Which camera/format/media was this picture taken with?

gavinlg

gavinlg

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I love high end fashion in high end magazines, and sometimes my friends joke about me being a girly kind of guy because I'm about the only male I know that buys high end women's fashion publications. There really isn't really anything cooler than a beautiful woman in an beautiful image. Something that really interests me is the way that the photographers are able to show the ladies in a beautiful desirable way while being completely different to the "other" look, which comes from penthouse/FHM etc etc.

Now one of my favorite models at the moment is a fellow Aussie, Miranda Kerr. I was looking through some scanned magazine articles featuring her, and came across this page....

kerrreference.jpg




Firstly, isn't she incredible? Secondly, isn't the photograph incredible? The look of the image is really appealing to me, and I started wondering what it might have been taken with/on.
It looks to me like medium format film, although it could possibly be 35mm. The reason I believe it to be film isn't scientific - it just seems to me the tones of the colors are very gentle, the transition of focus is gentle, and the sharpness is there but not particularly high.
If I had to make a guess at the equipment used I would say something along the lines of a Mamiya 645/Hassy with around a 100-130mm lens @ around f2.8. Film looks to be possibly a Kodak Portra?



If I asked you to hazard a guess at what gear the photo was taken with, what would you say?
 
I agree with your thoughts on fashion photography and your assessment of the photo. If we suppose that there has been minimal post-processing/image manipulation then i would guess from the low contrast of the image that it was taken with an older single coated lens. So maybe a Hasselblad with one of the older silver lenses, Mamiya C or Rolleiflex maybe?
 
OK, I'll play - but who knows if I am right or not?

Pentax 67, 150mm lens, f/4 or f/5.6. Film used - no idea. Portra it could well be.
 
Be careful people...It's a trick question...she's not real...stare into those wonderfully blue eyes and the rest of her looks fake...(that is a weird, but great photo)...
So, my answer is no camera was used to create this image...HA!!! ;)
 
I'm not 100% sure if you guys are being sarcastic or what, but it doesn't look like a digital image to me. If you think it's digital let me know why?


And yes, she actually is that pretty in real life.
 
Can't judge -- but I fully take your point about the magazines. In the early 70s I lived with an infants' school teacher in Cambridge. When we picked up our magazine, the assistant invariably handed them to the wrong person: my Vogue was handed to her, her Penthouse to me...

Cheers,

R.
 
I was only half joking, my daughter has just reached that Cosmo age, and I have been surprised by how artificial the girls look these days, clearly enhanced in CS I believe

These days with the hourly rate for this type of shoot running into thousands I would say the instant feedback of digital would be absolutely essential and would trump any artistic concerns


PS she is very pretty, and I would love to see her on film with less makeup
 
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Gavin,

Who is the photographer and when was the photo taken? There are still several highly published pro's that still use a lot of film here in Sydney. How do I know this? Because I know the master darkroom genius that develops their film.

How would you like to see 2,400(yes, 2,400) chromes of Megan Gale from one shoot for a cover photo?
 
Sparrow said:
I was only half joking, my daughter has just reached that Cosmo age, and I have been surprised by how artificial the girls look these days, clearly enhanced in CS I believe
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'Twas ever thus. When Senggye Tombs-Curtis's The Airbrush Book came out in the 1980s, one of the magazines -- it may have been Cosmo -- got really pissy when he said the photos were retouched, and threatened to sue. When he showed them a cover where you could actually see incontrovertible evidence of retouching, they backed down.

Cheers,

Roger
 
Roger Hicks said:
'Twas ever thus. When Senggye Tombs-Curtis's The Airbrush Book came out in the 1980s, one of the magazines -- it may have been Cosmo -- got really pissy when he said the photos were retouched, and threatened to sue. When he showed them a cover where you could actually see incontrovertible evidence of retouching, they backed down.

Cheers,

Roger
Click to expand...

I have a Paasche turbo airbrush that's dated 1938 so no it’s not a new thing, what is new however is the ease and pervasive nature, every page can be altered in CS in less time than a single cover with an airbrush

PS the technology was old then, they started well back into the 19th century
 
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Sparrow said:
I have a Paasche turbo airbrush that's dated 1938 so no it’s not a new thing . . .
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Is that the AB? The one with the oscillating needle? That model dates, as far as I recall, to 1903. There are very few basic designs: again as far as I recall, essentially the Devilbiss-type venturi (late 19th century), Paasche AB and the Aztek (Jan Ilott, 1980s). I did a book on airbrushing (with Kodak -- Aztek was a Kodak company) when the Aztek came out, because I knew both Senggye and Jan (I did a lot of the photography for The Airbrush Book, too). What fascinates me is that airbrushes are still in production and still popular, though obviously far less for retouching nowadays.

You are absolutely right about the vastly increased ease and reduced cost nowadays; I started in advertising in the 1970s when it was still commonplace to retouch and comp 11x14 inch trannies...

Cheers,

Roger
 
Roger Hicks said:
Is that the AB? The one with the oscillating needle? That model dates, as far as I recall, to 1903. There are very few basic designs: again as far as I recall, essentially the Devilbiss-type venturi (late 19th century), Paasche AB and the Aztek (Jan Ilott, 1980s). I did a book on airbrushing (with Kodak -- Aztek was a Kodak company) when the Aztek came out, because I knew both Senggye and Jan (I did a lot of the photography for The Airbrush Book, too). What fascinates me is that airbrushes are still in production and still popular, though obviously far less for retouching nowadays.

You are absolutely right about the vastly increased ease and reduced cost nowadays; I started in advertising in the 1970s when it was still commonplace to retouch and comp 11x14 inch trannies...

Cheers,

Roger
Click to expand...


ABG a turbo dated 1938 never looked into the history, it was among the detritus of an old studio that was closing down, I was buying their archive, I had worked there in the 70s and it was obsolete then, the last one I used in anger was a Aerograph Super 63
 
At that level of fashion photography they probably shot the same situation with film and digital, and I suspect that used the film -- digital is for proofing and covering your ass.

It could be any wide open nicer medium format camera with a lot of post work, added blur and color shifts.
 
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