What 'bad' photography advice have you heard?

[Patrick]

Not bad advice as such but once I was showing a 4 x 6 inch print to a lab owner and I mentioned that the neg was scanned by a lab in Adelaide. At that point, the guy had a confused look on his face and asked me why I would want to have a negative scanned. Honestly, he was really puzzled. He said that it would be better for him to get a print from the negative (I'm assuming that he's referring to optical printing but he never specified.) I was under the impression that very few labs did optical printing these days.

Regardless, I could think of a number of reasons why I would want to scan a negative or slide – such as putting the image on a website, sending the image in an e-mail, photo manipulation, cheaper printing costs etc. Actually, the print that I had showed him was an image that was to be part of a montage that I had planned to create with Adobe Photoshop. Of course I didn't bother telling him that – it would be like talking to a brick wall.

[Patrick]

I just remembered another one.

"16mm film has the same resolution as VHS tape".

Spoken by a guy who operated a local telecine service.

[Angus]

That reminds me of the time I made an industrial film which documented the testing of baby pushchairs and how they handle stairs. Using super 8 exclusively as I didn't even have a camcorder, I intended to have the film telecined for its one showing at the British Standards Institute.

So I shoot about 6 carts of K40 sound, edit down to around 100 feet of good material, mix in a musical track where necessary...get a brochure from a local-ish company which claims to have a Rank-Cintel flying spot scanner. They convince me that the VHS copy will look better than the super 8.

It arrives on the day of the showing, no time to even test run the tape before it is needed.

The results were dreadful, the sound was bitty and so soft the sound system had to be turned to max. There was virtually no colour in the picture and the actual image was out of focus.

I sent it back (everything done via mail) and they agreed to run it again but it was clear they were using a chain system. A few years later once I got my hands on a camcorder I could do much better myself.

Since the film was only ever shown the once, I probably killed the reputation of suer 8 amongst the furniture industry bods in London with one film

Should have skipped school and lugged my Eumig 824 there!

[Actor]

"The lab that develops your film holds the copyright!"

Spoken by a clerk who refused to scan my prints because they had "copyright XYZ Photography" stamped on the back. I had not even noticed the stamp until he pointed it out. I had taken my film to XYZ for processing and they farmed it out to ABC labs. ABC thought they did XYZ a favor by stamping the prints.

Some (unfortunately) good advice. "Your case is not worth pursuing." -- Spoken by the lawyer I discussed the incident with. (Charged me $60 to tell me that.)

I still get mad when I think about this.

[Patrick]

Since the film was only ever shown the once, I probably killed the reputation of suer 8 amongst the furniture industry bods in London with one film

Oh man, that reminds me when I had some super 8 time lapse footage telecined to VHS tape. I put a lot of effort into the filming and I was happy with my efforts but the transfer looked crap. Colour was horrible. Parts of some shots were blown out to pure white like a nuclear exposion had just occurred. However, the t.l. segment on clouds turned out acceptably well.

I was working on a student film at university and asked my fellow students if they could make use of the clouds segment from the tape. I left it with them and went off to do some work of my own. As it turned out, they ignored the clouds segment and used all the crappy parts instead for the film and had it screened before the rest of the class. My gosh, all those people watching must think that super 8 looks awful.

[jpolzfuss]

"The digital age has made tripods redundant."

When you ask the employees at "Saturn", "MediaMarkt" and other German chains for electronic gedgets, you'll most likely get the same answers. However the "Saturn" close to me has got one of the largest selection of tripods/monopods/... I've ever seen in a single shop. :lol:

[CHAS]

How many transfer businesses advised you could throw away all those reels of film once you had them transferred to state-of-the-art VHS tapes... ?

A friend of mine did exactly that back in the '80s...priceless family memories thrown out after being (crappily transferred) onto VHS ...which is probably fading away or already thrown out.

[Angus]

"The digital age has made tripods redundant."

When you ask the employees at "Saturn", "MediaMarkt" and other German chains for electronic gedgets, you'll most likely get the same answers. However the "Saturn" close to me has got one of the largest selection of tripods/monopods/... I've ever seen in a single shop. :lol:

Thankfully I've never had anyone try to persuade me that tripods are unnecessary in the digital age. I have been advised "Of course you'll need a tripod with that" when shopping for DSLR's.

[carllooper]

Enquiring at a shop as to whether they had any T2 adapter rings for attaching a bellows to a Canon DSLR, the guy said, "Nah. Bellows are old technology".

"So is the wheel", I said.

I came back later and found someone who looked like he actually enjoyed his job, and they did have the adapter ring.

Carl