For me there is normally plenty of time available. Old water-powered mills don't move, and aren't going anywhere. Nowadays photographing mills in a new area is generally a 2-3 day affair. First I have to visit each mill, and photograph it from a few angles to determine the ideal composition. Sometimes that requires using a long lens to get my preferred view. When that is done for all of the mills which I am visiting I need to determine which view to use. Because that view is not always optimally lit, I use the compass bearing in my camera's GPS and a computer utility to determine a window of optimum sunlight for each mill. I can then go back and get the final photo of each mill. I am still re-photographing mills which I first visited before I bought the Pentax O-GPS2. For those I use Google satellite view to determine the bearing of a photo close enough to use the utility.

I prefer to get the image I want in-camera, coming from a film SLR background which began nearly 60 years ago. I even still use colored filters for monochrome photography (I own 12 of them, which can be used on either of my most-used lenses). However, there are still times when I use Photoshop for what I consider relatively minor changes to an image, such as cropping. Even back in the day, when I developed and printed Tri-X and Plus-X film, I took advantage of the darkroom. I would alter the brightness and contrast of prints, crop, and dodge, to get the prints I wanted.

Flashes are what I plan to use. There is little available light in many old mills, and the contrast between illumination near a window and illumination in the center of the mill makes available light impractical. In a long exposure windows, and anything near a window, would be badly blown out.

Flashes have to be mounted to a flash bar below the camera. There is often not enough room to use tripods for the flashes. A typical mill floor might be 20x28 feet, with a lot of equipment.

It's not just a matter of experience with flashes - I have decades of experience with flashes. It is not a matter of appropriate flash accessories - I have those. It is a matter of using them in the very unusual context of the interior of a very small, and (by American historical standards) ancient grist mill. For example, external flashes usually cannot be put on tripods and remotely triggered - there is not enough room in many mills for that to be effective.

I finally purchased the last of the four Pentax lenses which I wanted for my K-70 - an smc Pentax-DA 12-24mm f/4 ED AL [IF], which I bought from KEH. Its intended use is for interior photos of 18th and 19th century water-powered mills. Those interiors are generally small and cramped, requiring a wide-angle lens. I am still experimenting with lighting for those interiors, using a pair of Vivitar 283 flashes. They have been modified for 5 volt shoe voltage and manual flash duration control.

Note that, as someone with minimal retirement income, it took me eight years to be able to afford to purchase those four lenses.

Mine was also made in 2017. The solenoid began to get erratic in 2021, and I replaced it with an original white solenoid (doing the repair myself) in early 2022 when the shutter count was about 5,000. The repair is not difficult, but it does require the correct tools, experience in using them, a known good replacement solenoid, and strict adherence to the directions:

https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/193-pentax-k-70-kf/399198-tutorial-repair-pe...

If you bought it used, what is the manufacure date? Here's how to find it:

https://www.pentaxforums.com/pages/check-shutter-count-exif.html

The manufacure date will help to determine if you are subject to aperture block failure.

My two longest lenses don't even get into the car unless I think I may want one or both. The Mamiya/Sekor 400mm f/6.3 isn't terribly heavy, but it is fairly long. The Rokinon 650Z 650-1300mm f/8-16 is a brute. I always use a tripod for both of those - at 75 my ability to steadily support a long lens by hand is not what it was when I was young. I bought the Rokinon at my local camera shop. It was their last one, and someone who looked at it ahead of me didn't buy it because it is white, and he only buys black lenses. It cost me $270, and I have recently seen it on Amazon for $350. The Mamiya/Sekor cost me $70 at a used camera shop about 30 miles from home. I built a telephoto lens mounting bar for the Rokinon, so that the combo of body and lens balances well at any focal length. I need to take new photos. I added a second RC2 receiver to handle the Mamiya/Sekor, and a flash shoe to hold the receiver for my wireless remote trigger. I also replaced the foam of the body rest with a much better grade of foam, and of greater length, to accomodate the Mamiya/Sekor.

The mill is actually not all that old. Edwin Mabry began to build it about 1903 as a blacksmith and wheelwright shop. He later expanded it to include a gristmill, and a sawmill which included woodwright machinery. He had to buy more land, to expand from one small creek to three to provide enough power. The mill was completed about 1910. In dry seasons the water was insufficient, and he added a kerosene engine about 1934.

At that time many mills had already coverted to steel roller mills, and used steel wheels, so Mabry Mill was a throwback when built.

As for execution, I had been a 35mm SLR photographer for about 40 years when I bought my DSLR, and I tend to do many things the way I did with film, trying to get the image I want in-camera. Of course, that is easier with a DSLR, with all the features it includes such as a histogram, and the ability to review images on the screen.

As a comparison, here is Mabry Mill from another angle, on a later occasion, to show what color it actually is:




I have a variety of equipment and techniques, dervived from film photography, to achieve the image I want in-camera. I am equipped to do black-and-white photography using colored filters. I prefer that to simulating colored filters during post. I developed my filter flip book to make it easy to choose the best filter for a b&w image.

Note to UK members -

The Blue Ridge Parkway is part of the US National Park Service. It runs along the top of the Blue Ridge Mountains from Virginia south to North Carolina, a distance of 469 miles. It stretches from the southern end of Shenandoah National Park in Virginia to the eastern end of Great Smoky Mountains National Park in North Carolina. I have loved the Parkway since I first rode down it as a boy, with my family. For almost 40 years I have lived in Roanoke, VA, a few miles from a Parkway entrance, and I continue to enjoy the Parkway as a senior citizen.