I have a few hundred photos that I took in that very musuem. I found that if you use 400 speed (ASA 400) film and don’t shake like an aspen leaf, the pics come out just fine. I even got some really good close-ups using the “macro” mode. As long as there’s no flash, they generally didn’t seem to mind with the exception of a very few objects.
FYI, I used a Samsung autofocus. I add this because I didn’t have the big photo bag with “pro” looking gear; I suspect because I looked like an idiot tourist (and I do this quite well), they paid me little mind. They made most people check their big bags for rasons they cared not to go into, but I suspect it was to keep professional grade equipment out. Once, they made me check the leather camera wallet-thingie, but let me take the camera and pockets full of film in.
I do think the prohibition on high quality equipment is to “sell postcards” or the equivalent thereof. Like sets of slides which are copyrighted, and hence can’r be made into prints unless you find someone willing to overlook the copyright laws, etc.
The idea that even flash photography damages the artwork in the Athens national Museum is silly, not because it is or isnt true, but because it is one of poorest-conserving museums I have seen anywhere. One picture I have (shot out into a courtyard) is of art awaiting “conservation” —it’s sitting outdoors in the sun, rain, smog, etc. I beleive that parts or all of the museum isn’t airconditoned --they just use open windows, and those who have been to Athens know the smog there is like LA in the alte 1960’s —horrid.
I was told that the reason they won’t let you photograph certian objects is that “they haven’t been published yet”, by which I took it to mean the research and so on hadn’t been publsihed by the musuem and the associated scholars yet; since it’s their object, they get first dibs on making their scholarly careers using it.
Objects that were off limits were a new Kore that still had traces of paint on it, and their lekythoi (which I may have misspelled here).
I’d like to try taking no-flash pictures with one of these new digital cameras.
BTW, the Getty Musuem in LA (one of the world’s absolute best by far) never gave me any grief anbout pictures, even with a flash. But taking flash pictures of oil paintings generally produces beautiful pictures ofthe frames only, as the flash usually bounces off the varnish over the painting, amking it look almost like a blank canvas in a good frame. Point here is that flashes must not cause damage to the artwork, because if anyone knows about conservation it IS the Getty!