Originally posted by hal55 I'm writing a short novel that references, in some detail, a nightime photo shoot involving a sports car, a model and a very long flowing fabric train. Although it's not strictly necessary to be 100% accurate, I'd like to keep it fairly factual and I'm wondering what colour slide films would have been the "go to" in 1983 for such a shoot.
For Black and White I've referenced Ilford Delta as the film of choice, Agfa 50S is one of the colour films he will be using, but what else, probably of a higher ISO rating, would have been a good choice?
Was curious to see Mamiya as the brand of choice for all the photographers shooting, I assume, medium format, and I'm wondering if this would also have been one of the cameras of choice for a landscape photographer in the early 80s?
I was a pro photographer in '83 and if I was shooting an exterior night with strobe, Kodachrome 200 was my color side default and Kodak Tri-X 400 for B&W. Kodak still had a monopoly on the film market with Fujifilm Fujichrome (Velvia wasn't introduced until 1990) rising for daytime color vibrancy. Even back then, however, Kodachrome processing was not locally possible other than major cities, and any serious pro would need to get their film processed the same day, night, or following day, so I suspect in more rural areas or smaller cities Ektachrome would have been the default. In Europe at that time Agfachrome was the most common and in Asia it would have been Fujichrome.
Also note that most car shots, especially at night due to the blinding quality of the strobes, would have had the model's car towed with tungsten lights and no gels. Therefore in that situation we would use Ektachrome 160T or if we really needed faster shutter speeds with tungsten lights, Scotch 640T.
In the US, back then, Ilford was perceived as a student, educational, hobbyist brand, mostly from Kodak brainwashing. I was shooting it for my personal use, but would have been scorned by the agency, studio, or my client if I used it.
Brand of choice for medium format? #1 Hasselblad; #2 about tie with Mamiya, Pentax, and Bronica; #3 Rollei and Contax. Other's existed but they were rare.
Last edited by Alex645; 01-07-2020 at 02:45 PM.