pros in the olden days

[sodarum]

Oh ok. So when roughly did the switch to 120 happen for advertising (from sheet film)? Because most of the fashion campaign ads in the late 90s and 2000s, by people like Meisel (before he went digital) were done with 120/220 AFAIK.

Also, was Kodachrome available in sheet film in the 70's and 80's?

Just to provide an example of the kind of work I'm talking about, something like this 1977 Dior campaign done by Chris von Wangenheim.

http://visualthirst.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/american_vogue_november_1977_dior_wangenheim.jpg

 

[mgb74]

My wedding (in 1973) was shot by National Geographic and was on Kodachrome. In fact, I believe we started the "photojournalist" trend for wedding photos.

Now, to be more precise, my wedding photos were shot by a National Geo photographer who was the son of a neighbor of my in-laws. And it was photojournalist style because a) there was no room for posed photos and b) that's all he knew. But great photos.

 

[Steve Smith]

First of all, I didn't mean "olden days" in a sarcastic or disrespectful way. In fact, I have a fascination with those times. But we all have to admit that 40 years has passed since 1974, for example. That's a lot of time.

Yes, but you dont have to remind us!!

Time is a strange thing. When I was at high school in the early 1980s, any reference to the 1960s seemed like ancient history. Now in 2014, 1984 seems like it was a few months ago.


Steve.

 

[Xmas]

Yes, but you dont have to remind us!!

Time is a strange thing. When I was at high school in the early 1980s, any reference to the 1960s seemed like ancient history. Now in 2014, 1984 seems like it was a few months ago.


Steve.

You don't have problems then I can recall the moon shots and weddings from '65 like it was yesterday.

Or even watching a black US skinny kid get in a ring with Russian hulk as I loaded a 35mm and I thought no bad match but the skinny stopped him and got the gold - Cassius Clay.

 

[Steve Smith]

You don't have problems then I can recall the moon shots and weddings from '65 like it was yesterday.

Well, I was born in 1964 but I can remember the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing being shown on TV and I remember watching the progress on a portable black and white TV which my primary school teacher had brought in.

I can remember a lot of tiny details from the past whereas my brother (two years younger) can hardly remember anything.


Steve.

 

[Ken Nadvornick]

Well, I was born in 1964 but I can remember the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing being shown on TV and I remember watching the progress on a portable black and white TV which my primary school teacher had brought in.

After the live transmission ended and Uncle Walter had blessed it, I walked out onto my parent's front yard and just stared up at the moon for what seemed like an eternity. I couldn't believe what had just happened. Just couldn't believe it. I mean, we all knew what was going to happen. But I still couldn't quite wrap my head around it. I kept thinking how lucky I was in the entire history of the human species to be alive to see it at that moment. And now we no longer even have a manned space program...

Of all places, I was inside a darkroom when the Challenger spacecraft went down. It was the middle of the week, if I recall. I had just arrived at work about half and hour earlier and was setting up for the day's job orders. I had a small 12-inch black-and-white television I had covered with Rubylith sitting in a corner. Normally there so as not to miss the Big Games, that morning I of course had it tuned to NASA on CBS. When I saw what happened I just stood there silently staring for a few moments, then rushed out front and told Carol and Harriet at the desk to put the closed sign on the door, lock it, and get back to the darkroom right away. Then under the eerie red safelight we all watched the whole thing happen over and over and over again. No one really said much of anything.

Ken

 

[Poisson Du Jour]

Calling the 80s and 90s "the olden days" is a bit odd. That decade, and those before, were no doubt the halcyon era of film and also an era where industry was juggling with the emerging technology of digital (even in 1986). Many observers would say 'very little has changed', but in fact a lot has changed: the photographers are not there; the film has gone too!

The outdoor magazines I wrote for in the late 1980s and early 1990s specified that [we welcome] high quality descriptive photographs accompanying submissions. Whether these photographs were negatives or transparencies, medium format or 35mm didn't matter to the editorial team — they had the technology then to make the best use of whatever was submitted (but not scans: submitted pics were scanned in-house), but quality of the photography was the deal-breaker: a weak photograph would torpedo the entire submission. Dupes were encouraged to be sent in rather than originals, as this lessened the possibility of something becoming lost or misplaced (common in busy production environments). Then, as now, the emphasis was on quality photography, not what camera was used. Not what film was used. Or bokeh or bunkum. Just quality, descriptive, exciting photography. One of Australia's most prolific rock climbers and mountaineers, Glenn Tempest, took with him on his worldly travels a Nikon F90X and just two lenses. His favoured film then for the myriad submissions to WILD magazine was Velvia (Ektachrome before that). He ditched film a long time ago and now works in MF digital as a key component of his publishing business.

Not actually a pro in those days (until 1991), nevertheless my income from writing and photography was around $2,300 over a spring-summer publication releases. I submitted Kodachrome 200 transparencies (I had yet to migrate to Velvia and/or Provia which came around early-1990s I think) and images were reproduced very, very well (a little dark, which was common for the print technology at the time). The magazine today is now fully digital and integrated and insofar as submissions are concerned, it very strongly favours digital, but "will consider" the use of film (and a few landscape practitioners do submit MF or LF, but they are not very common).

 

[snapguy]

1060s

I shot weddings "photojournalism style" in the eaaly 1960s because that is what I did for a living. The newspaper's Society Editor (women's interest section) would tell the photo department that "Joe Dimbulb is getting married tomorrow and needs a photographer." Once I photographed a bride-to-be in her wedding dress stepping over a rain puddle just before the wedding, with her dad holding an umbrella. It was used "above the fold" on the front page in the local newspaper and the bride was mighty happy. No Internet then.

 

[Rolfe Tessem]

C41 films in the era in question were crap, so if you wanted to shoot professional images, you shot transparency films.

This is hard to believe in the current era, when C41 films are every bit as good -- some would say better -- than the available transparency films. Kodak worked really hard to make this happen, and the Vision technology of their motion picture films is probably to thank for this.

It is the reason that the passing of the E6 films isn't so disastrous as it might otherwise be.

 

[sodarum]

Calling the 80s and 90s "the olden days" is a bit odd.

That was tongue-in-cheek. In reality, I'd really like to go back to those days.

 

[sodarum]

C41 films in the era in question were crap, so if you wanted to shoot professional images, you shot transparency films.

Vision generation of films really did give us some improvements (though I like EXR better), but I think it's a bit too much to say that it was simply crap. I have a book by Stephen Shore entirely made on color negative sheet film (from early 70s to early 80s) and it looks pretty good. I even have some consumer prints from the 70s from 35mm neg that look great. I'm not sure I'm convinced that the difference between negative and reversal film in those days was so much greater than it is today, in terms of image quality.

 

[MattKing]

I used to get excellent results from C41 Vericolour (in its various versions) in the 1970s. The modern films are better, but not that much better.

 

[David A. Goldfarb]

Vericolor was my go-to neg film when it was around.

 

[Roger Cole]

Yes, but you dont have to remind us!!

Time is a strange thing. When I was at high school in the early 1980s, any reference to the 1960s seemed like ancient history. Now in 2014, 1984 seems like it was a few months ago.


Steve.

This.

In the immortal words of Pepe LePew, "LeSigh."

 

[Roger Cole]

C41 films in the era in question were crap, so if you wanted to shoot professional images, you shot transparency films.

This is hard to believe in the current era, when C41 films are every bit as good -- some would say better -- than the available transparency films. Kodak worked really hard to make this happen, and the Vision technology of their motion picture films is probably to thank for this.

It is the reason that the passing of the E6 films isn't so disastrous as it might otherwise be.

This was true in the 70s, became steadily less true (but still mostly true) in the 80s but became untrue, IMHO, by the 90s, at least the mid 90s. But I think a lot of people just stubbornly resisted the idea that neg film could exceed transparency film even when the evidence could be right in front of them. (Not unlike some of what I hear about digital - I love film and shooting film but digital is capable of some really great images and for some things, like low light levels, kicks film's ass. It just does. And I shoot Delta 3200 because I enjoy it and for the look but for any reasonable measure of quality you will get "better" results out of digital at, say, EI 6400 or more than anything you can with film. Heck, that's true at 3200 as well, though D3200 is very, very good at that speed, especially in MF.)

 

[Poisson Du Jour]

Vision generation of films really did give us some improvements (though I like EXR better), but I think it's a bit too much to say that it was simply crap. I have a book by Stephen Shore entirely made on color negative sheet film (from early 70s to early 80s) and it looks pretty good. I even have some consumer prints from the 70s from 35mm neg that look great. I'm not sure I'm convinced that the difference between negative and reversal film in those days was so much greater than it is today, in terms of image quality.

Much would hinge on the quality of the pre-press reproduction of either type of film. Negatives or transparencies, they both looked great and both would feature on covers and in spreads. Probably true that if an editor/curator was looking for photograph with punchy colour, he would scour through images made on e.g. Kodachrome, Ektachrome or Velvia. Today, colour C41 emulsions do have a noted edge over E6 in reproduction, but E6 delivers the colour impetus that gets people looking up and at an image rather than give a sideways glance and move on. But things have definitely changed and big exhibition prints are now often run off negatives like Portra 160. Nobody should complain that we do, for now, have the best of both worlds to choose from.

 

[sodarum]

Can someone give us some info about the availability of Kodachrome in 120 and sheet format in the 70s and 80s? I know that there was a point in time when the only format that Kodachrome was cut into was 35mm, but I'm not sure where to place that point on the timeline of the past decades.

 

[MattKing]

I cannot help with 120 and sheet film, but Kodachrome was available in quite a few other sizes besides 35mm.

126, 828, 110 and a few movie formats come to mind.

 

[AgX]

C41 films in the era in question were crap, so if you wanted to shoot professional images, you shot transparency films.

There is no technical reason though aside of graininess. To the contrary: with the introduction of the integrated mask and with omission of the print but direct colour seperations the negative film would yield advantages.

 

[Roger Cole]

I cannot help with 120 and sheet film, but Kodachrome was available in quite a few other sizes besides 35mm.

126, 828, 110 and a few movie formats come to mind.

When I started in the late 70s it was only available in 35mm among pro formats though 126 might have been available and I'm pretty sure 110 was. But no 120 (that came later, in the late 80s or 90s, not sure) and certainly not sheet film.

 

[PKM-25]

I used both 35mm and 120 Kodachrome for my commercial and pictorial work in the late 80's and early 90's, all there ever was in modern 120 was KR 64. Kodachome was exposed aplomb until the very late 80's and early 90's when Fuji introduced Velvia 50 which had finer grain if not slightly softer edge effect and cartoon like color. Then Kodak came out with E6 films like Lumerie which gave Velvia a run for it's money and the age of E6 nudging Kodachrome out of favor really kicked into high gear. By the mid 90's, use of Kodachrome was a fraction of its heday.

Some fashion shooters did use C41 films to get a softer look ( still do actually ), especially in high key but it was mainly the realm of the portrait and wedding industry since proofs and studio driven enlargements were the primary result and were much nicer to people than chrome was. Newspapers also used color negative over chrome to a very large degree, the paper I last worked at used it until 2003 when they went all digital. I remember having a blast pushing Fuji 800 Super-G two stops and getting great results.

But yeah...Kodachrome, best film I have used in my life, chiaroscuro in a little cardboard frame, just amazing. If I don't get my book out soon, my wife will hit me over the head with all these slides, we met because of Kodachrome after all...

I'm 47 now, so damn olden, lol!

 

[Xmas]

There is no technical reason though aside of graininess. To the contrary: with the introduction of the integrated mask and with omission of the print but direct colour seperations the negative film would yield advantages.

The significant difference was a transparency on the light box looked good.

Studio shots were done with grey cards just out of shot when balance critical.

Location shots with E6 might have needed colour temp meter and CC filter, the integral mask simplified a bit.

So depended on marketing which you used.

Because I had no timescale pressure I used Kchrome25.

 

[AgX]

Yes, they looked good. But how to achieve in print what you saw on the light table...?

 

[Xmas]

Yes, they looked good. But how to achieve in print what you saw on the light table...?

When the editor bought the slide the cheque was in the post.

The technical people had to get the image into print.

SEP - some one else's problem

 

[benjiboy]

Can someone give us some info about the availability of Kodachrome in 120 and sheet format in the 70s and 80s? I know that there was a point in time when the only format that Kodachrome was cut into was 35mm, but I'm not sure where to place that point on the timeline of the past decades.

120 Kodachrome 64 was discontinued in 1996, Kodachrome Professional 8 A.S.A. sheet film was discontinued in 1951 it was never made in the 70's and 80's.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodachrome