Good Old Days

Then photographers like Eisenstadt didn't need or use a meter.

20droger wrote in post #16979860
Limit your sessions to 20 shots each (one "roll"), changing cards between "rolls."

36 exposures? And somewhere in there we had the 250 exposure back for the Nikon F.

Remember "Bracketing"?
When shooting out of town for a client, I burned film like crazy because nobody wants to hear that "the dufus in the lab knocked the lid off the developing tank."
More in post #43 here.

Let's not forget white balance, too. We were stuck with daylight or incandescent, unless we carried a lot of light balancing filters/gels.

And while I still like the "film look", I'm not sorry that we are where we are today, thanks very much! ; )

PhotosGuy wrote in post #16981268
36 exposures? And somewhere in there we had the 250 exposure back for the Nikon F.

Not in SE Asia in the early '60s.

Very well!

That would have been "the late dufus"! We all carried guns and were perpetually exhausted. Dufuses tended not to make such mistakes, at least not more than once.

Thanks. I forgot about incandescent film. I only shot daylight.

Me too. I by no means want to go back to the good old days.

But then, I do firmly believe that the photographer should be smarter than his camera. Alas, that is so often not the case.

I don't consider everyone who can press a shutter button a photographer, just as I don't consider everyone who can write a grocery list an author.

Ah, yes, the good old days, when you could still have "one for the road," and when you could still smack your secretary on the tush and she had to pretend to like it.

nathancarter wrote in post #16981493
Ah, yes, the good old days, when you could still have "one for the road," and when you could still smack your secretary on the tush and she had to pretend to like it.

. . . and when women took jobs with the title of secretary because men never learned to type.

Nowhere have I said that the good old days were universally good.

Like the good old days of the 1800s, when 40% of children died before they were 6, and we set a minimum age for the presidency of 35 because we wanted only mature, elder men to lead us.

OhLook wrote in post #16981497
. . . and when women took jobs with the title of secretary because men never learned to type.

Would you learn to type if you could just give a dictation to your sex object?

I was shooting film in the 70's. Pretty much the same deal except I did have a Tamron zoom lens. Still manual focus, though. And I did some pretty nifty PP in the darkroom. Nowhere near what I can do now in Photoshop, but there were certain techniques that were similar.

We had color 400 and 800 film then, too.

Am I nostalgic for those days? Not. A. Chance.

nathancarter wrote in post #16981493
Ah, yes, the good old days, when you could still have "one for the road," and when you could still smack your secretary on the tush and she had to pretend to like it.

OhLook wrote in post #16981497
. . . and when women took jobs with the title of secretary because men never learned to type.

Funny, a while back I ended up with a Netflix account and was catching up to some TV shows that I had missed...

Well, at some point I started watching "Mad Men" — I had only seen one or two episodes over the years so I started with Episode 1 and for a while I just kept up night by night.

Anyway, that show is really something, recalling the "old days" of the '60s, and especially highlighting the things that are now "out of favor"...of course the part about women being pretty much "second-class citizens" when it comes to the workplace...

But also, they really highlight the fact that smoking and drinking alcoholic beverages in the workplace, at least at the executive/managerial level, were considered not just "acceptable", but were considered part of the "lifestyle", those things as well as the freewheeling antics when it came to extra-marital "activities"!

Ah, well, not about photography, but about what we refer to as the "Good Old Days"!

DocFrankenstein wrote in post #16979911
You're kind of mashing up a lot of things in with using manual cameras.

If I have to get shot to shoot film, I'd rather shoot digital.

But I don't find limits of film camera systems hampering my creativity. Discard things you can't shoot with it, and shoot the things you can.

In fact, I'd (strongly) argue the opposite is true. It is a near truism that limitations enhance creativity.

The gauntlet has been thrown down Roger.

When I landed my first job as a staff photographer at a large industrial plant, my boss who became my mentor was also a hard man. I learnt so much from him. This was in the late 1970s.

For 'fun' he would send me out just for practice with a non metering Nikon F/50mm f/1.4 loaded with a roll of 36exp Tri-X. I was given an hour to shoot the roll. The negatives had to be 'interesting' and properly exposed. I had to have a 75% keeper rate. If not I had to buy the departmental lottery ticket and make coffee for the week.

Boy,, did I learn fast.

And probably drank so much coffee that your nerves are still shaking.

20droger wrote in post #16990884
And probably drink so much coffee that your nerves are still shaking.

There,, fixed it for you

20droger wrote in post #16981478
But then, I do firmly believe that the photographer should be smarter than his camera. Alas, that is so often not the case.

I don't consider everyone who can press a shutter button a photographer, just as I don't consider everyone who can write a grocery list an author.

Well said Roger!

Love the thread...Thanks!

Roger,

When I was learning, again back in the early 70's, I could only shoot with what I could afford. What that meant for me, was an Argus A3.

Did you ever miss a shot because you forgot to cock shutter?

Rad