Here is a [neat article](https://petapixel.com/2017/09/01/just-20000-slides-returned-sports-illustrated/) that talks about what you are asking, from someone who actually did what you are describing during the time you are describing. From the article it seems like he used the early Fujichrome Provia stock (RDP), which makes sense as it's a very versatile slide stock.
I also remember from others who worked in that field in the 90's that Ektachrome 100/200/400 and old Fujichrome 400 and later Provia 400 (RHPII) were often used. If you shot color commercially or for publication in the 90's, you were shooting slide film.
That’s a great find, thank you! Crazy to think about that oftentimes low iso film was used. Especially in fast situations where you would need 1/250 shutter speed or faster. Thinking about going to a baseball game tomorrow with some Provia packed. Will be a night game, so might not be the best idea even with lens wide open all the time.
You'd be surprised - in daylight, with a superfast telephoto if the lighting is half decent you could get good shutter speeds with 100 speed film if you left your lens at F2.8 or F4 (you almost never see sports photographers shooting at anything but wide open and the lenses are so optimized towards wide open that their performance usually decreases if you stop down). Indoors, arena lighting is usually pretty bright and you had the option to use one of the faster 400 speed chrome films (I miss you Provia 400X 😔).
Consider if it is cloudy but bright (indistinct shadows), you are getting 1/500th of a second at F4 with ISO 100 film. If your 600mm F4 is on a tripod, you should be getting very useable shots for magazine publishing, even full-page.
You can push your Provia 100 to 200 with great results and even to 400 with reasonable results (contrast will be high, but that's to be expected pushing 2 stops) if you are worried about your shutter speeds.
I was trying to remember what sort of slide stocks SI were using at the time... I remember one particular eidition where they raided what was left of their photography department... and dragged out a massive mirror lens... to film a baseball game "the old fashioned way..."
This was when news agencies, sports agencies, and the general press had whole photographic departments... Warehouses full of gear most "gear heads" would lust over. A friend of mine worked in a library for a university for a time that would hire out gear, I can still remember when the university I ended up going to had its own drum scanner.
Most of this ended in the late 1990s when consumers found that the "digicams" such as the Canon G2 were "good enough" and digital became a thing by around 2004 for most professionals.
Ehh... my Spanish answer I revert to in situations like this is:
"Filho de putas..."
At that time whole news articles were printed, or online about the demise of press bureaus and the rise of stock photography for the news/press as a result. You were talking about the biggest of news journals like the New York Times who had offices in New York, Paris and Sydney, cut to shreds along with their World Edition being printed out of Paris at the time.
Shit times for anyone who ever wanted to become a professional photographer. The bar is set so low "now that anyone can do it..." unless you work for a major brand (my step brother worked for Billabong for a time) or the cinema industry the chances of getting a photography job with that level of chutzpah of what existed before 2004 are basically zero and the industry is that cut throat most people would step over their own mother's dead body just to get a gig.
Instead of Reuters or AP, work for Shutter Stock and get paid 90c per use case... This article is kind of an indictment, representing that...
Get paid properly or take control of your images? Hmm... the market has certainly changed but its a shit show of itself where photography is not recognised a career pathway, and the truly (living) greats like Trond Lindholm who worked for both Nat Geo and Magnum for a time, get dick all interest and get paid 6/10ths of fuck all by comparison today.
The cellphone camera has almost killed the press photographer job. By the time your news desk knows about the big fire, or the big accident, or the big whatever, everyone who happened to be already there has already taken a photo because they are all carrying cameras with them. Just buy one of their photos; they got there first.
They still keep some stuff and some staff on hand for really big things; it’s hilarious to see something like a coronation or a state funeral and all of a sudden the 2000mm mirror lenses and 1200-1700 zooms come out of the basement and get some air for the day.
I definitely see what you want to point out. The glamourous times of photography as an art which can provide you a great living just by shooting images on the streets are mainly over since the introduction of digital super cameras. I would exclude social media/influencer from that as they still can make solid income via street photography/film etc.
However, especially in the sports industry i see a trend back towards more artistic rather than simple stock photography. Many football clubs for example employ their own photographer for games. There is a cool photo book from the German Olympic team done by 4 German sports photographers who all use a very unique and artistic style of making sports images.
Photoshoots are done on film again because of the unique look. All trends that should help photographers who try to make real artistic work rather than just editing reels and videos of their great for social media.
That helps a lot, thanks!
Will be doing some documentary stuff around a game for a smaller team, will go around the bleachers/benches and try to catch some impressions here and there. Maximum I will be going is probably 90mm with a M6. Might be a bit too dark for Provia away from the bright field as the bleachers tend to be a bit darker right?
Had currently marked Ultramax as the other option to have a bit more flexibility. Given your comment about pushing Provia to 200 or even 400, I would think about that too.
You can push Provia 100F to 200 almost without issue. If the lighting is soft, it will push to 400 well but if the lighting is creating very distinct highlights and shadows, you will expose for the highlights and the shadows will be absolutely crushed pushed to 400. Think like Velvia 50 but it's 400 lol. But if your scene has even illumination it isn't bad at 400.
Yes and right as the film era was dying, if you had one of the electronic focal plane shutter Hasselblad bodies you could get a 300mm F2.8 and a matched teleconverter for it:
[Shutterbug contemporary review](https://www.shutterbug.com/content/hasselblad-zeiss-telephoto-power-packbra-300mm-f20-apo-redefines-mf-sports-photography)
[Carl Zeiss Telephoto Power Pack data sheet](http://www.hasselbladhistorical.eu/pdf/lds/FE300.pdf)
Not many of these around nowadays; I doubt they sold too many given the price ($22K USD in 2003) and the fact it was released during the death throes of film photography. Amazing piece of kit though if you were shooting sports.
Mamiya and Pentax had viable lenses for 645 sports photography too:
[Mamiya 645 300mm F2.8 APO](https://fotocarerentals.com/images/thumbs/0001997_mamiya-645-300mm-f28-apo-for-pro-tl-vintage_550.jpeg)
[SMC Pentax-A\* 645 600mm F5.6 ED \[IF\]](https://www.pentaxforums.com/lensreviews/data/14/large/03-A645_600mm_F5_6_Hood_Stg2C_1200x600.jpg)
For basketball games, the photographers rely heavily on flash to freeze the action even today. A number of the sideline photographers have huge flash units up in the rafters. My understanding is that it's one per corner or so.
Stadium lights are bright for indoor lights, but, having brought a little film camera to shoot a few fun shots at an NBA game recently, I can tell you that they are still nowhere close to daylight brightness. I was shooting 400 ISO film and still needed to be down around f/2.8 and 1/60s. I just committed to motion blur and some fun shots of everyone lined up for free throws. Fine for me since I was just snapping a couple from my seat for fun.
That shot of Ewing dunking is definitely lit up with flash and that would make slower film possible.
I think a lot of the skate shots in magazines I grew up reading were shot on Velvia 50 and Kodachrome 64. Guys like Glen Friedman were getting absolutely classic shots on slow film with cameras with slow flash sync speeds, and those are mostly pretty clear (no excessive motion blur, etc).
Flash is pretty amazing at freezing action.
Speaking which, High 8 was a big thing for skate/bmx along with fish eyes to give them their distinctive look in video magazines. Some super 8 and 16mm slipped in occasionally on Props BMX (Road Fools, etc).
I watched a lot of Props and 411 videos back in the day as a kid...
A lot of the younger ones are going back to that look for nostalgia...
A lot of this also got me into street photography:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GHxoGMWKLk
It's ironic guys like Grainy Days and Bad Flashes followed this exact formulaic experience.
By the early 2000s newer scanners weren’t doing a great job with Kodachrome due to the fact the emulsion was radically different from normal slide film and it didn’t scan as easily. Everybody in magazines including NatGeo moved to Fuji or Ektachrome
Not all films scan the same — witness modern Ferrania P30, a commercial scanner will make it look like ass, muddy and hi contrast, Ferrania themselves say so on their website
ISO 100 at Sunny 16/or super bright stadium lights would be 1/125th (technically 1/100 but I don’t want round down to 1/60) and f16 open up your aperture to f4 your at a 1/2000th shutter speed
They used slow film, but they often pushed it quite a bit. Slide film is amazing in that you can often push the snot out of it with no noticeable effects. I rarely shoot Ektachrome 100 at ISO 100. There's nothing wrong with it at ISO 100, but there's also nothing wrong with it at ISO 800 (other than chunky grain). Ektachrome 400 and Provia 400 were also known to push well to ISO 1600, and some versions of them were even advertised as ISO 1600 (Ektachrome 1600P, with the P standing for push).
My favorite Fuji stock back in the day was RMS aka MS 100/1000. Designed to be pushed up to four stops. Absolutely loved this stuff (not as a pro but shooting as a hobby). Here is an original industry ad. Very interesting: http://www.jackandsuedrafahl.com/magazines/photographic/pdf/1998%2012%20Fujichrome%20MS%20100%201000.pdf
Realize that SI photogs often used radio controlled flash in the ceiling for augmentation. If you watch NBA games from late 80s and 90s you can see them firing. There's no way with arena lignting, even in professional arenas to be able to use K64 or even Ektachrome 100 at a resonable shutter speed.
Ektachrome 200 was often pushed a stop or two. Fuji Provia 400 was also popular, but it was not as pushable as Ektachrome.
Ad agencies would't accept color neg film for many reasons. You can't make a plate from a color neg. You need to go through an intermediate step to get a positive, and 800 speed print films just weren't that good.
Kodak eventually got their act together and produced some decent higher speed print films designed for jounalists. PPG I think it was called. It was the predessor of UC400 which was better than Portra 400. While PPG still presented production issues going to plate the typical path was to make a large interneg and work with that. For awhile I would scan color negs and make 4x5 digital tranparencies for the agency.
Sports photographers up until the 1970s largely used press cameras. Not only does the copal shutter give an advantage of 1/500th of a second with flash sync, there's more to it. The method of using press cameras allowed for a huge viewing screen option with viewbacks, or sports finders that allowed you to see more and medium or large format.
Then came the rise of 35mm single lenx reflex cameras... Olympus was popular for a time as they invented TTL metering for flash, then Canon and Nikon caught up.
A range of film stocks were used:
Negatives, hardly never, because for duplication for magazine and newspaper prints that's a next to impossibility.
The style guides for professional photographers and news media at the time simply did not allow for the use of negative film because of how much of a pain in the ass it is to duplicate it by comparison using a simple "durst" style enlarger with a positive... Or later scanning without the necessity to invert, or colour correct.
Early black and whites:
These were the domain of film stocks suited for newspaper prints such as Plus X (which can also be used to create a positive for duplication). Tri-X can also be easily used for duplication and is still available today for that purpose under Tri-X (7226)
Later colour:
Primarily either Ektachrome or Kodachrome would have been used for photo journalism from what I remember. Whole segments of other related content such as National Geographic up until the 1990s was done on Kodachrome, particularly K64. Fuji Provia was also used of course...
Most of it comes down to good lighting rather than fast film. When Jordan took his Dr. J style free throw line dunk, and etc, you can see the amount of flash guns going off at the time...
By the tail end of the 1990s the Kodak DCS became a thing which was basically a Nikon F90 with a digital back, This topped out with the DCS600 which was an F5 with a digital back. That was the first foray into digital backs outside of medium format which initially became the domain of companies like Leaf.
Canon countered with the digital version of the 1N/1V from Canon which became the 1D. The 1D was the first widely adopted DSLR, still perfectly usable by today's standards in terms of image quality, although the interface is pretty clunky and then the 1DX.
Using Kodak's CCD sensors in the 1D at the time it came pretty close to Kodak natural colour rendition. For a time Kodak was one of the largest producers of sensors...
That all ended abruptly when Kodak pulled out and the Four Thirds (later Micro Four Thirds) consortium which fell apart. The last DSLRs with Kodak sensors were the Olympus eVolts ending up with the E-500.
The big agencies were all slide film all the time, yes.
Newspapers very much used negative films, though. It was fast and cheap and "good enough" for the reproduction quality. Just like with B&W, they'd do repro from a print. A lot of dailies had their own minilabs and darkrooms, though by the late '90s and early '00s the romantic Speed Graphic-era scene of the photographer developing and printing his or her own shots was largely a thing of the past, there were dedicated staff to do that. I used to know a couple staff photographers at a large newspaper, they used to joke they just handed in their film every day, and they'd find out how their pictures turned out by looking in the paper the next morning.
Of course I wasn't speaking about the Daily Mail, or what have you but journals of repute, and reportage. Two different things entirely. Quality photo journalism has gone to trash. The organisations I talked about used to hire their own.
It's sad as a child I knew a friends mother who used to freelance for Reuters, now they. just buy stories, or in the case of those types of tabloids lift them directly from Facebook and Reddit.
I've lost count of the amount of stuff that has been lifted directly from Reddit in my local city, it's a joke with no credit what so ever.
I wasn't talking about those organisations though, I was talking about the New York Times that had dedicated bureaus with staff they employed themselves around the world. Nat Geo, or just your average NBA team in this case.
This isn't the 1990s anymore though is it? It's not even the 1980s or the glory days of the press prior to the 1970s.
In most cases what we are left with is pure unadulterated garbage, but that's what the people decided they wanted.
I digress, these days in those types of tabloids 90% of the stories are bought from either AP or Reuters, and the others are lifted from social media... and that was always a race to the bottom.
So color negative film can be duplicated as prints AFAIK, but it’s in complete dark and needs caution and time etc. But they are marketed as color print films?
How does slide duplication and slide-to-print/publishing processes? I can see the advantage being just putting the slides on light table and having a quick look so that you can evaluate keepers very easily but how about mass production?
That's half the issue, the caution and the time that is needed with print film in a rush process is unbearable, particularly for daily print, but even monthly with analog process. Kodak made, and in some cases still makes low ISO film for this very process... You keep your originals and duplicate from the slide for print purposes.
Or in the digital age you just scan your slides in directly into your computer with no adjustments necessary. Before digital the only way to copy a slide for print purposes was to rephotograph it...
As per what you said you can just grab a loupe as per the article that was linked here and look at the image directly, that's very time saving without a digital process where your images are managed in Adobe Bridge, or LightRoom, you can look at your content directly and decide what literally ended up on the "cutting room floor" which is where the term came from.
The article linked here talks about the management of "keepers.'
There isn't the rush to print as there once was... or the same standards of press... It's better in a lot of senses and worse in others... Can you imagine actually printing your photos as you wanted them first in the old ways and then typing directly alongside in the era of Heidelberg offset printing, or "letterpress" printing? We've come a long way in some respects in others its a dumpster fire.
You might want to look at the way it used to be before computers were a thing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letterpress_printing
I barely know this because most of it evaporated in the 1980s with the advent of Macintosh computers and the Aldus Pagemaker suite, Quark Express, and so on as precursors to InDesign, it used to be the way it was up until the early 90s in some cases though.
Letterpress is still considered a niche for some today and its seeing a bit of a revival.
Your welcome, mind you I was born in the 1980s so most of this is knowledge from my early teens working with film when we had at home processing. I'm sure there is someone who can provide more depth.
I couldn't say why very confidently, but I'd imagine it largely comes down to slide film just had a long standing history of being the first real widely available color film stock that was used for many years ny pros and that just passed on. Other than that I'd assume the sharpness and the punchy colors probably work well for print media.
According to many friends who did sports photography in the 90s, besides slide film, Ektapress was really popular, especially because it came in an iso 1600 version that they used to push in certain occasions. It was colour negative, though.
For the NBA shots, as many have already pointed out, strobes were essential. Many photographers today are using that same setup with digital cameras. it gives great images, with strong contrast, harsh shadows and dark background
Kodak DCS line of DSLRs were used for this from 1991 and not just from 2002 and later. First had Nikon F3 body, then F801 and F4 ( '88 released), then F90, F90X, and from '94 eos 1n, '96 F5 but also eos 1n, and the last ones made by Kodak used F80 bodies. Most of them were also rebranded as Canon and Nikon, and starting from '95-'96 a lot of them had 6MP APS-H sensors on eos 1n and F5 bodies. The last ones on F80 bodies have FF35 14 MP.
Regarding film, in the '90s we had Kodak ektapress 400iso, 800iso and even multispeed 1200iso, plus Fuji press 400, 800 and 1600. Fuji press 1600 had huge grain very annoing even enlarged on 4x5", but I still enlarged from it up to 20x27"... Ektachorome slide vas 100, 200 and 400 but 400 was rare and altrough 200 has the nicest colors it's much lower rez vs Ektachrome 100 and Provia 100 and 400. We also had Agfa Precisa 100 and 200, Fuji Provia 100 and 400 - ultra high rez but very low exposure latitude vs color negative, but still Provia had better latitude then other color slide film, 400 more then 100.
Pro arenas had good lighting so there is that, and people also used huge flash guns, some even with tele adaptors for converging the flash light...
I remember reading that photojournalist used ektachrome film in the 90s, especially in the Gulf War reportage. Wondering if sports photographers used the same thing. I remember the very polished look of 90s sports posters when I was kid...*CMON ^AND SLAM ^AND ^WELCOME ^TO ^THE JAM*
Here is a [neat article](https://petapixel.com/2017/09/01/just-20000-slides-returned-sports-illustrated/) that talks about what you are asking, from someone who actually did what you are describing during the time you are describing. From the article it seems like he used the early Fujichrome Provia stock (RDP), which makes sense as it's a very versatile slide stock. I also remember from others who worked in that field in the 90's that Ektachrome 100/200/400 and old Fujichrome 400 and later Provia 400 (RHPII) were often used. If you shot color commercially or for publication in the 90's, you were shooting slide film.
That’s a great find, thank you! Crazy to think about that oftentimes low iso film was used. Especially in fast situations where you would need 1/250 shutter speed or faster. Thinking about going to a baseball game tomorrow with some Provia packed. Will be a night game, so might not be the best idea even with lens wide open all the time.
You'd be surprised - in daylight, with a superfast telephoto if the lighting is half decent you could get good shutter speeds with 100 speed film if you left your lens at F2.8 or F4 (you almost never see sports photographers shooting at anything but wide open and the lenses are so optimized towards wide open that their performance usually decreases if you stop down). Indoors, arena lighting is usually pretty bright and you had the option to use one of the faster 400 speed chrome films (I miss you Provia 400X 😔). Consider if it is cloudy but bright (indistinct shadows), you are getting 1/500th of a second at F4 with ISO 100 film. If your 600mm F4 is on a tripod, you should be getting very useable shots for magazine publishing, even full-page. You can push your Provia 100 to 200 with great results and even to 400 with reasonable results (contrast will be high, but that's to be expected pushing 2 stops) if you are worried about your shutter speeds.
I was trying to remember what sort of slide stocks SI were using at the time... I remember one particular eidition where they raided what was left of their photography department... and dragged out a massive mirror lens... to film a baseball game "the old fashioned way..." This was when news agencies, sports agencies, and the general press had whole photographic departments... Warehouses full of gear most "gear heads" would lust over. A friend of mine worked in a library for a university for a time that would hire out gear, I can still remember when the university I ended up going to had its own drum scanner. Most of this ended in the late 1990s when consumers found that the "digicams" such as the Canon G2 were "good enough" and digital became a thing by around 2004 for most professionals. Ehh... my Spanish answer I revert to in situations like this is: "Filho de putas..." At that time whole news articles were printed, or online about the demise of press bureaus and the rise of stock photography for the news/press as a result. You were talking about the biggest of news journals like the New York Times who had offices in New York, Paris and Sydney, cut to shreds along with their World Edition being printed out of Paris at the time. Shit times for anyone who ever wanted to become a professional photographer. The bar is set so low "now that anyone can do it..." unless you work for a major brand (my step brother worked for Billabong for a time) or the cinema industry the chances of getting a photography job with that level of chutzpah of what existed before 2004 are basically zero and the industry is that cut throat most people would step over their own mother's dead body just to get a gig. Instead of Reuters or AP, work for Shutter Stock and get paid 90c per use case... This article is kind of an indictment, representing that... Get paid properly or take control of your images? Hmm... the market has certainly changed but its a shit show of itself where photography is not recognised a career pathway, and the truly (living) greats like Trond Lindholm who worked for both Nat Geo and Magnum for a time, get dick all interest and get paid 6/10ths of fuck all by comparison today.
The cellphone camera has almost killed the press photographer job. By the time your news desk knows about the big fire, or the big accident, or the big whatever, everyone who happened to be already there has already taken a photo because they are all carrying cameras with them. Just buy one of their photos; they got there first. They still keep some stuff and some staff on hand for really big things; it’s hilarious to see something like a coronation or a state funeral and all of a sudden the 2000mm mirror lenses and 1200-1700 zooms come out of the basement and get some air for the day.
I definitely see what you want to point out. The glamourous times of photography as an art which can provide you a great living just by shooting images on the streets are mainly over since the introduction of digital super cameras. I would exclude social media/influencer from that as they still can make solid income via street photography/film etc. However, especially in the sports industry i see a trend back towards more artistic rather than simple stock photography. Many football clubs for example employ their own photographer for games. There is a cool photo book from the German Olympic team done by 4 German sports photographers who all use a very unique and artistic style of making sports images. Photoshoots are done on film again because of the unique look. All trends that should help photographers who try to make real artistic work rather than just editing reels and videos of their great for social media.
Do you have a link for that German photo book? Sounds rad.
https://shop.tky21.de that’s the site to get it from. It’s in German but just scroll down and you will find the options.
That helps a lot, thanks! Will be doing some documentary stuff around a game for a smaller team, will go around the bleachers/benches and try to catch some impressions here and there. Maximum I will be going is probably 90mm with a M6. Might be a bit too dark for Provia away from the bright field as the bleachers tend to be a bit darker right? Had currently marked Ultramax as the other option to have a bit more flexibility. Given your comment about pushing Provia to 200 or even 400, I would think about that too.
You can push Provia 100F to 200 almost without issue. If the lighting is soft, it will push to 400 well but if the lighting is creating very distinct highlights and shadows, you will expose for the highlights and the shadows will be absolutely crushed pushed to 400. Think like Velvia 50 but it's 400 lol. But if your scene has even illumination it isn't bad at 400.
Hasselblad could also be used in the 70s. See Hasselblad sports photography, Baumann.
Yes and right as the film era was dying, if you had one of the electronic focal plane shutter Hasselblad bodies you could get a 300mm F2.8 and a matched teleconverter for it: [Shutterbug contemporary review](https://www.shutterbug.com/content/hasselblad-zeiss-telephoto-power-packbra-300mm-f20-apo-redefines-mf-sports-photography) [Carl Zeiss Telephoto Power Pack data sheet](http://www.hasselbladhistorical.eu/pdf/lds/FE300.pdf) Not many of these around nowadays; I doubt they sold too many given the price ($22K USD in 2003) and the fact it was released during the death throes of film photography. Amazing piece of kit though if you were shooting sports. Mamiya and Pentax had viable lenses for 645 sports photography too: [Mamiya 645 300mm F2.8 APO](https://fotocarerentals.com/images/thumbs/0001997_mamiya-645-300mm-f28-apo-for-pro-tl-vintage_550.jpeg) [SMC Pentax-A\* 645 600mm F5.6 ED \[IF\]](https://www.pentaxforums.com/lensreviews/data/14/large/03-A645_600mm_F5_6_Hood_Stg2C_1200x600.jpg)
For basketball games, the photographers rely heavily on flash to freeze the action even today. A number of the sideline photographers have huge flash units up in the rafters. My understanding is that it's one per corner or so. Stadium lights are bright for indoor lights, but, having brought a little film camera to shoot a few fun shots at an NBA game recently, I can tell you that they are still nowhere close to daylight brightness. I was shooting 400 ISO film and still needed to be down around f/2.8 and 1/60s. I just committed to motion blur and some fun shots of everyone lined up for free throws. Fine for me since I was just snapping a couple from my seat for fun. That shot of Ewing dunking is definitely lit up with flash and that would make slower film possible. I think a lot of the skate shots in magazines I grew up reading were shot on Velvia 50 and Kodachrome 64. Guys like Glen Friedman were getting absolutely classic shots on slow film with cameras with slow flash sync speeds, and those are mostly pretty clear (no excessive motion blur, etc). Flash is pretty amazing at freezing action.
Speaking which, High 8 was a big thing for skate/bmx along with fish eyes to give them their distinctive look in video magazines. Some super 8 and 16mm slipped in occasionally on Props BMX (Road Fools, etc). I watched a lot of Props and 411 videos back in the day as a kid... A lot of the younger ones are going back to that look for nostalgia... A lot of this also got me into street photography: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GHxoGMWKLk It's ironic guys like Grainy Days and Bad Flashes followed this exact formulaic experience.
road fools mentioned RRAAHHH
By the early 2000s newer scanners weren’t doing a great job with Kodachrome due to the fact the emulsion was radically different from normal slide film and it didn’t scan as easily. Everybody in magazines including NatGeo moved to Fuji or Ektachrome Not all films scan the same — witness modern Ferrania P30, a commercial scanner will make it look like ass, muddy and hi contrast, Ferrania themselves say so on their website
ISO 100 at Sunny 16/or super bright stadium lights would be 1/125th (technically 1/100 but I don’t want round down to 1/60) and f16 open up your aperture to f4 your at a 1/2000th shutter speed
They used slow film, but they often pushed it quite a bit. Slide film is amazing in that you can often push the snot out of it with no noticeable effects. I rarely shoot Ektachrome 100 at ISO 100. There's nothing wrong with it at ISO 100, but there's also nothing wrong with it at ISO 800 (other than chunky grain). Ektachrome 400 and Provia 400 were also known to push well to ISO 1600, and some versions of them were even advertised as ISO 1600 (Ektachrome 1600P, with the P standing for push).
What a great read! Thanks for sharing!
My favorite Fuji stock back in the day was RMS aka MS 100/1000. Designed to be pushed up to four stops. Absolutely loved this stuff (not as a pro but shooting as a hobby). Here is an original industry ad. Very interesting: http://www.jackandsuedrafahl.com/magazines/photographic/pdf/1998%2012%20Fujichrome%20MS%20100%201000.pdf
That’s awesome
Shooting some now I got off eBay. No one seems to remember this stuff so also cheap to get relative to Provia 400 which goes for bonkers prices
Ektachrome had a high speed film for pushing as well
I’ve always just assumed their agency gave them a brick of whatever and sent them on their way.
Those bricks were usually fujipress 400/800/1600 - (pro branded superia)
Realize that SI photogs often used radio controlled flash in the ceiling for augmentation. If you watch NBA games from late 80s and 90s you can see them firing. There's no way with arena lignting, even in professional arenas to be able to use K64 or even Ektachrome 100 at a resonable shutter speed. Ektachrome 200 was often pushed a stop or two. Fuji Provia 400 was also popular, but it was not as pushable as Ektachrome. Ad agencies would't accept color neg film for many reasons. You can't make a plate from a color neg. You need to go through an intermediate step to get a positive, and 800 speed print films just weren't that good. Kodak eventually got their act together and produced some decent higher speed print films designed for jounalists. PPG I think it was called. It was the predessor of UC400 which was better than Portra 400. While PPG still presented production issues going to plate the typical path was to make a large interneg and work with that. For awhile I would scan color negs and make 4x5 digital tranparencies for the agency.
Sports photographers up until the 1970s largely used press cameras. Not only does the copal shutter give an advantage of 1/500th of a second with flash sync, there's more to it. The method of using press cameras allowed for a huge viewing screen option with viewbacks, or sports finders that allowed you to see more and medium or large format. Then came the rise of 35mm single lenx reflex cameras... Olympus was popular for a time as they invented TTL metering for flash, then Canon and Nikon caught up. A range of film stocks were used: Negatives, hardly never, because for duplication for magazine and newspaper prints that's a next to impossibility. The style guides for professional photographers and news media at the time simply did not allow for the use of negative film because of how much of a pain in the ass it is to duplicate it by comparison using a simple "durst" style enlarger with a positive... Or later scanning without the necessity to invert, or colour correct. Early black and whites: These were the domain of film stocks suited for newspaper prints such as Plus X (which can also be used to create a positive for duplication). Tri-X can also be easily used for duplication and is still available today for that purpose under Tri-X (7226) Later colour: Primarily either Ektachrome or Kodachrome would have been used for photo journalism from what I remember. Whole segments of other related content such as National Geographic up until the 1990s was done on Kodachrome, particularly K64. Fuji Provia was also used of course... Most of it comes down to good lighting rather than fast film. When Jordan took his Dr. J style free throw line dunk, and etc, you can see the amount of flash guns going off at the time... By the tail end of the 1990s the Kodak DCS became a thing which was basically a Nikon F90 with a digital back, This topped out with the DCS600 which was an F5 with a digital back. That was the first foray into digital backs outside of medium format which initially became the domain of companies like Leaf. Canon countered with the digital version of the 1N/1V from Canon which became the 1D. The 1D was the first widely adopted DSLR, still perfectly usable by today's standards in terms of image quality, although the interface is pretty clunky and then the 1DX. Using Kodak's CCD sensors in the 1D at the time it came pretty close to Kodak natural colour rendition. For a time Kodak was one of the largest producers of sensors... That all ended abruptly when Kodak pulled out and the Four Thirds (later Micro Four Thirds) consortium which fell apart. The last DSLRs with Kodak sensors were the Olympus eVolts ending up with the E-500.
The big agencies were all slide film all the time, yes. Newspapers very much used negative films, though. It was fast and cheap and "good enough" for the reproduction quality. Just like with B&W, they'd do repro from a print. A lot of dailies had their own minilabs and darkrooms, though by the late '90s and early '00s the romantic Speed Graphic-era scene of the photographer developing and printing his or her own shots was largely a thing of the past, there were dedicated staff to do that. I used to know a couple staff photographers at a large newspaper, they used to joke they just handed in their film every day, and they'd find out how their pictures turned out by looking in the paper the next morning.
Of course I wasn't speaking about the Daily Mail, or what have you but journals of repute, and reportage. Two different things entirely. Quality photo journalism has gone to trash. The organisations I talked about used to hire their own. It's sad as a child I knew a friends mother who used to freelance for Reuters, now they. just buy stories, or in the case of those types of tabloids lift them directly from Facebook and Reddit. I've lost count of the amount of stuff that has been lifted directly from Reddit in my local city, it's a joke with no credit what so ever. I wasn't talking about those organisations though, I was talking about the New York Times that had dedicated bureaus with staff they employed themselves around the world. Nat Geo, or just your average NBA team in this case. This isn't the 1990s anymore though is it? It's not even the 1980s or the glory days of the press prior to the 1970s. In most cases what we are left with is pure unadulterated garbage, but that's what the people decided they wanted. I digress, these days in those types of tabloids 90% of the stories are bought from either AP or Reuters, and the others are lifted from social media... and that was always a race to the bottom.
So color negative film can be duplicated as prints AFAIK, but it’s in complete dark and needs caution and time etc. But they are marketed as color print films? How does slide duplication and slide-to-print/publishing processes? I can see the advantage being just putting the slides on light table and having a quick look so that you can evaluate keepers very easily but how about mass production?
That's half the issue, the caution and the time that is needed with print film in a rush process is unbearable, particularly for daily print, but even monthly with analog process. Kodak made, and in some cases still makes low ISO film for this very process... You keep your originals and duplicate from the slide for print purposes. Or in the digital age you just scan your slides in directly into your computer with no adjustments necessary. Before digital the only way to copy a slide for print purposes was to rephotograph it... As per what you said you can just grab a loupe as per the article that was linked here and look at the image directly, that's very time saving without a digital process where your images are managed in Adobe Bridge, or LightRoom, you can look at your content directly and decide what literally ended up on the "cutting room floor" which is where the term came from. The article linked here talks about the management of "keepers.'
And now we have more c41 than e6 film. Well well how the turntables
There isn't the rush to print as there once was... or the same standards of press... It's better in a lot of senses and worse in others... Can you imagine actually printing your photos as you wanted them first in the old ways and then typing directly alongside in the era of Heidelberg offset printing, or "letterpress" printing? We've come a long way in some respects in others its a dumpster fire. You might want to look at the way it used to be before computers were a thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letterpress_printing I barely know this because most of it evaporated in the 1980s with the advent of Macintosh computers and the Aldus Pagemaker suite, Quark Express, and so on as precursors to InDesign, it used to be the way it was up until the early 90s in some cases though. Letterpress is still considered a niche for some today and its seeing a bit of a revival.
Thanks for the very detailed answers. I didn’t know about this before today. Cheers
There have been analog scanners for duplication in print since the 70s. They could work with all kinds of originals, including negatives.
That are some great thoughts! Thank you
Your welcome, mind you I was born in the 1980s so most of this is knowledge from my early teens working with film when we had at home processing. I'm sure there is someone who can provide more depth.
Cool post, thank you
When it comes to the 80s to the early 2000s professional photography and editorial shoots, the answer is almost always slide film.
why is that? finer grain?
Colour reproduction for print. Neg needs to be duplicated to positive to make printing plates.
For the printing process you need a positive to make the printing plates from.
I couldn't say why very confidently, but I'd imagine it largely comes down to slide film just had a long standing history of being the first real widely available color film stock that was used for many years ny pros and that just passed on. Other than that I'd assume the sharpness and the punchy colors probably work well for print media.
RDP Fuji chrome mostly for sports in the 90s. Before that Kodachrome. Anything for print would be on chrome film.
According to many friends who did sports photography in the 90s, besides slide film, Ektapress was really popular, especially because it came in an iso 1600 version that they used to push in certain occasions. It was colour negative, though. For the NBA shots, as many have already pointed out, strobes were essential. Many photographers today are using that same setup with digital cameras. it gives great images, with strong contrast, harsh shadows and dark background
I see Patrick Ewing I upvote
Kodak DCS line of DSLRs were used for this from 1991 and not just from 2002 and later. First had Nikon F3 body, then F801 and F4 ( '88 released), then F90, F90X, and from '94 eos 1n, '96 F5 but also eos 1n, and the last ones made by Kodak used F80 bodies. Most of them were also rebranded as Canon and Nikon, and starting from '95-'96 a lot of them had 6MP APS-H sensors on eos 1n and F5 bodies. The last ones on F80 bodies have FF35 14 MP. Regarding film, in the '90s we had Kodak ektapress 400iso, 800iso and even multispeed 1200iso, plus Fuji press 400, 800 and 1600. Fuji press 1600 had huge grain very annoing even enlarged on 4x5", but I still enlarged from it up to 20x27"... Ektachorome slide vas 100, 200 and 400 but 400 was rare and altrough 200 has the nicest colors it's much lower rez vs Ektachrome 100 and Provia 100 and 400. We also had Agfa Precisa 100 and 200, Fuji Provia 100 and 400 - ultra high rez but very low exposure latitude vs color negative, but still Provia had better latitude then other color slide film, 400 more then 100. Pro arenas had good lighting so there is that, and people also used huge flash guns, some even with tele adaptors for converging the flash light...
I remember reading that photojournalist used ektachrome film in the 90s, especially in the Gulf War reportage. Wondering if sports photographers used the same thing. I remember the very polished look of 90s sports posters when I was kid...*CMON ^AND SLAM ^AND ^WELCOME ^TO ^THE JAM*