Dumb photography in movies

[Mark Thomas]

Tell us about some dumb things you've seen in movies. Saw a piece where a photographer was taking pics in a crowd with what looked like a 400mm lens and the people were standing less than 3 feet away.

Cheers

[Simon Easton]

LOL. There's got to be something good from Bridges of Madison County. Although Clint did put his film in the fridge!

[khairul]

I remember Anthonio Banderas, in Femne Fatale, shooting with a Pentax 35mm film SLR and printing the photo right away.
How did he do it ?
Anyway I love the Apple Cube and Cinema Display he uses in the movie.

[Tim Gray]

the classic of all "enhance" was in one of the CSI's where from a couple of hundred yards away, they "enhanced" through a window to see a tatoo on someone's wrist.

[JDArt]

Originally Posted by Mark Thomas

Tell us about some dumb things you've seen in movies. Saw a piece where a photographer was taking pics in a crowd with what looked like a 400mm lens and the people were standing less than 3 feet away.

Cheers

Well, I always love it when investigators in police films can take a really crummy low-res file and blow it up, digitally "enhance" it, and then identify a crook or suspect. Can such things really be done, or is this just way over the head of Photoshop?

[mikej]

Originally Posted by JDArt

Well, I always love it when investigators in police films can take a really crummy low-res file and blow it up, digitally "enhance" it, and then identify a crook or suspect. Can such things really be done, or is this just way over the head of Photoshop?

we were doing stuff like that back in the late 70's early 80's when I was in the Air Force and worked with output from spy satellites. If we were doing some of the amazing stuff that I saw back then, I can only imagine what the right people with the right equipment are able to do today. It's not all science fiction.

Mike

[scoundrel1728]

Near the end of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, one of the main supporting characters documented the appearance of the aliens at night with an Instamatic (shows how old that movie is) without flash, not that flash would have done any good at a range of at least ten meters anyway, and punched the shutter button so hard that the camera visibly moved at each shot. I saw this movie on DVD several months ago. One of the other viewers - can't remember withether it was my wife or the other woman - hit me with the back of her hand when I pointed this out. :

[mikej]

Hey, I had a Instamatic 104 that I used for a few years. One of the tricks you could do with it to get better low light photography was to put a spent flash cube (I just had the base of a few that I carried) on. When the camera had a flash cube, it slowed the shutter speed down to match the speed of the little flash bulb. I think it changed it from 1/100th or 1/60th down to 1/30th or something like that. So I'm sure the scene could have been remotely technically accurate.

Mike

[metalstorm]

Originally Posted by scoundrel1728

DVD several months ago.* One of the other viewers - can't remember withether it was my wife or the other woman - hit me with the back of her hand when I pointed this out.* :

You have two women?* Scoundrel!

[Stephanie]

Originally Posted by bauerman

This is not an example in movies and I actually hesitate to bring it up. But I was in Las Vegas recently on a business trip and walked around one evening with my DSLR and took photographs. (If you have not been - Vegas really is a smorgasbord for photographers!) As I was walking around taking pictures it was amazing to me the amount of people trying to take pictures of the Belagio Hotel with their flash! Or they would be on one of the overhead sidewalks that cross the Strip and would try taking a picture of the Strip with the on-board flash firing on their compact camera. I even heard one person say that was trying to photograph the Belagio from the sidewalk - "That one's not going to work - I did not have the flash on...".

A more recent example of something similar would be the St. Louis Cardinals baseball game I was recently at at Busch Stadium in St. Louis (again on business ) Every time Albert Puljos (their star) would bat - thousands of flashes would go off on compact cameras all over the stadium. I was thinking are there really this many people that think the built in flash on their cameras can light Busch Stadium? Seems every large event you see whether it be a sporting event or a concert - there are always flashes going off everywhere.

What do you feel the level of basic photographic principles is within the general population? Based on my experiences over the past few months - I would say that it would be a bit low.

Jared

Lol. I see that kind of stuff all the time. Got to love it when 200 flashes go off for a subject in excess of 100 ft away. I don't think these people with p&s cams. pay much attention to the proper way to use the flash. They just 'hope' it'll turn out.

[scoundrel1728]

Originally Posted by bauerman

This is not an example in movies and I actually hesitate to bring it up. But I was in Las Vegas recently on a business trip and walked around one evening with my DSLR and took photographs. (If you have not been - Vegas really is a smorgasbord for photographers!) As I was walking around taking pictures it was amazing to me the amount of people trying to take pictures of the Belagio Hotel with their flash! Or they would be on one of the overhead sidewalks that cross the Strip and would try taking a picture of the Strip with the on-board flash firing on their compact camera. I even heard one person say that was trying to photograph the Belagio from the sidewalk - "That one's not going to work - I did not have the flash on...".

A more recent example of something similar would be the St. Louis Cardinals baseball game I was recently at at Busch Stadium in St. Louis (again on business ) Every time Albert Puljos (their star) would bat - thousands of flashes would go off on compact cameras all over the stadium. I was thinking are there really this many people that think the built in flash on their cameras can light Busch Stadium? Seems every large event you see whether it be a sporting event or a concert - there are always flashes going off everywhere.

I see that kind of thing at televised sporting events all the time. Even worse is the Eveready (I think) commercial from a couple of years ago showing a stadium full of flashes going off, most eventually dying out except for a single one in the upper deck going off every few seconds.

This is one of my pet peeves. Not only is this practice ineffective, it really annoys the nearby spectators.

[mikej]

I've noticed times when the camera was shooting with the sounds of a motor drive but the camera the guy was using didn't have a motor drive on it.

Mike

[scoundrel1728]

Several years ago, if I remember right, one of the camera manufacturers produced a digital P&S model with SLR sounds built in. I would hope that you could turn them off if you wanted; using a camera like that would be embarrassing...

[badpickev]

watched calendar girls. photogs take one shot?

[scoundrel1728]

I can sorta understand that one, where the director wouldn't want to slow the pacing of the movie by showing the photographer rearranging the girls a lot and taking multiple shots as a real photographer would.

[badpickev]

whats funny is all the other ones it seems like he took a lot, but on the first one, it was one shot.