This is one of my more favorite threads. I like seeing you guys, and your fancy equipment. Here I am just "trying to make it work".
Sagging bellows like an old Italian grandma. I stuff things underneath like Amazon bubble packaging, that day it was my key holder box from Ikea, and a box of sani-wipes. I've worked in LF studios (waayyyy before digital, and yes, we shot everything in 8x10) and the motto was "gaffer tape everything". In house cameras were falling apart, but lenses were pristine. So I just got used to taping up lensboard.
Corresponding shot (also in the "Oct portraits thread)
The corresponding shot is in October portraits but here's the set up with ME!!! That's me!! Probably last shot of me inside a sheet of 8x10 film. I mean, who else is gonna take the pic?
Last edited by ericantonio; 25-Oct-2020 at 08:05. Reason: wrong tags
--
ericantonio, nice portraits! Seeing your "making it work" set-up reminded me of my discovery years ago of how much of the same is done behind the scenes in Hollywood and other filmmaking. While there are fabulous troves of vast varieties of lighting, rigging, and set tools, and while the kinds of money those folks sometimes throw around could lead you to think that they use nothing but commercially available items, there is constant improvisation with plywood, fabrics, foam core, etc., etc. A good gaffer is far more than the guy who rigs the lighting per instructions from the director of photography. And the DP may also have lo-tech camera adaptations for the $60,000 camera to achieve a certain look.
Anyway, we have our own realm of DIY tools and techniques, as nearly any craft does. As you say, you do what it takes to make it work.
Philip Ulanowsky
Sine scientia ars nihil est. (Without science/knowledge, art is nothing.)
www.imagesinsilver.art
https://www.flickr.com/photos/156933346@N07/
Oh heck yah! I did this in NYC back at the time when shoots were film and we had in-house film processors. We made everything. One summer from school, they didn't have an assisting job. The studio was half a block big and 5 stories and one of the floors was actually a carpentry department. And one of the floors was shooting furniture in little made up rooms. So one summer, instead of assisting, I worked in carpentry department. We made gobos, light stands, scrims, reflectors for everyone. I learned how to make all that stuff and still today, I'm floored to see how much a scrims and reflectors costs! Yikes!
We had unlimited (seemed like it) Kodak gel filters and nobody had holders. We just rolled tape like weed and stuck it on the lens and the gel filter right on it. Worked great.
And I learned to gaffer tape light stands, gobos and tripods on the floor. Cause there was always some advertising exec who doesn't get the memo and fat foots a light or tripod. Easy fix today if you are shooting digital but with LF gear and a dozen Mole Richardsons lighting up a set to look like a suburban living room, a bump in light or tripod is half an hours work!
--
Here is one from this summer, photograph taken in July in the Vosges région in eastern France.
Intrepid MK4
Fujinon 180mm f5.6
Kodak TMY
Fuji xpro1 for the camera picture._DSF6040 by renaud henry, sur Flickr
Bouleau001 by renaud henry, sur Flickr
Bookmarks