Originally posted by Bassat Very nice recounting, Rick. You have used a lot of gear over the years. I just want to put it out there that I am not old enough to have used my '40s & '50s vintage folders when they were new. I have acquired them in response to my question: "What else uses this weird film?" after I bought my first P645 last year. I am old enough to have been seeing the world through a viewfinder since about 1965. I was old enough to buy my first SLR (Yashica FX-2) in 1976. I have never done any type of photography for money. Why ruin a good walk in the park?
We could not agree more on your last sentence. I learned that lesson the hard way. But it was one of many things I did to fund my activities while in college and for some years thereafter, even when I had a day job, though getting paid turned me off of photography for many years as a result. The weddings I've done since I refuse to charge for, and so only do them for friends and family who can't afford a pro and would otherwise have only Uncle Harry photos.
But your 40's and 50's folders were amateur cameras--nice ones, to be sure--but still for tourists. I have a Moscow folder from 1958--typical of the breed and a copy of a Super Ikonta or something like that. It's really fun to play with and look at, but cell focusing has its limitations. And I do have a Speed Graphic, but the only press camera I've used that made money was a baby-size Crown Graphic--a Century Graphic--which I used with a Zeiss Jena lens to photograph the Texas Aggie Bonfire. That image sold 10,000 8x10 prints. Notice my story did not include Rolleiflex, even though I have a Rolleiflex MX-Type II (I think) from the early 50's with a Schneider Xenar. I traded a TV for it. That is a very nice camera and the shutter is still snappy and accurate. But that sort of camera for a wedding is a disaster, though many used them. Swing-up backs really did make it hard to change film, especially since the bracket for the flash had to be removed before the back could be opened. The Mamiya TLR solved that problem with a back that hinged on the lower back edge instead of the lower front edge. And the Mamiya had interchangeable lenses, some of which were really excellent for the era and could keep up with the standard Zeiss/Hasselblad lenses of the day.
What that Rolleiflex taught me (and the Yashica 635, and the several Mamiya C-series TLRs) was that cheap medium format trumps expensive 35mm, and the reason 35mm was expensive was because making small mechanical things is harder than making big mechanical things, and making lenses that could support quality 11x enlargements (to a mere 8x10) require cubic dollars compared to lenses that could support a 4x or 5x enlargement to make the same print. And even setting acutance and resolution aside, the larger film simply contained more tonality. My 11x14 and 16x20 prints from that era, made using the (expensive!) Canon F-1 or one of my two Pentax KX's (the first one, both bought new in the 70's) lack the sort of image definition and clarity I started demanding once I got used to larger formats. That led me very early on, while still an architecture student, to large format--a beautiful but ancient Linhof Kardan Color owned by the architecture school. I was hooked on large format and remain so, though scratching that itch now requires overcoming vast inconvenience and I'm lazy. Once I could afford a view camera, I bought a Newton Nue-View, truly a dreadful camera that should have cured me of the disease but didn't, followed by a Calumet CC-400, a Cambo SC that I used for several decades, a Sinar F that I used for another decade, and finally a Sinar P that I now use as long as I don't have to stray far from the car. The image-management capabilities are endless, and the information stored in those negatives vast. I'm still looking forward to a practical and affordable field-capable 4x5 digital back, but I doubt that will ever happen.
What made those old-tech cameras work at an event were powerful automatic flashes. That Vericolor could shoot at 1/60 and f/16 in open shade, and because it was negative film one could overexpose it by a stop or two and still not block up the highlights. But it takes a powerful flash to provide much range at f/16, even though the fill flash can be two stops less exposed than the scene. So, I would set the automatic flash on f/8, but set the lens to f/16, and could shoot outdoors at 1/60 without worry. At f/8, I might have a range of up to 10 feet or so, so I let it do good where it would and didn't worry about it otherwise. For portraits and altar returns, I would use a large reflective scrim (I have one that unfolds to six feet in diameter and is covered on one side with gold and the other side with silver metallic material) to fill shadows when forced to work outdoors in direct sun. Of course, that was in the day when shots were posed and the photographer was expected to manage the photos rather than work invisibly. And nowadays photographers set up powerful strobes on stands around the room margins and use a radio control and TTL to control the light.
But even using P-TTL (or E-TTL with my Canons), I still mount the flash on a bracket and use a remote cord. A battery pack, too. For my Canon (current is an old but still effective 5DII, fresh back from service where they replaced the shutter and the mirror box) I have two 580EXII flashes and four battery packs that can be converted with a plug change to use with my two Pentax P-TTL flashes. I haven't tried to set up flashes on stands around the room--but I don't think that's really any easier than hauling around that Pacemaker Graphic with a Honeywell Strobonar, and it's certainly worse than the Mamiya C-3 or C-33 with a Sunpak 611 potato masher.
Oh, well, enough stories. In 1965, I was looking through the viewfinder of a Kodak Hawkeye Instamatic, which, like the Newton, should have put me off of photography altogether. But it really just made me want more that first good camera--a Yashica Lynx 5000e rangefinder. My first SLR was a Mamiya/Sekor 1000DTL, stolen a few years later. I used the insurance money to buy the first KX, since I had a range of lenses for it, but had already bought the F-1.
Rick "who, just this weekend, found all of the missing old darkroom equipment buried at the back of the attic storeroom" Denney