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Rick Newton (and others) wrote: > (What do Fig Newtons have to do with color printing?) (Must be a local thing here...) Not much, but if you stop to buy some out on the road, a train will always go by when you are looking out of the store window. > > The statement was made that an art director or editor would wonder why > you use > > color negative film. Only if you don't shoot chromes when you are supposed to... you shoot what they want or you don't get the job, and they all want chromes unless you are shooting a display ad (or a wedding - and thankfully there is no A.D. there, just usually a future mother-in-law acting like one... it even says on my web site that I don't shoot weddings!). This whole issue is silly if you are looking at it from the "I wonder why I can't use the film I like" perspective. There are a lot of things about photography that you won't like if you end up doing it for a living. Luckily, we can shoot trains for a hobby (fun), and do whatever we want. Several reasons are: > > 1. It is more forgiving than slide film. You can over or under exposed by > > perhaps as much as 1 f stop and still get an acceptable result. If you are looking for fudge factors at this point, it doesn't matter what type of film you shoot. You use what you need to use to get the type of output you need if you have an intended purpose for the image. If you don't know why you are shooting what you are shooting, then I can't help you. > A thing called bracketing. Not real effective for railroad photography > though. Very true. Why triple your film and processing costs and throw two thirds of your stuff in the trash when you can learn to expose film right instead? Now I'm going to hear from the people who say that there may be more than one 'correct' exposure for a scene. Then shoot both (or more). See, I picture a scene the way I want it while I am looking at it first, before I shoot it, then I try to shoot it that way (I don't have to study it, I just have to look at what it is in front of me that I am shooting). If I don't know what I want it to look like, then why would I care what I get back on film, and how would I know the difference? There is no auto-fix for everything. Learn to shoot and have fun doing it (if you like this hobby and/or photography) . When you get past the point (in your shooting experience) of not being able to let a shot go without 'getting' it on film, you will wonder why you shot a lot of it in the first place and they you will concentrate more on what your shot will look like, instead of just getting it, regardless of the film type in the camera. > What is acceptable? Even with the exposure correction you can make in a > darkroom, a 1 stop under or over, even on negatives, cannot always be > properly > corrected for. Thank you Rick, my point exactly. Just my opinion, but I think some of us should spend more time nailing down the right exposure while shooting, than using auto everything and then a bag of technology to save our shots later. What is acceptable... and what goes in the trash can? I know a few people that shoot negs because they can't properly expose a chrome to save their caboose. Is that fun? I don't know; when I shoot anything, I try my damnedest to properly expose it, no matter what. I get great satisfaction from looking at my properly exposed film, and I get irritated looking at my film that is not, but I also learn something from it by looking at it before I throw it away. Many people start off shooting trains on print film and actually have no idea where they are as far as exposure goes, so when they do finally figure this situation out, they are again 'back to the beginning'. How frustrating, and how avoidable this is. That's also no way to learn anything (Are we having fun yet?). > What you call acceptable, and what I might call acceptable, > or the art director, may be two separate things. I could repeat this, but I couldn't say it any better than this. > > With transparencies what you get is what you get. No compensation is > possible in > > the darkroom for the individual exposure. BS. It ain't done until the final image is on paper (or on the screen, or wherever it's supposed to go). I can tweak a chrome as good as a neg, and I'm not even in the prepress business (but you should be prepping - optimizing - for publication, not fixing mistakes). The digital darkroom is replacing the traditional darkroom for nearly all but 'fine art' prints. The beauty of a chrome is that you have an instant proof to review when submitting material. And a very important point these days is that if you still don't know how to expose film, you have no business sending it in for publication. Competition in this area is fierce. It is just assumed that anything that you send in will be properly exposed, so none of this is even an issue at that point. You send in crap in this business, and you will be leaving it in a hurry. Publications don't have time to deal with photographers who are still learning how to shoot. If you don't think you are all that consistent yet, then you can learn, and that can be fun too in the railroad photography hobby. And before you get your underwear all in a bunch, the railfan magazines are not your typical publication. They put up with more latitude in photography quality than any non-hobby supported publication, and that is one reason that they pay accordingly low (but we won't go there again). They also run 'tabloid style', so they take what they can get from limited subject matter, which is sometimes more important than the quality of the photography. I'm not trying to knock them, this is the market. Do you want to see an F-unit or a technically perfect but otherwise 'boring' photograph? Case closed. > Entire rolls of film can be > pushed > > or pulled but not single frames. Sheet film, remember that? I should be downstairs using some instead of typing this... > Every pro photographer I have ever worked with, uses color negatives when > they need to create something to be displayed. A poster, a framed print, a > DuraTrans or DuraFlex display ad or something of the sorts. If it is for > publication, they always used color transparencies. Bingo. Dave Dave Cohen Photographer, Member ASMP Action Photographic Webmaster [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.anet-stl.com/acphotog/home/ ======================================================= -> SPORRS: 'Serious Photographers Of Railroad Related Subjects' -> Web Site: http://www.anet-stl.com/acphotog/sporrs/ -> Message © 1998 SPORRS® - All Rights Reserved =======================================================
