how we used to do it in the old days
 

way back in 2000 I used to advertise in the local trades and free-presses. there were only a few porn agents and they WOULD NOT TAKE ANY CALLS FOR new clients... so the girls would call me off the ads and then swing by and do a test shot on Polaroid, which I would scan and send off to the client for approval. then on shoot days I would use 20 rolls of film for a shoot with a Nikon F and 50mm lens... all manual with a handheld meter... then I would send the rolls off to the client or straight to 'Denver Digital' for processing. back ten Denver Digital was the main place to process and scan for the web. we didn't shoot video because the bandwidth wouldn't carry vids :)

went with my first digital camera in mid 2001, and even then I didn't have the balls to use it for anything other than test shots for about a month or so... but I did finally go full digital, the files were about 450 KB, now the files are about 6 +/- MB...

started shooting video with a vx2000 in 2003?? so I had to learn to edit vids as well.... most of the shooters that came in early do everything like I do... it was never about getting a guy to do this or that or whatever...

The first forums I joined were photography based and one of the hot debates was whether digital would ever reach the quality of film. There were guys that were absolutely sure that digital wouldn't surpass film. Back in 1975 when I bought my first camera ( Nikkormat FT2 ) I never envisioned what we have today :) From the beginning of digital I loved its advantages including ease of use, forgiveness and most of all the money saved on film and processing. I was cheering it on all the way.

When you paid for that block of film did you ever think it would be like it is today?

with all the time and energy I put into post processing, well let's just say film was cheaper at first... when I started buying film had no idea digital even existed, started shooting mid 90's with the Nikon F

I saw things a little differently. Roy was around back then, World, Cam, Tabitha Yang, Rebs, Regan, Lucky... they all referred girls if you threw out the cash.

First video camera was a Sony Digital 8, then the Canon Gl1, then the xl1 of course. First DSLR was the Nikon D100 probably in 2002, 3.

You and Marco always had fresh girls. You both shot the love of my life Athena way before me! I visited Marco's cat site all the time... then he had some deal i think with fucked company or something...

Fun days.

Back then.....
 

Yep, those were the days - $10 a pic! I had a mobile kit and would drive out to the girl's home and shoot her there. Now they all live with their parents or room together because they can't afford their own place.

Shot film with my Minolta, just sold it recently. First digital was an Olympus 2500, a real work horse. Next was Olympus E10 - it was the bomb! Then on to Nikons.

Saved huge on film, but now that is completely lost on post production. A day of shooting costs me 1 day of post production. Phone calls, email, the typical goings on in the office can push that to 1.5 days with all the interruptions. Add video and it can run to a full 2 days, and we are talking 12 hour days.

I would run one ad in LA Weekly at the end of the month, just before rent was due, and it would provide girls for a month. Nearly all girls were required to come out for a looksee. Few will do that now. The atmosphere was different then, the girls were doing it for excitement as much as money, now it is all about the money. That attitude has negatively affected their performance. An unprecedented number of girls are "escorting" which really flattens their performance ruins their attitude and changes their personality - not for the better.

Reb was the first guy I dealt with, him and DK... was years before world would deal with me, and of course Cam was way to cool to talk to an internet shooter... and yes i did start working with Roy and tabitha didn't come around until later... and yes I did deal with regan because I knew him from some private stuff years earlier. and no they would not refeer girls if you tossed out the cash... they wouldn't deal with anyone they didn't know and internet was considered low class scum. and agency fees were $65..

my first digital camera was the fuji s1 june 2001. I didn't shoot athena Marco ddid then she went off the market because she started dating the calif pimp

I started shooting with digital cameras in 1998 (owned content company Pure Candy Images).

I remember reading Phil Askey's website like it was the bible. He was way ahead of the curve on digital photography.

The first digital camera I had was a Sony that used floppy disks! I actually had a belt that I wore with 40 or 50 floppys as they could only hold 4 to 5 pics each with the cameras settings on high (1024 x 768 and as you said about a 450kb size)

Then I moved on up to one of the first Nikon Coolpix cameras in 1999. It cost $1,100 and was a huge step up since I was able to use a MASSIVE 128 mb sd card! And that sd card was about $400 lol

I still have that Coolpix camera sitting in a drawer in one of my file cabinets. I remember thinking when I retired it in 2002 that I would keep it in case I needed a spare...of course in this day and age my freakin' cell phone has a better camera in it! lol

It wasn't bad though. I used strobes with those early cameras and lighting it up nice like that made it passable. And it looked MUCH better than the early film to digital scanning that was being done back then. So it gave us a competitors edge over guys who hadn't embraced the new technology of the time.

Now I'm thinking I may need to replace my Canon EOS5D (I have the original, not the MkII). I bought it in 2007. I'm thinking that with the way technology jumps so fast I might be missing out.

BM, what new camera in that same price range (around $4000 to $5000) do you think would be worth me replacing this EOS5D?

So true. LA Weekly was a goldmine back then. OC Weekly too. That's how Matts Models blew up.

Brian's partially right that some agents wouldn't deal with noobs or internet guys, but if you just tripled their rates you could get them. World loosened up in 2002 or so once that clown Steve Austin left.

How I used to do it back in the old days ...

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_vMQfeVSYbq...out+flyers.jpg

I had that camera ! Still upstairs somewhere I think :) I remember having the HUGE External battery Pack, that I had to clip to my belt, and the cord that plugged into it to the cam, was like an old style curly telephone cord !

Great cam :) I however moved onto Canons as opposed to Nikons

The Mavica?

http://i.imgur.com/euo5S.jpg

That was my very first Digital cam as well :) I rember having to wait ages after taking the pic, for it to write to the floppy and having to put a new one in every 5 mins!

Yes it was a Mavica. But it was the top of that line....I think it cost about a grand. And it had that Carl Zeiss lens that was centered in the middle of the camera with a nice zoom. The camera was pretty big.
It was a real pain like you said waiting for it to write to the disk and then having to change them out every few seconds.

I had a deal with a production company here in the States...they were old school DVD guys and didn't realize that the internet was going to soon be dominant. But I was already ahead of that curve.
So they actually allowed me to come in and photograph all the scenes they shot. As long as I didn't take video of any kind and they gave me all the internet rights to it! lol
And they would sneer at me while I fumbled and took too long. Meanwhile they would whip out their "real" slr cameras and shoot a hundred pics every 5 minutes. Told me what I was doing was just a fad. But they were friends of mine and let me do it.

That's why I laugh when guys on here talk about how old TGP guys like me were just "lucky" when we started out and couldn't cut it if we had to start over today.
No, I MADE my luck...I was always just a little bit quicker and a little bit more forward thinking.

A couple of years later that company that let me shoot all that and gave me the internet rights were out of business and I was making millions. :)

God, I'd forgotten about DK... didn't he go to prison or something? He just disappeared one day. And Tabatha Yang got out of the biz in 2003 or 04, and was never heard of again. I never figured out where she got the name "Yang" as she was a white chick and Yang sounds Asian.

I too started off advertising in the LA Weekly... circa 1998, but was shooting solo and mostly softcore then, and would get a lot of calls from the ads... I think they cost like $65/week if you bought in bulk--ridiculously expensive.

I shot Athena for both ATK and SoCalCoeds, I think. I like Latinas a lot, but she never did it for me... I think because she didn't have much in the way of personality. And speaking of the cat's website (someone did), here's some more of her: http://www.littlegrayguy.com/images/page047/index.htm

And yes, Brian, we were looked down on as we were shooting for the Internet. I was once in World Modeling with my (then) business partner, and some director (from now long-gone Dane Productions, I think) started mocking us because we were Internet guys. After he left, my buddy said something to the effect of, "He has no idea he's about to be shit on from a great height by the Internet". He was right, but so many of the old guard Valley porn guys didn't have a clue, and went the way of the passenger pigeon and buggy whip.

The first job I had in adult was sorting through slides and scanning them for Jack Harrison.

OK -- I'm not *that* old school, but I think I can share this: in 1998, I borrowed a friend's Sony Mavica FD-5 (or maybe it was an FD-7?) cause I didn't have the $1000 to buy one. I think the highest rez I could shoot was 640x480, but I might be wrong. I shot on the 3 1/2" plastic floppies. I'd get like 50 shots per floppy, and every donzen shots (or so) were ruined cause I'd get these weird stars/halo effect...no matter what I did with my lighting.

My little bro was a bouncer at a popular nightclub, and I'd pay him and his bouncer buddies a $50 finder fee for any cute girls who were willing to nude-up for SC photos. I actually got some cute ones!

I got out of the biz in '99, and jumped back in in '02, and was shooting on a Sony Cybershot and a Canon GL-2 -- the cutting edge in digital video. Camera was $2700, and of course it was SD. Post done in the latest version of Premiere -- 6.5. I think I set bitrates on the vids at 750KBpS, but I might be wrong there. I placed an ad in the Phoenix New Times weekly that pretty much said, "Porn stars make more money in one day than most people make in a week" and took it from there.

Fun memories.

I heard he did, and then I heard (a few years back) that he was a doorman at a bar in Santa Monica.

World, DK, and Reb's were the 3 agents we dealt with in 02. Oh, and Spiegler had just started up.

I'm not a canon shooter, and I've read on-line that canon will not release any new models in 2011 so u less your shutter or 'board' is shot I wouldn't worry about it. I think the nikon 700with 24-120 f4 wouldd be great if you went nikon however no video so then you are looking at a used nikon d3s which is pretty awesome as well, with the same 24-120 F4 glass... or just stick with canon and grab the 7d or new 5d. but like I stated if you're not a heavy shooter the 5d should last another few years

LOL, I had a Macvica too (almost forgot) - I only used it a handful of times... :helpme

I started on film, shooting with a Canon EOS Elan (nice SLR camera at the time), and even though it was still the 90's and there was no video on the web, I was already shooting video (Sony HI-8), since I was always more interested in videomaking than photography.

I remember it was expensive as hell to shoot and process, and even after the film was developed, I had to hand scan each photo which took a few minutes per photo back then.

The most common monitor resolution was 800x600, so if I sized pictures at 300 pixels on the x or y axis, they were awesome (they look like thumbnails on today's monitors).

After buying and then quickly dumping the Macvica, I picked up the incredible Sony 505:

http://a.img-dpreview.com/news/9908/sony505.jpg

Since the largest memory sticks were 32mb, I could get exactly 40 photos per stick, so that is how many photos became the standard for each photo set for me. No room for error.

This limitation taught me how to pose models efficiently (I've worked with some talented photographers that do not have a clue about posing models, whom just tell the girl to pose while they snap, so there are tons of crappy shots, especially with inexperienced models).

It's funny, because nowadays it is not uncommon for photographers to shoot 300+ photos for a set (and as many as 1000 shots), even though I generally only use 50-75 pix per photo set. I guess since I am the one that has to select the photos for editing (and even that process can take 1-2 hours), I still try to keep the number of shots down when I am the principal still photographer.

For the past 6+ years, I have worked almost exclusively with Canon DSLRs myself, although I also hire photographers that expose me to the other cool stuff on the market.

For video, I buy cameras in sets of 2 or 3 at a time, for ease of video mixing. I have migrated through 4 generations of video cameras in the past 12 years. I loved the Canon GL1 and GL2 cameras, and I currently own Sony HVR-1VU cameras, although I am already planning to move to new solid state cameras in the next 6 months (I've used them a few times and love them).

For lighting, I started with good old Sears shop lights, migrated to hot fucking metal halide and tungsten lights, and I am loving life now with my new daylight balanced fluorescent system, although the new LED systems are starting to look very appealing now that prices are starting to drop.

I started out my first 3-4 years shooting a few local solo models. When I finally expanded out to shooting more models, I already was pretty well connected with the agencies and other models, plus I have always received good referrals since my niche is specialized.

I try to not get too obsessed with the equipment, since I already spend enough time constantly trying to learn new editing software, but I guess it's the nature of the beast.

As expensive as it is to shoot, the technology still never ceases to amaze me, and I am ever so grateful that such creative tools are even available for people like myself to play with. :)

ADG

spiegler was 'top models' with another guy... speigler girls didn't start until that other guy left and got with derek and stated 'la direct'

I tried every lighting configuration in the world until I finally admitted to myself that I really don't care for the look of fluorescents or tungsten and went with HMI's using 55k fluorescents for fill. I'm much happier and wish I would have had the courage to go HMI 10 years ago...

She had a great personality and still does :thumbsup

Brian thanks for this thread. Those early days in LA represent so far anyway, one of the best periods ever in my life.

Most everyone in the valley was clueless and some old internet legends were being phased out because they couldn't spam or bang anymore. New guys doing it right and ethically just dominating...I wasn't around during the original wild west days of 96-99. But the second wave was a fun ride!

Maybe she had an off day when I shot her--it happens. She was very new in the biz when I shot her, so she may even have been a little shy or something.