Professional photographer, late 1940s

[madame_manga]

Vintage camera enthusiasts, help me out! My character is an American documentary photographer in 1949. He specializes in location work, nearly always outdoors and often in rough conditions. He's taking a solo trip to Mexico (probably by bus and train rather than by car, though that could change) to scout and shoot various subjects. I'm trying to

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[mistressindi]

I have a Crown Graphic, which is similar to a Speed Graphic. The negatives are 4x5" and it's considered large format. 120mm rollfilm is medium format - that's your Hasselblads, Rolleiflexes, and the like. I don't know much about MF beyond box cameras, so lemme tell you about my Graflex

[madame_manga]

Thank you! Yes, the enormous and iconic Graphic with its mixing-bowl reflector! :) I hear stories about amateurs who could even get past police lines wielding those, since they were so associated with press photographers. Those are some great pictures of that camera's mechanical workings. I'm aiming to emphasize the non-automatic, need-to-know-your-stuff element of photography at that time, which is one thing that attracted my interest in Graphics. Perhaps they're more suitable for urban situations, I'm thinking now -- it's sounding like even a big guy such as my photographer might find it unwieldy for trucking around the countryside.

There was a roll film accessory back available for Graphics, so yeah, they can go either medium format or 4x5. I wasn't sure that my character would need to go for large format, but I'm also hearing that 35mm wasn't considered professional. Obviously I need to dig deeper into this question. I'll look up Arthur Fellig, thank you.

I love those little folding cameras! Those look very promising.

[mistressindi]

Sadly, I haven't shot anything with the Graflex -- it spent 18 years in a Floridian garage and the shutter is gunky with rust. (It was a birthday present: a friend's grandfather died and I was given the coolest/biggest camera of the lot.) I did play with it enough to figure out how it works, and it only seems counter-intuitive until you stop expecting it to act like an SLR. *grin

[madame_manga]

Ah, I hadn't realized they closed up so nicely. What a marvelous piece of engineering -- I'd love to play with one of those just for the thrill of seeing it work! (Not that I'm liable to give up my digital SLR.)

It's sounding like there was a slightly bumpy transition going on around this time between the LF/MF standard and 35mm for pro work -- some photographers were tussling with their employers over the question, since they didn't want to deal with large view cameras. Sounds a little like the transition phase between film and digital, which I remember very well. :)

[reynardo]

My father went around the world in 1954, and his gear wasn't that new, so it'd be appropriate for a lot of what you need.

1) He mainly took slides for colour work, and even for B&W. Recently he scanned in a whole heap from the early 60s and the quality was amazingly good still - see this for an example. No laughing. Ok, I've grown a little. But black and white, yes, they'd prefer the larger stock back at the newspaper but could blow up easily form a negative if necessary.

2) He had one main camera, not an SLR, that took 35mm film, and he had a light-meter that I adored playing with as a child. He didn't use flash as in the 1950s they still hadn't got past flash bulbs - one-use only bulbs that sat in a reflector. They weren't as bulky as the ones from the 1930s though - see here for some pics. Luckily, at least you're past the era of the flash-holder with a striking wheel and a tin frame and a small pile of magnesium powder in the middle

[madame_manga]

Thank you! For some reason light meters had slipped my mind, even though I actually used one decades ago. Yeah, my own dad shot a lot of slide film in the '60s, saying it was better than prints -- certainly it was cheaper when you took as many pictures as he did. Naturally he's gone digital now and never deletes a single shot

[duckodeath]

If you are still looking for information tomorrow, my dad (a photographic historian) has been selling the equipment from the estate of a serious bushiness professional photographer who started his career as a stringer for Life magazine in the 1950s and became a White House photographer when Nixon was in office (http://americanhistory.si.edu/maroon/). I'm not so good with names of the bits and pieces and lenses myself but right know I can tell you all of the equipment so far has been vintage to that period and I can ask my dad for more details

[madame_manga]

Thank you! I would love to hear any details your dad would be willing to supply. That sounds like a fascinating collection, even if a little high-expense. :)

[duckodeath]

Sorry for the delay, I just heard back from my dad. When I told him the story was about a photojournalist, he tailored his answer accordingly

[madame_manga]

Fantastic details! Please thank your dad for me, and thank you for passing on the question to him. This is great stuff and very enlightening.

[rhiannon_black]

I would expect him to carry some sort of large format camera, at least a 4X5 and a tripod, especially if he's doing any kind of scenic stuff a la Ansel Adams. He'd need a light meter. For a large format camera, lenses are not as important as they became when 35 mm became the standard. A 35 mm negative is really dinky, you have to have excellent optics to get anything good. He might only carry the one lens for the large format, possibly a "normal" lens or a wide angle. "Normal" lenses are so called because they "see" the way the eye sees. "Normal" changes depending on format--50 mm is normal for a 35 mm, around 80-90 mm is normal for medium formats and so on

[madame_manga]

Thank you! Yes, I'm hearing that 35mm isn't considered professional in that era. National Geographic and Life are just the sort of place my photographer would be wanting to sell his work -- would they require large format rather than medium?

Thanks for your suggestions!

Alamin (www.glamourmestudio.com)

[anonymous]

Hi,

Thank you for your nice article on little details live journal. It will help me.

Thanks