Bill,
I also knew Fritz during a 1.5 year stint as assistant technical director at
Nikon's Instrument Division! He was, most assuredly, at times an unusual
character. I had the pleasure of studying with his rival from Look Magazine, (I
was clearly the grunt, but what an honor to be there) Phil Harrington. Phil was
an equally eccentric character who taught me the meaning of serendipity. No
monkey heads, but we knocked over plenty of other stuff including a few bottles
of brandy.
Anywho..... the point of my note is to pick on Polaroid some more. It was
actually Kodak who made the film and photosensitive layers (the negative) for
the Polaroid 4x5 Type 55 P/N film Fritz used (so did Ansel Adams and lots of
other great ones.) DuPont (I think) made the film for the 3-1/4 x 4-1/4 Type
105 P/N film. So, in consideration of those facts, I think it is okay if we
continue to dump on Polaroid.
Better get back to MG talk before someone starts complaining. Thanks a million
for the memory jog. Whatta small world!!!!!
Jim
Bill Saidel wrote:
> 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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