I had hoped to take some nice photos of historic Williamsburg, Virginia while at this conference, but I "got volunteered" to help setting up for the presentations, so I was locked inside most of the day. I decided not to bring my expensive 1D and 24-70mm only to leave it in the hotel room unguarded, so I bought my A2 film body and EF 50mm f/1.8 II instead. I checked the weather before leaving and found it was supposed to be very sunny, so I bought ISO100 sun-balanced film. Well, the only time I got to go out was in the evening on a walking tour of Williamsburg. The sky was gray at the departure. By the time I got there, a few drops of rain were falling. About 10 minutes later, the rain was in full downpour. I followed the walking tour guide and about 50 other people under a little overhang outside an old chapel. I stayed there for about 1.5 hours waiting for the buses to come back while the rest of the crazy folks went on the walking tour, some without umbrellas!

I dared not go out in my only pair of pants and shoes, so I stayed under the overhang and tried to take some pictures of lightning, which was terribly close, using my sun-balanced, slow speed film.

Not having a tripod, I put the camera down on the concrete and bolstered it against my shoe usually aiming for a 20 second exposure at around f/16 to f/22. I couldn't even look through the viewfinder (and thus autofocus), so I just hoped I had it right.

With a 50mm field of view, and the utterly unpredictable strike of lightning, I was lucky enough to get one or two shots with lightning in them.

An old cross-post fence. It's fairly dark out and this is a 10 second exposure.

This was the inside of the chapel under whose small porch roof I found shelter. We weren't allowed inside, so I took this photo through the window. The yellow rippled window silhouette is from a street lamp behind me, and the white sky seen in the other two windows is from all the lightning (a good body-shaking 4 or 5 stikes per minute). The "ghost" in the upper right is also a lightning reflection.

This is some iron work from outside the chapel. Again the sky is white due to lightning. It was quite dark out. This is about 15 seconds of exposure.

This is the full force of the rain, unfortunately invisible during this 20 second exposure. Again, it's very dark out at this time.

Here's my first catch of lightning during a 20 second exposure. Luckily, some lightning was within my 50mm field of view.

This photo made my $25 of film, processing and scanning all worthwhile. This is not a cropped photo!! My 50mm field of view was EXACTLY in the right place to get this shot! I must say, I would have rather not been there.

Well, there's my memories from Williamsburg. There wrong type of film on a dark, very very stormy night without a tripod. I hope I never have to go back to that scary place again.