Back home to Brooklyn from a great holiday vacation. I extended a short working tour in Europe into a three-week vacation to visit friends I haven’t seen in ages.

Best of all (not really… Best of all was wine, beer, friends, delicious food, and the camposanto in Pisa) was that I was able to use my AMAZING new D3s to record my first photos of the (50Hz in Europe) flicker. I’ll be assembling them into a demo film in the next few weeks.

Here are some photos to give an idea of what this beast can do at 100,000 ISO.
[so, why build the telescope? asks the discerning reader.]

• Quantitative reasons: the telescope will have tighter control of frame rate (so the flicker can be slower and more even than possible with the D3s) and will let through 100 times more light (so 100,000 ISO and the resulting graininess won’t be necessary.)

• Aesthetic reason: the aim of the project is to offer viewers and experience that is immediate and undeniable. I want us to see the flicker firsthand, not mediated by a computer or a really fancy camera.