Years ago after graduating MIT, I didn't know what to do with myself so of
course, I worked as a freelance photographer in the Boston area.
I picked up a part time job with Life photographer Fritz Goro (well, I
carried his $20K worth of equipment). Fritz was a great science
illustrator...he was the 1st to photograph a laser beam-his insight:
cigarette smoke. When I worked with him, he was trying to illustrate the
work of 2 people at Harvard Med School who 4-5 years later won the Nobel
prize for their studies on brain visual mechanisms.
Anyway, for 3 days, he set up a monkey head with an electrode penetrating
its brain. On the 3rd day, he had it just the way he wanted and with his
4x5 camera and a Polaroid back (P/N film), he started to take pictures when
I jostled the table knocking everything on it to the floor (including the
monkey head). After yelling at me for my clumsiness (which is still evident
in how I deal with by 'B'), he reset it up and yelled "Wonderful"... a
slight modification made the presumptive image even better.
He took about 3 Polaroid images as tests and then proceeded to take about
20 4x5 Kodak negatives.
About a year later, I saw the picture in Life magazine (which has been
reprinted at least 4 times in various Scientific American publications)
when I realized...he had chosen as the best negative, one of the Polaroid
trial images and its negative. I later saw him and he confirmed my
suspicion that it was the Polaroid that was used.
Enough knocking of Polaroid. Its grain is non-existant and can be enlarged
much more than nearly all Kodak films (except maybe Technical Pan in low
contrast mode).
But it is expensive and that I would hold against it.
FYI, this experience is what sent me back to doing science as a career.
Bill
At 10:21 AM 02/09/2000 EST, you wrote:
>In all fairness to Polaroid it isn't a camera at all, it's a chemistry set
>and not bad at that for what it does. When you put a Polaroid back on a
>"real camera" you can take pix like those in their ads.
>Now let's hear about LBCs.
>
>George
>
**********************************************************************
Dr. Bill Saidel
Assoc. Prof. Vocal phone (609) 225-6336
Department of Biology FAX (609) 225-6312
Science Building email: saidel@crab.rutgers.edu
315 Penn St.
Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey
Camden, NJ 08102 -1411
http://crab.rutgers.edu/~saidel/saidel.html
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