Sunday, July 13, 2025 | By: Jim Zuckerman
In the middle 80's I got special permission to visit San Miguel Island, the westernmost island in the Channel Islands National Park off the coast of Santa Barbara, California. Every year, thousands of northern elephant seals gather here to give birth to pups and then mate again. In the late 19th century, these elephant seals had a population crash due to extensive hunting for their blubber. They were actually thought to be extinct. A few individuals were discovered on a remote island at the turn of the century, however, and ever since then they have been assiduously protected. Now there are about 160,000. In this shot, two males are battling for dominance and the right to mate with a harem. The fights are rarely fatal, but they can get bloody as you can see here. At the time, I was shooting the Mamiya RB 67, and I used a handheld light meter because the camera was fully manual -- manual focus, manual exposure, and manual film advance. The meter got some saltwater spray on it and suddenly stopped working, so I spent 4 days on the island with no meter. Using the 'Sunny f/16 Rule', about 92% of my exposures were correct -- much to my surprise. I remember using a 350mm lens for this shot (equivalent to a 200mm in the full frame digital format), and the settings were unrecorded. But they were probably 1/400, f/8, and 64 ISO (Ektachrome 64 slide film). 1/400th of a second was the fastest shutter speed on this camera.
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2 Comments
Jul 13, 2025, 7:29:21 PM
Jim - I'm sorry I sold all the 6x7 photo stuff. It would be nice to have it. I began with the RB and then upgraded to the RZ.
Jul 13, 2025, 4:52:44 PM
Douglas Benson - Yes indeed, those were the days. I had always used the RZ version with the AE finder so I avoided your delema here. Sometimes I think it would be interesting to( =fun) to dig up some of this gear and combine it with a digital back.. Thanks for the memories!