A Colour Query

lawrence

lawrence

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Last year I took some portraits of a friend for a CD cover. The original brief called for b&w, for which I used Tri-X in my Bronica, but I shot some colour with a hired D200 just in case. Needless to say, the record company chose the colour shots over the b&w but everyone was happy.

Now I've got the chance to shoot another portrait session for him but I'm re-thinking my strategy. I don't own a digital SLR and I was pretty lucky with those colour shots because the D200 seemed to take care of everything for me but it could have been a disaster. I mean, I had no idea what all those buttons were supposed to do! So now I'm thinking maybe I need to buy a D300 and learn how to use it. Or maybe I could get away with colour slide or print film in my Nikons or Broincas and then scan -- I just feel so much more at home with film cameras.

So I'd like to know, has anyone else been down this road and, if so, where did you end up?
 
Shoot your Bronica with slides and watch the record company types drool over what color quality they used to get (maybe their fathers, if they were in the business). You know your camera and will be much more at ease which should show through in your images. Let them pick what they like and then scan. You'll also have image quality to spare if they want to use some of them for large promotional images, too. Just my $.02.
 
charjohncarter said:
Everbody shoots digital, so to look different from everybody: film. But maybe rent a DSLR again set it auto everything because maybe this time they will want a more generic look, i.e. use both.
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Well that's what I did last time but setting 'auto everything' doesn't inspire me with confidence. I mean last time the focus square in the viewfinder suddenly decided to move to the left side of the frame and I had no idea how to move it back! And as I've pointed out, they ended up going for the 'generic look' despite the fact that the b&w shots were better.

Another question is "If film, which film?". I've done thousands of scans of b&w negatives but very little colour. Should I be using negative or transparency? I always liked neg better because of the latitude but I've heard it doesn't scan nicely, which means using tranny -- but then it's so easy to blow the exposure. So that's why I asked if anyone has been down this road before...and where they ended up.
 
Neg scans as easily as slides if you're minimally obedient to the scanner's "ez" instructions. The only ways to get in trouble are a) to shoot Velvia or Kodachrome, which cannot be reproduced to look like you imagine it (everything else is more accurate) and b) to get creative with the scanner..just scan with defaults using Ice at lowest setting, don't use any other settings. Easy as pie.
 
I would take the fact that they chose the digital shots over the medium format B&W last time. Most likely that is a clue into their taste in photographs.
 
Chris101 said:
I would take the fact that they chose the digital shots over the medium format B&W last time. Most likely that is a clue into their taste in photographs.
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Yes, that's my thought so tomorrow I'm taking a close look at a D700 and will most probably buy one. I've got a dozen manual Nikon primes plus a zoom and they will all fit without the ridiculous 'crop factor'.
 
I think it was (I might be wrong; it sounds more like P. T. Barnum or Will Rodgers) our (American) H. L. Mencken (sp?) that said, ' Never under estimate the ignorance of the American public.' If I were doing it, in the back of my mind, I would think; some 20 year old chick or mucho, that is a junior assistant photo looker, will look at your/my film photos (and then pass them to the big idiot) and like them. She/he will be the future photo picker and will call you. 'In other words' do both.
 
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