Questions from the search engines

I like to view what people are hitting my site about so that I can make the content of my site more useful. Sometimes, I'll notice a search that seems to ask a question but I'm not sure if I've got a great answer for it, so here's some short answers...

How to shoot slide film

It's not very hard. Load your camera with the slide film like you do any other film.

Expose carefully. You can get away with all sorts of exposure errors with negative film but you can't get away with slides.

Develop at a lab that's set up to do slide film. Most one-hour labs aren't.

The beauty of a good slide is your reward for the troubles.

Can I Crossprocess in a One Hour?

In theory, yes, you can take E6 slide film (DO NOT TRY TO CROSS PROCESS KODACHROME! IT WILL CONTAMINATE THE MACHINE AND NOT DO ANYTHING USEFUL!) and run it through the machine and get interesting results.

Because some machines have been contaminated by people trying to run Kodachrome or ECN2 movie camera film, some places will refuse to develop anything that doesn't have "C-41" written on it. See, if you put Kodachrome or ECN2 in a C-41 machine, both have a coating of Rem-Jet on the back, which will flake off and contaminate the rollers and result in crap on everybody else's film. Which means that they've got to discard the chemicals (which ends up being hundreds of dollars) and carefully clean the machine (which is downtime and can't be trusted to be done by a minimum-wage button-pusher). And it's just mean to ruin other people's film, no?

Half of the interesting results of crossing are the result of a machine that's intended for negative film being used to handle crossed slide film.

If you are going to do this, please be careful and only run one or two rolls at a time because it will screw up their chemistry if you do it a lot.

fine grain slide film with the best dynamic range

Slide duplication film, like EDUPE. Or maybe Fuji Astia.

But it's a jinx. If you don't want contrasty images, there's not much point to slide film. Just use print film. Or learn how to use grad-ND filters, polarizers, and smart fill flash.

Oh, while we're at it. Remember that the sensitivity of film is mostly fixed at manufacture, so pulling slide film won't increase the dynamic range.

Velvia Print Film

There isn't one. There cannot be one. The closest you will ever get is shooting digital and then using one of those fake-Velvia effects in Photoshop.

Pushed Slide Film for Night Shooting

Start with fast 320-400 speed film. Meter very carefully. Unless you can make an exposure handholdable with 2-3 stops of push, it's not worth it.

You will likely get better results with Fuji Press 1600 print film, although pushed slide film has a unique look all its own.

D. Brian Nelson did a bunch of excellent work with Ektachrome 320T pushed at night. Of course, you can't get 320T anymore.

Shooting 800 film at 1000

(or 400 at 640, or 320 at 400, or 160 at 200, or any other situation where you didn't meter right)

If you are off with print film by less than a stop, you very likely won't notice a thing. Kodak tells you to just develop as normal if you are one stop off.

If you are using slide film, it may be a little "dull" but will probably be OK. A third of a stop is generally well within what slide film can handle.

If you are shooting with the zone system or doing careful repro work or any number of other finely detailed tasks, you may be very unhappy. But you probably know that already.

How to use Canon TX meter

Normally, adjust the shutter knob on the top right side of the camera and the aperture knob on the lens until the circle and needle on the right side of the viewfinder overlap. If your circle doesn't move when you adjust the aperture, push the lever to the left of the lens mount down and adjust until the needle is over the notch on the side of the viewfinder.

Your meter may not be perfectly accurate overall, which you may or may not notice. If you shoot slide film, you probably want to shoot a roll of film with exposure tests overexposed and underexposed to nail what the setting ought to be.

Your meter may also get confused if you have bright sky and dim ground. You can usually point the camera up or down to get a more clear view of your exposure. Only experience will show how you should handle most situations. If you don't want to get a feel for your meter, maybe you want a modern camera with matrix metering?

If you want to set the film speed, you pull up lightly on the shutter speed knob and rotate it.

Taking Oictures of the Moon Iso/Aperture

Follow the Sunny 16 rule. Shutter speed should be the reciprocal of the film speed (so 100 speed film means your shutter should be around 1/100) and the aperture should be f/16.

As the moon goes from full to partial, the amount of exposure goes down.

This holds during the day and at night, which is why most of the truly impressive moon-and-scenery shots (but not Ansel's famous Moonrise over Hernandez) are actually double exposures, often times with a telephoto lens for the moon and a wide angle lens for the scenery.

The moon moves. So if you have a telephoto, you might discover that it's blurry after a few seconds. I've had it blur even with 400 speed film. And you probably want to shoot a little stopped down from fully open, for better sharpness.

How to get a Girl / Woman / Model to Pose Naked

Generally you have to treat them nicely, have a book of impressive clothed shots, potentially pay them, and make it clear that you would like them to pose nude ahead of time.

In a classical art education in drawing or painting, you generally start with the nude and then move to clothed shots. In a photographic education, often times the reverse is true.

Some people just don't want to pose nude. Respect that.

You probably don't want your girlfriend to pose, for reasons that I'll write about some other time. And your girlfriend probably doesn't want to pose because people search for things like "pictures of my ex- girlfriend naked"

Photographing the First Time Nude Model

If you have to ask, don't. Photograph experienced nude models first, that way only one of you is going to have newbie butterflies in your stomach.

Why Women like to Pose Nude

I should ever have written that article, I guess...

It's hard for me to say, given that I'm a guy who doesn't pose. And I suspect that the real reasons make sense only to the person who poses and that there's a lot of different reasons... and I don't want to dig too far into intimate details of people's personal lives.

Some women have a point, sometimes profound, sometimes fairly lame, to make to the world. Some women want to pose nude because people of their group (ethnic, social, build, etc) don't normally pose. Some women want to get back at their ex-boyfriend. Some women want to point a finger at how stupid our attitude towards nudity is.

Some people just have a high level of comfort with being nude. Several models have mentioned that they hate having to keep a wardrobe, so they pose nude instead.

Sometimes it's just because it's a good way to make money.

But really, there's no single reason. Why do you want to look at women posing in the nude?

Is it a sin to look at nude women?

Not just because there happens to be a naked lady. Do you realize how many pieces of sacred art would be sinful? Remember, Adam and Eve were without sin in the garden of Eden but nude.

However, looking at nude women can be sinful, depending on your intentions and the content of the picture, which is something you should examine carefully with your religious texts (a bible, maybe?), the counsel of a learned biblical scholar (a priest or other person-of-the-cloth?), and prayer.

I do happen to know that Pope John Paul II wrote that it is not the being naked that is the potential sin but the intent in the eyes of the viewer. Are you celebrating the beauty of the human form or are you just doing things for unhealthy sexual arousal?

And, to be fair to the atheists, let me say for you that looking at nude women can be wrong, depending on your intentions and the content of the picture, which is something you should examine carefully with the help of your sources of advice that may or may not parallel those used by agnostic or religious folk. :)

Oh, and while you are here, here's a topical offensive joke for you to enjoy.

All of these are pretty much directly from my search logs. I've tried to capitalize them and give them better grammar. In the draft of this post, I had a section making fun of weird things I found in my search engine logs, but I decided that I'd probably make things worse.