

But a couple of finger-sized cameras, one for ASA 25 and one for ASA 1600, were ideal. I took my two III-S cameras and added an Olympus XA as a bow to 35mm (loaded with Ilford XP2) and carried the whole mess in a belt pack.

People were always fascinated that the things were even cameras, although I suspect many thought my Minox was just some sort of obscure viewing device. Then again, with the multitude of weird looking digital cameras around, the Minox doesn't stick out that much any more in some respects. There are some digital cameras not much larger.

Observations about shooting at ski resorts at the 6,000 foot/2000 meter level: One would think that the "sunny 16" rule would require very high shutter speeds because of all the snow, but I actually found myself having to use a one-stop overexposure, shooting at 1/200 for sunlit surfaces and 1/100 for shadow areas despite all the white snow acting as a reflector. Many times there were so many bodies around the snow was blocked off and the image surface I wanted to shoot was very dimly lit.

Why? The air at 6000 feet is thinner and shadows, especially with a sharply tilted winter sun, are very dark. It was a high contrast situation anyway, and the shadows would go black on my film.

As a result, I found images shot with an orange filter -- an attempt to get detail on the snow -- were more contrasty than I was used to. I had to use a 1 1/2 contrast filter to flatten them out a bit. Many others shot with some overexposure or at 1/200 came out very good, easily printed.

The chief advantage of the cameras was that, once set for a good exposure, I could point and shoot easily, adjusting only focus as needed, which made for quick response when a situation presented itself.

People usually smiled, too, if not at the games going on around us, then at the sight of someone pointing a tiny silver object at them and going through all the motions of taking a picture.

Or so I said. Only my secret masters in Moscow know for sure.