Part 3 of 5, I hope to examine why.
Shooting commercially was a skill taught over and over generation to young assistant by season professional working photographers. Like myself who’s business it is to help client’s vision of their product come to life on page or screen now, that best states their identity and confidence in their product that the audience identifies with themselves. The end result is a glamour shot that attracts the attention of the audience to find out more… Back then meant going to the store and looking at the product, today means searching online for more info and reviews. REVIEW
FILM SPEED OR ASA
Today, I work with very high-end strobes and continuous digital lights. An ASA is dialed in on the camera as it was rated for the film back in the day. ASA you just matched to the situation you were shooting and how sharp and crisp you need the pictures to be. ASA 64 color was the standard for still and food, beverage photography and if you want more depth of field you have 100 ASA available.
One big benefit of sheet film before digital photography came in the fact that It was very, very sharp and much larger than 35 mm vs 8 x 10 inches large. You could enlarge it to billboard size, and it’s still be as sharp. Today, digital camera backs at Pixel ratings that match the speed and grain of film can be achieved with high-end digital cameras that cost in the 5k to 10k range.
POST PRODUCTION
Large camera sheet film you could retouch right on it, and it made incredible separations for the printing. Likewise, you can see all the detail or lacking of detail. The best way to print back then was to provide the printer with the largest and best exposed negative or chrome aka positive slide film chosen in the final selections.
You could add time to the developer stage called “push the film”, in 1/4 stops all the way to 1 stop which would clean up the highlights and not affect the shadow density. You could pull it back in the development, meaning reduce its time, you could flash it and tone, its base color, Ektachrome you could take the film and cross process it with color print film chemicals C-41 and get a radical shift in colors, something I’m sure you can get similar in filters with phone apps or photoshop.
Or you can just experiment with it, like where I flashed my film and instead of having a black base, I would have blue or green base to create the shadow being color effected, that was before Photoshop. I’ll go more into that later on. But, you know, primarily
I think the biggest benefit to using sheet film was you could quickly make print mock-ups right away to show your client at the size and sharpness that it would come out at the print run. They would be before going to press run could see what the ad would look like.
Color print shops themselves love to work with large film. Loved it. Back then you were always shot and going after the best quality you could deliver to the client and make the image show stopping. Photographers, Film Retouchers, Art Directors and Printers all had great pride in how the final outcome looked. You were always after the best quality you could deliver as the final art work. A pride you could see from all involved as it came off the printing press and the client is just smiling ear to ear.
