Boat Crash piccies......

[photodog]

I was browsing our archives at work today, and I came across this series of pics which I shot in the mid 90's whilst working for the Times.... Thought you guys might find them interesting.....

Frame 3 was used on the front page of the paper, one of the very rare occasions that a standalone sport pic ever made it to the front... but it was a Monday.. /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

For the anoraks they were shot on a Nikon F3HP using a Nikkor 300mm f2.8 AIS, probably on Fuji 400 colour neg....

There is a bit of a shift in colour between frames, as we didnt have the same attention to detail back then!

 

[Twister_Ken]

There's a picture I'd love to see again (we used it on a poster). Must date back to the early 80's. Paper maker Wiggins Teape sponsored a race boat called High Speed Blade (the product name of a printing paper). It was a cat powered by 4 outboards. There was an aerial shot of in mid channel, at speed, with the mechanic lying on one hull, attempting to repair a broken down outboard while the other 3 still thundered away.

If anyone has a copy, I'd love to see it.

 

[elton]

Great pics!
How would you do colour correction before digital cameras or digitised negatives, and apps like photoshop? I can imagine you could do it manually when making the print with some kind of clever lamp with rgb controls or something (or am I talking rubbish?!), but I'd imagine it would be too time consuming to bother with on newpaper pictures?

 

[Eventide26]

I have a comedic visual of a guy at his desk, tongue pocked out one side of his mouth and set of colouring felt tip pens, and an intense look on his face as he reshades pixel by pixel/forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

 

[photodog]

These were actually scanned on a Nikon Coolscan, and then manipulated in photoshop on a mac, but we did not have proper colour profiled systems in our offices back then, which is partially responsible for the inconsistency, and you are correct of course, with newspapers back then, we were less fussy....
I was actually scanning negs and outputting colour files as early as 89 or 90 using a machine called a leaf transmitter, which took 1/2 an hour to send a colour picture, and cost aroun£20k, then we went to a hasselblad transmitter which was the first digital machine (The leaf was analogue) that cost something like £30k, and took about 8 minutes if I recall to do a colour pic.. in 1993 I went onto a mac (A 165c laptop) using a coolscan and photoshop.....

In Canada we used to print in colour, using a colour enlarger, which has a series of filters which you manipulate to get the right balance, I never was very good at that... /forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif

Digital is great!

 

[Nauti Fox]

Ahh the days before digital.
I spent a few years as a sports photography runner for David Ashdown of the Indy. Got to see many fantastic sports events very close up including a lot of matches at Wembley from on the pitch, Centre Court at Wimbledon, motor sports, boxing and all from the closest you could get, then wizz the films back to the paper. I don't suppose that job exists today.

 

[johnalison]

Great pictures of course. I was wondering if you were using autofocus in those days - I always thought the skill of sports photographers with manual focus was amazing even though pre-focussing is sometimes possible.

Actually, a spell of "wet" colour negative photography is very good training for any colour work as it teaches you to identify colour variations, especially the unfamiliar cyan and magenta.

 

[photodog]

None of that fancy AF stuff back then.. /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

 

[Lakesailor]

Nice sequence, especially without autofocus. I remember how die-hard smudgers said that auto-focus was the Work-of-the-Devil and couldn't match "proper" focusing.

Bet no-one thinks that now /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

 

[johnalison]

I got my first autofocus (Canon EOS) in 1987 when my old Pentax was burgled (it was corroded inside and due to conk out again soon). When I analysed my pics I realised that I was missing the best shots due to the time I took focussing. Even then the Canon was very quick and accurate and completely changed the kinds of pictures I could take - such as one-handed long-focus while riding a bike. We amateurs were quite amused at how long it took for the pros to take up autofocus.