1959: the year that the press cameras became dethroned, defunct, defunded

[Bikerider]

Then why photographers in other parts of the world changed earlier, even much earlier? They too (with the exception of Germany) could have gone on with their big cameras.


I hope I do not come over as the arrogant European. I rather see myself as the ignorant European since long time finding no convincing explanation for the american-way on this matter.

Not at all you give a well reasoned argument and I go along with what you say.

 

[AgX]

One of my first cameras was a Contax S slr. It was a PIA to operate. Dim viewfinder makes it hard to focus, “pre set” aperture so you had to manually open the lens to focus and then stop it down to take the pic, then knob wind the fricken thing to get the mirror back down so you can see something! A rangefinder or TLR is much faster to use. A press camera? I could operate my Baby Speed faster than that Contax S. My Contax IIa beat them both, that’s why you see all those rangefinders in AgX’s 1949 photo.

It in the mid-50's it got an automatic-diaphragm mechanism and a field-lens was added to the finder.

Concerning the lack of an automatic-return mirror: how often does one really need such ??
One typically rewinds a camera immediately after releasing, be it with the camera kept at ones face or set off.
Loss of sight thus only occurs during winding.

With the Contax S and successors the major issue is the lack of a quick-action winding-lever. But this typicallly implies taking off the camera from ones face for winding, a automatic -return mirror would thus yield no benefit at all.

 

[Sirius Glass]

Except for in the range finder, my Speed Graphic is mirror less, while the Graflex Model D is not.

 

[AgX]

This is how the story is always told... but it does not make any sence, nor did I find any proof of this.
With the unconditional surrender of Germany the victorious Allies took all german patents as reperation. Thus to their own benefit. The exact way it was handled may have differed, at least in some cases the patents were sold. Anyway, to give this prey to your major enemy Japan makes no sense at all. With the political change during the postwar years however this may have changed with the intent of building a economical strong Japan as bulwark against communism.

During the war likely all belligerants used the chance to take control of patents owned by persons or firms of a hostile country, and to give licences for those patents. The restrictions on to whom such licence could be given are not well documented.
Very busy on this were the USA. Moreover they took the stand that the owner of such patent not necessarily needed to be from a hostile country, but it was sufficient if the owner resided in a country that was german-occupated. Think of what this meant for a firm as Philips.

After the end of the war, the situation becomes a bit more clear, as the Lonton Treaty regulates that patents seen as german property were to be licenced only to persons or firms of the signature countries.

 

[blockend]

Roll film cameras could be simple and inexpensive, and offer acceptable results from meniscus or triplet lenses. Amateurs didn't shoot a lot of film because it was expensive stuff reserved for special occasions. 35mm cameras demanded good optics, which were costly. Enthusiasts opted for upfront camera costs and cheaper film per shot.

Professional camera formats depended on how technically conservative picture editors were. Specialist picture publications which were popular in the pre and post WW2 decades, had no trouble with 35mm for print. Regional newspapers tended to be more conservative, with national press somewhere in between. Right up to the end of film, magazines insisted on roll film exclusively for publication, with no obvious aesthetic advantage to the format in print. This was for two reasons in my experience. First was resistance from picture editors to using a light box and lupe to look at slides. Many preferred to hold up a transparency to window light, only checking for focus through a lens after selection. The second reason was resistance in the print industry to small image sources, when making colour plates. Print technicians were dismissive of 35mm for illustration purposes.

A good guide to professional cameras at a given time, are motor shows. These were annual events with huge financial implications - most UK vehicles were homegrown, US likewise - which attracted press and newsreel photographers. Cinema newsreels emphasised the importance of the event by shooting Fleet Street photographers and their cameras, often photographing scantily clad ladies on cars, perpetuating the idea of photographers as louche and rakish individuals.
The Ideal Home exhibition, boat shows and similar annual events are good for camera spotting.

 

[AgX]

Early 50's 35mm SLR in large series production:

Exakta (start 1936)
Praktiflex (start 1939)
Praktica (start 1949)
Contax S (start 1950)
Praktina (start 1953) first system camera
Asahiflex (1953)


Then there also were low-production models as Sport (1936), Duflex (1947), Wrayflex (1951), Mecaflex (1953)

The first pentaprism SLR, the Contax S (on export markets later presented as Pentacon) has as big disadvantage the small size of its screen of only 21x30mm. A merely presented fact.
In the context of the topic of this thread one may discuss, whether this excludes it as press camera or not.

 

[nokia2010]

I do have a curiosity on the art of printing too. I know that on making images a big repro camera with a raster filter was used. But from 4 x 5" film or rollfilm (6 x 4,5 or 6 x 7 or 6 x 9) could you made dirrect copy for newpapers or magazines, meaning you put the original, the raster filter and the film for copy without using the repro camera? On my printing books I dind't find such things (I don't have any forgein one, except for an 1953 East-German printed one, which is more about offset and I don't speak only but a few words in German), but I'm curios if some one used this methodes.

"Exakta" with hand written marque is my dream....

There is one German book (I hope I will get money to buy it) Paul Wolff - "Meine Erfahrungen mit der Leica".
In Romania in the '50's? I've heared that the people who took wedding pictures using 35 m.m. cameras where called Laichişti (35 m.m. format beeing also know as Leica format).

 

[reddesert]

I do have a curiosity on the art of printing too. I know that on making images a big repro camera with a raster filter was used. But from 4 x 5" film or rollfilm (6 x 4,5 or 6 x 7 or 6 x 9) could you made dirrect copy for newpapers or magazines, meaning you put the original, the raster filter and the film for copy without using the repro camera? On my printing books I dind't find such things (I don't have any forgein one, except for an 1953 East-German printed one, which is more about offset and I don't speak only but a few words in German), but I'm curios if some one used this methodes.

The halftone image had to be the exact size that it was going to appear in the final copy. I imagine that you could make a halftone image by contact printing the negative with a halftone screen (what you're calling a raster filter), but given that it had to be sized to the newspaper layout, not sure that would be helpful.

Excuse me if this is stuff you already know, but I can describe how this was used in a newspaper layout from having pasted up layouts for high school and college newspapers in the US in the 1980s. I was just a student so people with more experience may understand this better. We would send the photographs out to our printer to have them converted to halftones. Early on, we would also send them the text of the articles and they would typeset it into columns and send us back the copy printed in columns. We then used newspaper size sheets of layout paper printed with a grid to lay out the articles, headlines, and photographs at 1:1 size, gluing the printed text and halftoned photos into place (this is called "paste up"). If you ever look at an old high school newspaper and wonder why some of the paragraphs of text look a bit crooked, it's because the text was cut into pieces to fit the layout and then pasted back down.

We could also paste up cartoons and drawings. Shading in drawings had to be done with dots like the photos - you can see these dots and hash marks used in comic books. We had sheets of preprinted adhesive dot patterns called "Zip-a-Tone" that you cut out with a razor knife to match the fill area: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screentone . This entire process was probably about the same in 1983 as it was in 1943. Then my high school got a daisy wheel printer, which produced type of sufficient quality that we could typeset the text ourselves (although it wasn't as good as the professionals, nor properly justified). This saved a step, but we still had to get the photographs halftoned. A daily newspaper would have done all that in house on a tight schedule, of course. The completed full size, camera-ready layout sheets were then sent to the printer - presumably an offset printer - and they sent the physical newspapers back.

 

[AgX]

nokia2010, be aware that the english halftone and the german Halbton have different meanings.

The german Halbton means continuous tone.

 

[nokia2010]

But what is continius tone anyway? It's like having black written on white or white on blue?
Sometimes, at a newspaper you could put 6 x 9 images... but probably not very often
Oh, yes, halftone screen. Printing industry terms are very different in Romanian (in which most are isnpired by German terms) and English.

 

[RalphLambrecht]

The Nikon F was certainly not the first SLR, but its accessories, panoply of great lenses, and quality of build caused a sensation back in 1959. Although I have heard that the last holdout for press cameras was with the Anchorage Press in the early 70s, most newspapers got rid of their large cameras far sooner.

Does anyone have comments about this change of events? The quality of the image wrought from 24mm x 36mm stunned many within this journalistic genre. I was only nine, so I cannot really relate this to you with any accuracy. And, I do not suppose that there are many Photrio members who really can with a candor married to a repository of factual knowledge. But some might have information which could pique our collective interest in this regard.
I benefitted from thepress cameras going out of style by picking up my first densitometer from an old press camera;I think it was an Agfa102?
And, it was not only the superb image quality which made the day for Nikon. Parts fungibility, along with quick turnaround for repairs, sealed the bank deposit for Nikon. Others tried to follow suit, like Canon. Pentax's approach was to create cheaper bodies which still were of high quality and had lens systems which were at least somewhat comparable with Nikon's and Canon's. Still others were content with catering solely to the advanced amateur. But Nikon's initiative with becoming a milestone with professionals was an endearing and enduring testament to photographic achievement and modification of the heretofore. Photography was never the same, again.

How did this change the whole approach to journalism and timely access to news information? There are many facets to this event which deserve to be told. Were there any drawbacks, any loss in quality of any kind, tangible or subjective? I do know that there were holdouts. Were these renegades' stubbornness "with good reason" or were they desperately holding onto whatever they had known the best and did not wish to venture into the 'high tech' of the day? - David Lyga

 

[Cholentpot]

I just ordered a 6x7 holder for my defunct camera. I've been shooting a lot on my useless machine, getting lots of defunct images that are pointless because the camera is obsolete.

 

[cjbecker]

When the photographers were using 4x5 press cameras, were most using grafmatic, or where they using normal double darks slides? If they were using dds’s how would the carry them?

 

[Ian Grant]

It would have been a combination of regular DDS, Grafmatics, and also film packs. Most press cameras were carried in shoulder bags and quite a wide variety of cameras were used, in terms of style and make, particularly in Europe.

Ian

 

[juan]

Stories I’ve heard from old press photographers were that they were frequently given two sheets of film - one double sided holder - to cover a story. Speed was necessary particularly in breaking news. One needed to get back to the office, process the negative, make the printing plate, get it physically laid out for the paper, and get the paper printed and distributed in just a few hours. One did’t have time to take a lot of shots. A two sheet holder could have been carried in the camera as could a single grafmatic.

By the time I came along, we were using 35mm and bulk loaded 10-exposure rolls to avoid wasting any more film than necessary.

 

[Paul Howell]

The only time I was told to shoot a story with a Speed, not mine, was with the paper's Speed with interchangeable backs, I was given a press pack, had 10 sheets. I shot 3 or 4 images, then returned it where the staff photographer took it for the rest of the day. The paper a small daily that covered Wilmington and San Pedro districts of LA was clearing out a stock of old film including the press packs, they were expired. My assignment was a ground breaking for some government building. Don't know if they ran the picture I took. The paper also had a TLR, not a Rollie, I never used it, and a Canon 35mm with a set of lens.

 

[gone]

If you watch old B&W movies, you see a Speed Graphic in nearly every one. Even out in the jungle, floating w/ supplies on a raft, sure enough someone will have one. I've even seen them in space ships. Nowadays, you probably should be careful getting too close to someone w/ a Graflex 4x5, 10 to 1 says they'd have no idea what it was.

 

[Cholentpot]

If you watch old B&W movies, you see a Speed Graphic in nearly every one. Even out in the jungle, floating w/ supplies on a raft, sure enough someone will have one. I've even seen them in space ships. Nowadays, you probably should be careful getting too close to someone w/ a Graflex 4x5, 10 to 1 says they'd have no idea what it was.

I take one with me on shoots.

I took my Crown with me on a shoot this fall and another photographer who was there saw it and got to talking. And that's how I ended up with a Nikon F+F36 and a box of meters.

Sadly the calibration of the RF is out again so it's shelved for now. Tootn' thing won't stay true.

 

[AgX]

If you watch old B&W movies, you see a Speed Graphic in nearly every one. Even out in the jungle, floating w/ supplies on a raft, sure enough someone will have one. I've even seen them in space ships.

American movies. As I explained somewhere at the begin of the thread, not over here or most parts of Europe.