Shop Talk-cameras, film, lighting, etc.

[geolarson2]

Originally Posted by CK1

you beat me to the punch. i was thinking about starting a thread like this. i will post my advice here and delete my other post.

Sometimes, I've noticed, a thread gets started, forgotten and then whammy people begin to discuss said subject and there it is, way, way, way back in the index!

One word of caution--for those of you (like me) who still use good ol' celluloid (actually I think mine's made of polyester) film. If you're goingt o shoot nudes, you might not want to drop your film off at a 1-hour or drug store lab. Back in college, I did a friend a favor--he had a class to get to, and a project due the same day. Well, you know how college can be--you put off 'til the last minute what you should have done last month! Anyway, he asked me to pick up his prints & negatives from a 1-hour lab, and when I got there, I was greeted by two very frosty people. The young woman spoke up when she took the prints out, then asked me a few questions, ultimately asking if the girls in them were 18 or older. I explained I was just picking them up, and she wasn't buying, but I guess the look on my face when she pulled the prints from the envelope out was proof enough (I must have been somewhere between tomato red and beet purple!). Apparently the project was life studies of the female form, aka, nudes. Anyway long story short, the female tech was cool about it, said if my friend needed anything else to be developed, bring it to her, not to the male tech who had been very embarrassed by the photos. This was also way back in 1988 or 89, long before digital was common so maybe this is immaterial, but still food for thought (or a humorous anecdote--BTW, my friend set me up a bit--he was too embarrassed to pick up the photos himself and admitted as much to me, although he never explained why he didn't just use the school's darkroom ...).