Early photo magazines and photo quality

So lately I've been addicted to reading Popular Photography mags from the google books library (1938-the '50's). Along with being fun, they're quite educational and informative. Amazing how much still applies in today's age.

One thing I noticed is that the pictures look like crap. Not from an artistic standpoint, albeit many would be considered snapshots, but from a technical standpoint. Lots of relatively soft focus, crushed blacks, not a lot of detail, etc. My question is, is the lack of quality due to the equipment the photographers were using back then, or is it due to the limitations of the magazine print capabilities of the era?

As an example, in this issue from Aug 1943, if you go to the second to last page (99), there is an ad for Wollensak lenses. That full page image would not make me say "Wow! I have to have a Wollensak lens!"

I do realize that I'm from a different generation, and more accustomed to newer publications (was a subscriber to Pop and Mod Photo in the early 80's), so I can't really tell if the fault is in the magazine limitations (which I suspect) or the originals.

I own and use quite a bit of vintage bodies and glass, but (fresh) vintage film is something we don't have an opportunity to use.

Sorry this was sort of rambling.

In general colour print quality was very low only a few decades ago. A fault I often come across is colour seperations not being in register.

suggestion

I strongly suggest you look at the real thing and not through the lens of some electronic gizmo dreamed up in someone's garage because he couldn't get a real job. Scanning petty well sucks unless you put one heck of a lot of time and energy and smarts into it.

I might be one of the few people, but I like crushed blacks. I like pictorialist photos. I actually don't see the point of useless detail for the sake of detail. To me it usually distracts and takes a way from the image than add anything to it.

Different courses for different horses.

Saying all of the above, I think the image you have mentioned has bigger issues than being very high contrast.

It looks to me like you are looking at:
1) a scan;
2) of a publication printed more than 70 years ago;
3) on what appears to be newsprint.

None of which make it easy to appreciate what the original photographs shown in the magazine looked like.

not sure what you mean by crushed blacks---but standard magazine printing back then was a lot cruder than what you see today -- there's been huge advances in offset printing. Even fresh off the press reproduction then left a lot to be desired, so much so that some photo mags had special rotogravure sections which had better reproduction when they really wanted to show something off.

Kirks518 said:

... My question is, is the lack of quality due to the equipment the photographers were using back then, or is it due to the limitations of the magazine print capabilities of the era?...

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I take it that the above is the crux of your question.

I personally see quite a lot of original prints from the early part of the 20th century and I can comfortably say that black and white print quality was often extremely high even by todays standards. Colour prints and reproduction are another matter. The poor quality you are seeming probably has little to do with the original print quality and probably much more to do with mediocre magazine reproduction compounded by further photography or scanning for the internet.

The vast majority of images shot in the early part of the 20th century were shot on plates, either gelatin films or glass plates, that require relatively little enlargement so even though the lenses and film emulsions were not as advanced as those available today, they generally didn't need to be for the degree of enlargement involved. Incidentally, even the least advanced lenses were still very sharp in the centre although they may have had various aberrations the further you went from that central zone. Early telephoto, retro-focus (reverse telephoto) and zoom lenses were not nearly the same optical standard as modern lenses but these lenses tended to be used with small film cameras, ie 35mm or medium format, so lens advances in this field had little effect on the images shot with plate cameras of various sizes which typically used quite simple lens designs rather than telephoto or wide angle lenses.

Once 'miniature' cameras became popular (ie Leica and Contax 35mm cameras) film emulsions were not really up to snuff for a long time and the technical standards of images fell away, dramatically in some cases, but plates were commonly being used for a long time, certainly in the 40's and into the 50's. Medium format took over for a vast range of high quality work, especially in the 50's and 60's, and most commercial work was still shot on large format cameras (until the late 90's). Really, aside from the early 35mm stuff the technical quality of most early-mid 20 century photography has been extremely high. Magazine print quality is another matter and I would suggest that the losses in magazine reproduction quality are quite dramatic, especially in the early part of the century. I have a lot of books from the 1930-40's (and earlier) and I generally find that B+W print reproduction is not great, and certainly no where near the standard of original prints from the same period. I only have a few magazines from that period and find their print quality generally inferior to that in books from the same period.

Go to some museums and try to see as much early photography as you can and I think you might be surprised with much of the work from the early to mid 20th century. Some of the most beautiful prints that I have ever seen have been the images shot for Hollywood studios in the 30's and 40's. If you ever get a chance to see the John Kobal collection , which is full of work from this period, then I can highly recommend it.

Its a joy to read those ads. Wish I read more of these magazines.

See if your local art museum has some photographs from the 30s to 50s to view.

It's interesting that even since Germany had declared war on the U.S.A almost three years before that Leitz products are still being advertised on page 77 of the magazine.

White whites and black blacks. Less detail in the shadows. These can create dramatic but understandable photos that have emotional content if lighted and framed properly. Even with the graininess and poor reproduction. The purpose of a photo is to create an emotional response so we can understand and feel. The brain cares little about resolution, details, etc. It fills in the blanks .

The problem is inferior, low rez scans from faded magazine pages that were 60+ years old, in all likelihood, at the time of the scans. When they were new, or even maybe 10 years old, the colors and sharpness were beautiful. I was born in the beginning of the 50's and remember how good they were, even into the 70's. After that, wear, age, and the fading of fugitive printing dyes has taken it's toll.

Granted there was a war going on, but the military propaganda, there is no other word for it (and all I mean is what I see in those mags), is very alarming to me. Even though I was born into the 50's, I came of age in the 60's. There was a huge world, cultural shift going on then, probably the greatest in the last 100 years. Now, things are swinging the other way in some respects.

And yet, people are still shooting Tri-X today in cameras made around the time of those magazines, and still developing it in D76 :]

jjphoto - thanks. Yes, that was my actual question, and you confirmed what I thought. I know the equipment (lenses, bodies, etc) of the era was good to excellent by today's standards, but wasn't sure about the period film, or paper.

I really enjoy going through those old magazines. I get a huge kick out of the ads, and converting the prices then into today's dollars. Accounting for inflation, camera prices have remained pretty constant. The wartime ads (propaganda) is also very interesting, and really helps to understand the mindset of the typical reader/citizen of the era.

As for the scans, I don't think the scanning has nearly as much to do with what I was asking about as the available printing processes of the day do. The so-called 'lo-res' scans that these were done at were probably a higher resolution than the original.

I do read these with a grain of salt, and a wide buffer for the technical failings of the individual photos, but there certainly are some that make me say 'how'd that one get into publication?', but that's just me.

Now if google could group them better for easier access, it would be great! Anyone kow of other old photo mags that were made back then (or earlier) that are available online?

I think it was just the printing available back then. Halftone technology when this magazine was published is not as advanced today. Some of the blacks looked blocked is I think it was tough to print a small halftone dot back in the 1940's.

Kirks518 said:

jjphoto - thanks. Yes, that was my actual question, and you confirmed what I thought. I know the equipment (lenses, bodies, etc) of the era was good to excellent by today's standards, but wasn't sure about the period film, or paper.

I really enjoy going through those old magazines. I get a huge kick out of the ads, and converting the prices then into today's dollars. Accounting for inflation, camera prices have remained pretty constant. The wartime ads (propaganda) is also very interesting, and really helps to understand the mindset of the typical reader/citizen of the era.

As for the scans, I don't think the scanning has nearly as much to do with what I was asking about as the available printing processes of the day do. The so-called 'lo-res' scans that these were done at were probably a higher resolution than the original.

I do read these with a grain of salt, and a wide buffer for the technical failings of the individual photos, but there certainly are some that make me say 'how'd that one get into publication?', but that's just me.

Now if google could group them better for easier access, it would be great! Anyone kow of other old photo mags that were made back then (or earlier) that are available online?

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If you view one of the magazines online at it's maximum available resolution you may notice that the individual dots that make up the printed pictures are not fully discernible. At least that was the case with the magazines that I have viewed online. The scan resolution was most likely very low. Or they were re-sampled at a low resolution to make the documents smaller and quicker to download via the web. The original magazine images are made up of dots or a pattern that can be easily viewed under a loupe. Now, compound that with the resolution of my computer monitor and things don't look too wonderful from the web. My monitor is 32" on the diagonal but only displays approx. 100-103 dots per physical horizontal inch. It takes two dots to make a pixel, so that's really just 50 dpi. You can buy originals of some of these photo magazines via eBay, if you really want to see one first-hand. Granted the print quality in these magazines was not wonderful. But, for 25 cents I think they did an excellent job as far as being an affordable magazine for their time.

Mainecoonmaniac said:

I think it was just the printing available back then. Halftone technology when this magazine was published is not as advanced today. Some of the blacks looked blocked is I think it was tough to print a small halftone dot back in the 1940's.

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Very high quality printing was available, but it was too costly for magazines being churned off a web press. These days, with better inks, more reliable papers, climate controlled press rooms, combined with fast computer controlled presses, even "junk mail flyers" are often better quality of magazines of the 80's.

Sad but true

vittie said:

These days, with better inks, more reliable papers, climate controlled press rooms, combined with fast computer controlled presses, even "junk mail flyers" are often better quality of magazines of the 80's.

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Now they don't even have to burn plates. They now have digital presses work like Xerox machines. Expensive machines though. Probably with 200 lpi screens.

Mainecoonmaniac said:

I think it was just the printing available back then. Halftone technology when this magazine was published is not as advanced today. Some of the blacks looked blocked is I think it was tough to print a small halftone dot back in the 1940's.

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True. I notice it often with art books - compare a book about an artist such as van Gogh or Matisse with one published more than 20 years ago. The quality improvement is significant.