automation and home movies

Posted on July 25, 2019 by Robert

Bell & Howell 200EE ad in LIFE magazinne

Toronto. If you were to believe the marketeers who wrote this ad found on page 24 of the October 8, 1956 issue of LIFE magazine, the 200EE camera is so simple a child could take perfect movies. Yeah! Right!

This 16mm camera is very technical and elaborate as the instruction book suggests. The camera speed (in FPS – frames per second) and film speed must be set; the lens focussed; a decision made to use the normal lens or two different add on lens elements to make medium wide angle or telephoto shots; and most importantly whether to use the auto aperture adjustment mechanism (based on an electric eye/motor/battery and red flag) or use a manual setting. And oh yes, do you want a movie or just a single frame?

The electric eye automation is the fresh idea that the marketeers are promoting, but the heavy, 16mm camera is far from the simple tool envisioned. Unless you are a talented photographer trained in the nuances of the art, this camera may as well be a brick!

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stuck in the middle

Posted on July 24, 2019 by Robert

c1930s, two photographers with 5×7 Speed Graphics from Laurent De Miollis.

Toronto. Over the time from 1839 until today, still cameras have become smaller and the media faster. When dry plates became readily available, shutters became a necessity. Combined with aperture settings, shutters and diaphragms gave the right amount of light for correct exposure of dry plates and eventually film.

The title of this post “stuck in the middle with you” is from a 2004  song popularized by the UK all girl band “Clea“.

Ken Metcalf down in North Carolina has just released the second newsletter of the Graflex Journal for this year. And like the song, Graflex collectors source cameras smaller than those used in the pre-dry plate era but far larger than the minicams, sub-miniatures, and digital cameras that came after the Graflex and Graphic cameras of the 1920s – 1940s. The vastly popular Graflex and Graphics where the primary tools of press photographers in the era of 5×7 and 4×5 films and plates.

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beginning to see the light – again

Posted on July 23, 2019 by Robert

Focal Press Version

Toronto. The post title must be a favourite of mine – used many times here, Long before digital photography arrived where it is today, professionals and advanced amateurs struggled to make prints that gave the most accurate and satisfying monochromatic rendering of their subject. Film, paper grade, paper surface, developers, and lighting all played a part in the matching of the subject to the final print (plus a dash of artistic talent thrown in for good measure).

The combination of all this marvellous magic culminated in the science of Sensitometry. We see a vestige of this today in the H&D curve displayed on the back of some digital cameras indication the proportion of dark to light areas in the image. Browse the Encyclopedia of 19th Century Photography for their explanation of Sensitometry  and many other fascinating articles. This book was published in 2008. The pdf here is courtesy of the website, Archive.org. A hard copy is available with free shipping for a modest $676 USD.

Most people who use a smartphone camera today seem content to let the computer in their phone determine the various elements that combine to make a reasonably accurate image of the subject (and a very good determination it does, indeed). In the 1950s-1960s we didn’t have such a luxury hence the interest in Sensitometry, and the books that taught us the technique of choosing the variables that ended up making a good monochrome print of the subject.

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Redlands Photo Contest

Posted on July 22, 2019 by Robert

Redlands – Australia

Toronto. Fancy seeing a bit of down under? The Redlands Camera Club in Wellington Point, Queensland, Australia is hosting its 2019 International Print and Digital contests this year. The contests are open from July 1st through August 10th.

Click on their website here for more details on joining or entering.

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ice cream and analogue

Posted on July 21, 2019 by Robert

hazy, lazy days of summer

Toronto. Did you know today, July 21st, is international ice cream day for year 2019? My thanks to Rita Godlevskis over at PhotoEd magazine for noting this epic event. The analogue (she uses the American spelling which skips the “ue” on the end) of course is the modern term for film photography which is more of an analogue process vs. digital.

Slide rules, nomograms, speedometers, gas gauges, etc are all analogue too. Pianos, telephone numbers, house numbers, digital cameras and even modern computers (using the base 2 – a long series of zeros and ones to give a discrete memory address, machine language code, etc.) are digital.

Have a look at the PhotoEd site (or the spring/summer issue of the magazine) while you enjoy some ice cream this sweltering weekend!

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I know it sounds real goofy…

Posted on July 20, 2019 by Robert

50 years ago today – courtesy of NASA

Toronto. …but the man in the moon is a Newfie. So sang Stompin’ Tom in his 1972 response to Neil Armstrong’s epic adventure 50 years ago today when the Ohio native became the first man to walk on the moon.

A tip of the hat to the brave trio of Americans who first ventured around and on the moon a half century ago on Apollo 11: Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Mike Collins. Ironically, the only one not to walk on the moon at that time (he did later) was Mike Collins, the sole survivor today.

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a litter of letters for lens test

Posted on July 19, 2019 by Robert

Gene Smith tests his Lenses – LIFE 1956

Toronto. In the late 1960s I was in Montreal and devised a means to test lens resolution and shutter accuracy. It was during the shutter test that I realized my Exakta had a serious problem. It turned out a brass stop was nearly chopped off and a dry axel made a curtain erratic as it moved across the exposed film frame.

For the lens tests, I used a commercial lens testing poster and moved the tripod back and forth to get most of the chart in the frame for each focal length. For the Exakta, the Steinheil 135mm f/2.8 was by far the best of the three lenses in flatness of field and resolution. The Angenieux 28mm f/3.5 was terrible and the 55mm f/1.9 Steinheil not much better. Both lenses used a retrofocus design. However; in practice, both gave a reasonably sharp result although curvature of field shows deteriorated corner resolution in my tests.

George Dunbar found the above novel lens test in LIFE magazine. The photographer, Gene Smith, was using a much larger camera and elected to photograph hand written letters and words scattered over the image frame and at various distances. Check out LIFE for  September 10, 1956 (pp16, 17).

You may wonder why we are using LIFE ads. There are a bunch of reasons: The magazine is no longer published; Google Books elected to scan and post every page of each weekly issue; LIFE was widely distributed and its name easily recognized; the magazine offers a slice of middle American life over a half century ago and by osmosis how we were in post war Canada at the time as we moved from Britain and its products to the brash outspoken America and American products.

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uh-oh, colour film – again

Posted on July 18, 2019 by Robert

Metropolis Film

Toronto. For those of you who were born in the digital era, Colour NEGATIVE film was used before digital to make colour prints. Like black and white film, the illumination was reversed and an enlarger made the shades correct for the eye. In the case of colour negative film, colours are also reversed using complementary colours (look it up). Sometimes the film also had a filter layer – usually orange – in varying degrees of intensity.

The folks at Lomography have a passion for film and frequently announce new versions of film cameras and lenses. Some of their cameras use the Fuji film version of Polaroid packs (Instax).

They recently announced a col0ur negative film in various still-popular formats. Like Ilford’s XP-1, their film can be exposed in various ISO ratings – all incredibly slow in these days of digital sensors (ISO 100, 200, 400).

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duck! …bang …finito!

Posted on July 17, 2019 by Robert

speeding bullet head on

Toronto.  Years ago,  Dr Edgerton of MIT revolutionized the art of photography by using high speed flash to record mundane events in a fraction of a split second.  In the late 1950s, I bought a used Ultrablitz Reporter IIL. The speed of its light flash was more in the range of camera shutter speeds with its 1/800th and 1/400th second bursts. Before then I always thought of electronic flash as super fast.

On pp14 and 15 of the August 27th, 1956 issue of LIFE magazine, a regular column called “Speaking of Pictures” features the remarkable work of Lawrence Faeth in the New Haven Conn. labs of Winchester-Western – the rifle makers of Winchester fame. The column shows how Faeth recorded a speeding bullet head on. His photo is amazing even today, over six decades later.

N.B. Be sure to scroll through the pages of LIFE magazine above. With rare exception colour is reserved for advertisements by those with the money – most  photos in the articles are in black and white even if colour would be more suitable for them. And the products are sometimes long forgotten or viewed today in a far darker light (e.g. Marlboros are touted even though years later the poor old Marlboro Man died of lung cancer and cigarette ads have long been banned).

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come a little bit closer…

Posted on July 16, 2019 by Robert

The 1969 50mm Summicron all metal black anodized finish with a close focus of .7m

Toronto. …cried the Mexican girl in the ballad of the same name sung by Marty Robins back in the 1960s.

The standard set by Leitz in its Leica lenses was a close-up distance of 1m or 39 inches. Spider legs and various close-up devices allowed smaller items to be recorded, right down to 1:1.

This standard was continued with the Summicron 50mm lenses until the famous lens was recalculated in Midland, Ontario by the magnificent lens designer Walter Mandler to use only six elements. The close-up distance was reduced almost a foot to 28 inches or .7m. The lens was marketed in 1969. I bought mine in 1972 along with an M4 to photograph my two daughter, the youngest of whom was born that summer just before I took the plunge.

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