Hutch, a photo for you

[Monkeyleg]

In the thread about Haynes manuals, I said I didn't have a digital photo of my E-Type. I found the transparency (film) of it, though, scanned it and color corrected. Here's the car:

[Cromlech]

Wanna touch the hiney...   

[Strings]

Oh. Oh MY...

[230RN]

Unh.  Uhn.  Uhn.  Uuuhhn.  Uuuuuhhhhnnn.   Aaaaaah.

[Tallpine]

They forgot the back seat 

[Monkeyleg]

And this is what happens when you use a Hayne's manual. (Actually, this was about when I was halfway through the restoration).

[Nick1911]

Wow!

More, please?  What's the back story?  When did you acquire the car, how long did the work take, general thoughts, did you sell it, etc. 

Inquiring minds want to know!

[Monkeyleg]

Quick synopsis: bought it in 1982; was going to pull the cylinder head to replace worn valve guides and got carried away; took four years and over 2,000 hours. I used pretty much every holiday, vacation day, weekend and evening. My wife is still angry.

Finished in 1986. I paid $5000 for it, and spend about $13,000 in parts and supplies. The real irony is that, in 1982, I could have bought the Jaguar Clubs of North America champion car, which is the #1 car to emerge from all of the year's competitions. The champion car--a 1967 E-Type convertible--was for sale for $18,000.

I sold it in 2000 because I wasn't driving it, except to one show each summer. I got $20,000 for it.  

That studio shot of the car I did in in late 1986, a few months before I got fired from the photo studio I managed. I did the shot on a Saturday by myself (no assistants), and it took all day. It took half an hour to expose one sheet of film, so I shot just one. After I got fired, I asked my former boss for the sheet of film, and he said no. I told him that it was of no use to him, since he didn't have a property release from me giving him permission to use the photo (he was planning on slapping his name on the shot, as he had with many of my other car shots). I told enough people in the ad community about what he was trying to do, and he finally gave me the sheet of film.

[Hutch]

Thanks, Dick.  Am I correct in guessing it's ~ a '71?  My dream car is a red roadster from the late '60's, with the 4.2L 6, twin side-draft carb (Stromberg?  SU?).  Too old and fat to enjoy climbing in and out of one, now, even if I could afford it.

[Tallpine]

So you made about a dollar an hour...? 

[230RN]

That is a beautiful picture.  Glad you pried it loose from the boss.  What size sheet film?  4X5?

Most people don't realize what's involved in taking a really good photograph --especially in the silver photography days. 

Excellent lighting, by the way.

I got bitten by the "poor man's Jaguar" bug, that is, the Datsun/Nissan 240Z-car.  I got one for $201 ($200 is the cutoff for a roadworthy, licensable car versus being able to get only a salvage title) and intended it restore it to "pretty" (not "concourse")  condition.  However, I discovered that progressing arthritis among other things would not allow me to do much with it.  I finally broke it just in time.  It sure was a fun driver, but too much fun, and I would have killed myself in it sooner or later.  That's why it broke "just in time."

This one isn't mine, but just to show why it was called "the poor man's Jaguar."  Pic from topspeed.com :



Compare XKE profile, from bringatrailer.com :



That one's not mine, either. 


Terry, 230RN

[Monkeyleg]

It's a 1969. It came with the factory with twin Stromberg's with a heated crossover, but one of the previous owners took all that garbage off and put on triple SU's, which give a lot more horsepower. Below is a really lousy scan of a small print photo of my engine.

It was because the Stromberg's and other pollution control plumbing reduced the horsepower in the E-Type that the Jaguar went to the V-12. The 12 cylinder motor, while having roughly 1000 cc's more displacement, had a little less horsepower as the straight 6. The V12 was also over 600 pounds heavier, so the weight-to-horsepower ratio was much higher (the lower the number the better).

The most desirable E-Type is the 1967 Series 1 1/2 convertible ("Open Two Seater", or "OTS"). The Series 1 1/2 E-Types had the 4.2 liter motor but with the triple SU's. They were transition cars from the Series 1 to the Series 2, so other parts on the car would be either Series 1 or Series 2. That made judging them difficult, as it was impossible for the judges to say that rocker switches on the dash, for example, on a particular Series 1 1/2 car were not correct, as the factory just put on whatever parts they had in the bin.

230RN, the film was 8"x10". Just to give you an idea of what's involved in shooting a car photo: it was lit with a 24' x 24' translucent screen above the car, above which the lights were positioned. I used 16 4800 watt-per-second strobe power packs and about 24 flash heads, each putting out 2400 watt-seconds. A watt second is the amount of power that would be used if the flash duration was 1 second. By comparison, the typical on-camera flash is about 35 to 50 watt-seconds.

Tallpine, probably less than that. It was a labor of love (yeah, right).

[RevDisk]

That is absolutely beautiful...

[230RN]

Cool!  TNX fer the lighting description.

May I correct one thing?


"I used 16 4800 watt-per-second strobe power packs and about 24 flash heads, each putting out 2400 watt-seconds. A watt second is the amount of power that would be used if the flash duration was 1 second."

A watt-second (synonym: Joule) is a unit of energy, not power.  Use up that energy in a short time, it's a lot of power.  Use up that same amount of energy in a long time, it's  low(er) power.  The capacitors store the energy, which is measured in watt-seconds.  A typical studio lamp will dump that energy through the flash tube in anywhere from 10-ish to 50-ish milliseconds, depending on how heavily "loaded" the flash lamp is.  Yes.  That is a lot of power.  For one 2400 Watt-second (Joules) lamp, assuming a long flash of 50 milliseconds, that's about 64 Horsepower per lamp, if my arithmetic is correct.  With 24 lamps fired, that's a total of 1500 HorsePower worth of lighting on that car --more than the car's engine would put out!  (But for only a short time.)

I'd just remove those sentences.

People are amazed at the power developed when energy is expended in a short time.  For instance, by my calculations, a .22 rifle develops about 90 HP each shot....

...Terry, yer ramblin' again...

Largest format I ever used was 9 x 12 cm, almost as big as the American standard 4" x 5".  I loved that format --a Zeiss Ikon.    If I developed Panatomic sheets in diluted Microdol, I swear you could enlarge them to football-field size and not see one little grain.  (I exaggerate for the sake of a good story.... but not much.)

There was no synchronization on that camera, so it was all available-light and reflectors and a grey card and a light meter.

I'll say it again:  Beautiful picture-makin' work on your part --both pics.

Terry, 230RN

[Monkeyleg]

Thanks for the correction, Terry. I haven't needed to know that since photo school in the 1970's. All I needed to know was that 4800 was more light than 2400, which was more light than 1200.

I've always enjoyed lighting cars and motorcycles. My style was what one art director termed a "drippy look", where there were bright edges that smoothly faded to dark. Digital removed the subtlety of those gradients, as none of the cameras can smoothly go from, say, 15% to 14% to 13% to 12% to 11% to 10%. They jump from 15% to 12% or even to 10% (I'm talking CMYK).

[230RN]

Silver halides forever!


Nah.  For my level of photography, a four-pixel image will do.

[Waitone]

Put that bad boy up on blocks in your front yard. 

[Monkeyleg]

Put that bad boy up on blocks in your front yard.

The last time I knew its whereabouts, it was in Switzerland.