Dental Car Shoot

[Manfred M]

These are certainly not great shots, but were taken in a retired railway dental car. The car with dentist would be pulled to remote parts of Canada so people could have dental work done. It has the usual parts of a dentist's office, waiting room, examination room, darkroom to develop dental films plus the living quarters for the dentist. The car was in use until 1977.

All the shots were taken with a 14-24mm lens on a FF body. This is the first time I used a lens this wide in portraiture, so the results are a bit as expected with strange distortions especially at the edges of the frame. Lighting was terrible and I tried some shots with the existing light as well as with bounced flash.

1. The Canadian National Railways Dental Cart - exterior






2. The reception / waiting area. Taken at a 14mm focal length. It was very tiny.





3. Jennifer posing in the dental chair - shot at 17mm - my back was right against the wall. Jennifer has long legs, but not quite this long.





4. Another shot of Jennifer - this time using a 24mm focal length

[Shadowman]

Nice series, I've taken some full body portraits with an UWA and acceptance is usually 50/50.

[pschlute]

I was very intrigued with the title. Never heard of a Dental car but of course it makes perfect sense. Fascinating.

[William W]

Historically significant and interesting. I like that you've combined those elements into the portrait shoot. And I love trains, too.

On the matter of UWA for Portraiture - the venue does not assist, it being a such tight area. The fact that the Model was tall and slim does assist. I reckon you compacted the composition quite well - the sloping windows (Keystone Distortion) in Image #3 are annoying to me, but I think to fix those you might make her head wonky? That's at first glance, I haven't interrogated it closely.

Thanks for sharing.

WW

[MrB]

Perhaps a good advert for the quality of dental care - Jennifer appears to have perfect teeth!

In #3 the pose of her right hand seems a bit of a distraction to me.

Philip

[rpcrowe]

Nice captures in a very challenging environment! You really piqued my curiosity with the title of this string. I wondered what the heck a "dental car" could be...

[Manfred M]

Thanks for the comments Bill, Philip and Richard.

Unfortunately, we know that getting really close to one's subject is going to result in some strange distortions. I had thrown my 14-24mm lens into my camera bag knowing that we might be shooting in some of the rail cars and thought I might get some interesting but somewhat strange results.

This is the first view I did of image #4 where I removed the key-stoning but found it really accentuated her hand and legs. It reminds me why I avoid doing "selfies" with my camera phone...