Eastman Kodak ad – February 1934
Toronto. Ahhh, 1934 (before I drew a breath) Kodak was advertising its newest film – Super Sensitive (SS) Panchromatic – plus a couple of inexpensive cameras and special photoflood bulbs ready to screw into their special reflectors or into ordinary lamps.
The film and cameras where touted as ‘ideal’ for night photography. Sadly both film and camera lenses shown were SO slow that special photofloods had to be used to allow hand held indoor shots (a pdf of old Kodak catalogues is on this site)! (The f/2 lens on the Kodak Pupille camera was fast enough for Tri-X, but not for the SS film.)
A tip of the tuque and a big thanks to good friend and retired cinematographer, George Dunbar for sharing this delightful advertisement from the February, 1934 issue of Popular Mechanics, memorable to me as my dad married my mother that year and bought a Kodak Six-20 a few years later.
Note, the title of this post is a riff on a song by Suzanne Vega called, “Knight Moves“. This song is on her first CD called “Suzanne Vega” released by A&M in 1985. I first heard her sing the songs on her second (1987) CD, “Solitude Standing”. Her a cappella version of “Tom’s Diner” is haunting.
