Journalism's divisive ride to '35'

The transition from 4x5 to Rolli/Contax II to 35mm Motor drive.
Was about immediacy.
Hindenburg at Lakehurst the Leica got different shots from the double dark slides. The sound man a different story.
The elephant in the room is the camphone...

Does anybody know of anyone using hasselblads for news/journalism?

mopar_guy said:

Newspapers used a lot of Filmpacks. You got 16 shots with about the same size as one double sided sheet film holder.

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OK - thanks! I did not know about those and just now discovered what they were and how they worked. It's too bad they don't make these anymore.

Not sure if it a Hassy, this morning Arizona Republic front page there are 9 photos taken of the last 9 survivors the U.S.S Arizona taken with 6X6, Delta 400 and HP5. Printed full frame, nice work.

I see no fear here, or crazy holdouts who just won't see the light. I see pragmatic businesses doing their work of not wasting money. The 35mm "advantage" you think you see is not so obvious if you consider newspaper work during the time period.

Often shots were brought in, quickly developed in hot soup, and rushed wet to make plates for the late edition immediately. Those shots didn't even need a lengthy editing process because there were only 10, not 100 to vet. Because the negatives are big you also skip the entire enlarging process and can make those printing plates directly from the negative, also immediately.

You don't just randomly switch out an entire infrastructure to buy into some new kit that requires a high capital expenditure with no major upside in your news cycle.

Not to mention that early 35mm cameras were complex even then and required more upkeep than press cameras which are basically just a big box.

It was only after 35mm kit became more sturdy and enlarging/photocopying became faster in creating plates that the new format took over. Which moves us into the Xerox photocopier at 1959, the F2 era after 1971, which combined is oddly the cutoff for the irrational holdouts' conversion.

The dot screen of newspaper printing until the late 1980s was coarse. You'd have been hard pressed to tell if the shot was half frame or 5 x 7 from the final product. This was true of national dailies and regional weeklies. There was considerable inertia to any change in technology, hot metal type press was universal and the head printer was king, and paid accordingly. The newspaper business was highly unionised, and nepotism was rife.

Editors would only look at a 35mm transparency on a light box if was a plane crash or the Pope being shot and they couldn't get their tog to reproduce it. Everything else was held up to a window from a sitting position. This was the culture against which technology was played out. The Magnum ethic of photographer control represented a tiny fraction of the work, the dying picture papers, The Sunday Times for a short period, a few European magazines. Most commercial photography was hack work shot on what everyone else was using. Nobody rocked the boat, everyone bought newspapers. Artists debating the merits of this look over that, wouldn't have made it past the front desk.

Large format work was like taking a 35 mm lens to print a 135mm shot, you hope it's going to be in there somewhere.

cjbecker said:

Does anybody know of anyone using hasselblads for news/journalism?

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One summer, when I was a kid growing up in Williamsport, PA around 1960, I snuck into the photo area of the Little League World Series - as much to try to rub shoulders with the big-time pros from out of town as to take pictures with my Practica FX3. I became friendly with a guy from one of the New York dailies who was using two cameras - a Rolleiflex, and a Hasselblad with a moderate (guessing around 250mm) telephoto lens. He sat on a stool with the Hassey mounted on what looked like a cinema tripod head bolted to a wooden milk carton between his legs, and the Rollei on a knee. From what I could tell, except maybe for the likes of Sports Illustrated, this was pretty much state-of-the-art at the time.

Also present was a local pro who was strictly 4x5, using his "sports rig" - a 4x5 Graflex (the slr, not a Speed Graphic) with a long lens. I remember him using this camera well into the 60's - the only one I've ever seen in use.

I worked in newspapers starting in 1975, and although there were still 4x5 tanks in the darkroom, everyone had converted to 35 mm by then. The old timers talked about back in the 1940s when being built like a linebacker -- to break through crowds -- was more important that artistic skill in photographers.
I think Tri-X and the conversion of many papers to offset presses in that era helped spur along 35 mm. If I remember correctly, hot metal presses were lucky to get to 80 dpi on halftones, and I commonly worked at 180 for offset. Magazines and commercial photography are another matter, which might explain why larger formats are still found there.

You've just described the human condition with perfect 20-20 hindsight.

Early in Franklin Roosevelt's first term in office a newspaper reporter took a 35mm photograph of him in a wheelchair or sitting. FDR was furious and ordered that only press cameras were allowed for use by the press corp covering him. That is why press cameras stayed firmly intrenched.

Sirius Glass said:

Early in Franklin Roosevelt's first term in office a newspaper reporter took a 35mm photograph of him in a wheelchair or sitting. FDR was furious and ordered that only press cameras were allowed for use by the press corp covering him. That is why press cameras stayed firmly intrenched.

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I nominate Franklin D. Roosevelt to "Honorary APUG Member"!!

FDR wanted to minimize instances of being seen by the public in his wheelchair. I believe there are only three known photos of him in it.

So, perhaps he was worried about someone with a small camera being inconspicuous enough to make such a photo.

See "Public awareness of FDR's disability" at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_D._Roosevelt's_paralytic_illness

Theo Sulphate:

Back then, even when I was a child in the 1950s, being 'disabled' was a social scourge. It was, for example, unthinkable for a wheelchair-bound person to enter a restaurant, so no accommodation was necessary! I remember that there was one girl in our middle and high school who was born with a disfigured face. No one was nasty to her but in all those years I do not remember seeing even one person make a gesture towards her in order to remind her that she was a human. I look back and I was just as guilty even though I had my own strident problems being gay and hated by 90% of the class for being so.

The point I wish to make is this: FDR's malady was serious business then. It might have even gotten him kicked out of office, so vilely were these 'crippled miscreants' treated at that time. The ONLY normal people back then were entirely straight, white, conservative people who had all their arms and legs and were relatively attractive (but, amazingly, 'fat' was more accepted than is even now). I do not blame FDR one whit: reality was the driving force. Kids in the fifties who had polio were not considered capapble of being social beings. The times back then were amazingly ignorant in this regard: the physical malady was considered a microcosm of a mental defect.

NB: the girl with the disfigured face had her yearbook picture taken: it was a rather masterful job of showing a facial profile, the side that was not disfigured, and in low, dramatic light. How I would like to see her now and tell her that I would feel comfortable talking to her. And also tell her that the people who were 'afraid' of her were the real losers in life. When you really stop to think about it: what makes such people 'terrifying'? Answer: people like that expose us to the side of ourselves that we would rather make believe does not exist. Likewise all gays were considered vile and lecherous beings. - David Lyga

In first grade at the beginning of Spring the teachers collected and smashed squirt guns. When anyone was sick for more than two or three days we would start to worry that the had polio.

In fourth grade the first Salk vaccine was announced.

Now we can forget about those days.

A footnote: It turned out that polio is spread oral-fecally. Children would drink from a fountain filling their mouth. Then they would put the squirt gun in the mouth and pump the trigger to refill the squirt gun. So after all these years the teachers were right to collect and destroy the squirt guns to prevent the spread of polio.

David Lyga said:

Theo Sulphate:

Back then, even when I was a child in the 1950s, being 'disabled' was a social scourge. It was, for example, unthinkable for a wheelchair-bound person to enter a restaurant, so no accommodation was necessary! I remember that there was one girl in our middle and high school who was born with a disfigured face. No one was nasty to her but in all those years I do not remember seeing even one person make a gesture towards her in order to remind her that she was a human. I look back and I was just as guilty even though I had my own strident problems being gay and hated by 90% of the class for being so.

The point I wish to make is this: FDR's malady was serious business then. It might have even gotten him kicked out of office, so vilely were these 'crippled miscreants' treated at that time. The ONLY normal people back then were entirely straight, white, conservative people who had all their arms and legs and were relatively attractive (but, amazingly, 'fat' was more accepted than is even now). I do not blame FDR one whit: reality was the driving force. Kids in the fifties who had polio were not considered capapble of being social beings. The times back then were amazingly ignorant in this regard: the physical malady was considered a microcosm of a mental defect.

NB: the girl with the disfigured face had her yearbook picture taken: it was a rather masterful job of showing a facial profile, the side that was not disfigured, and in low, dramatic light. How I would like to see her now and tell her that I would feel comfortable talking to her. And also tell her that the people who were 'afraid' of her were the real losers in life. When you really stop to think about it: what makes such people 'terrifying'? Answer: people like that expose us to the side of ourselves that we would rather make believe does not exist. Likewise all gays were considered vile and lecherous beings. - David Lyga

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Dammit !! You, David, are a really nice person.

'NICE', afer all, is a four letter word, dear barzune, and interpreted as nefarious by certain people who see such as a 'weakness' (just like so many saw Jimmy Carter's human rights prerogatives with foreign policy as a weakness and not the strength that it actually was; or, indeed, failed to perceive Reagan's love of right-wing dictators as the putrid evil that THAT was). One thing I learned early in life was to understand that some people are really out to get you. Escaping that becomes nearly impossible within an environment that is so structured and largely upheld by one's parents for socially acceptable reasons. Thus, one must look inwardly for answers. My parents loved me, provided for me, but did not want to hear of the trumas I was experiencing in school.

I knew I had it in for me for life from my peers by first grade in 1956: the teacher had a 'litterbug patrol' (her two pet students) who would go around all the desks at the end of the day. Just before they approached my desk all the surrounding kids would throw debris under my desk and I was unable to remove it in time. Result? I was given punishment and had to stay after school several days and had to have my mother pick me up. This was a truma for me at the time that I only gradually recovered from. On the bus, the kids would save a seat for me so that they could punch me from behind, from the front, and from both sides was also something that I was unable to escape. NOTHING said to an adult mattered, as 'pansies' did not have any rights. Period. In second grade I almost had my right eye punched out by a girl sitting in front of me who purposely jabbed my eyesocket with a pencil as she was passing me paper that the teacher initiated at the front of the rows. My mother noticed a scar there and I told her what had happened and she wrote a note to the very young teacher. That teacher (who is still living in Wolcott, CT but APUG would not want that name published) simply laughed out loud and crumpled it up and threw it away with arrogance and more laughter. It WAS that way at that time. When I had to stay in Wolcott for six weeks in the summer of 2013 watching my father die and, afterwards, then empty his apartment, it was very tempting to go to her house and literally strangle her. I did not do that.

You see, as crazy as it sounds now, back then kids did not DARE to refute what adults said. If my teacher accused me of being a litterbug, I was, in fact, a deemed litterbug, it was that simple, as reason was always trumped by authority when I was young. This and similar incidents carved out my cynical and excessively paranoid personality for life and I cannot escape its focus no matter how much I try. To live alone, as I have for all my adult life, is NOT lonliness, but, in fact, 'refuge'. I have NEVER been lonely and cannot understand why people are, since there is so much to do regarding helping others. (Honestly, I believe lonliness to be a form of selfishness, as severe as that sounds.) In some ways I have benefited, in other ways (careerwise) I am surely defeated (even after having passed the formidable CPA Exam three years ago). But I have learned how to survive with my 'handicap' and credit such cynicism with literally saving my life many times over. As a result, I think that I can 'see' people better than most. I know that I am healthier than most, at nearly 65. - David Lyga

David Lyga said:

'NICE', afer all, is a four letter word, dear barzune, and interpreted as nefarious by certain people who see such as a 'weakness' (just like so many saw Jimmy Carter's human rights prerogatives with foreign policy as a weakness and not the strength that it actually was; or, indeed, failed to perceive Reagan's love of right-wing dictators as the putrid evil that THAT was). One thing I learned early in life was to understand that some people are really out to get you. Escaping that becomes nearly impossible within an environment that is so structured and largely upheld by one's parents for socially acceptable reasons. They loved me, provided for me, but did not want to hear of the trumas I was experiencing in school.

I knew I had it in for me for life from my peers by first grade in 1956: the teacher had a 'litterbug patrol' (her two pet students) who would go around all the desks at the end of the day. Just before they approached my desk all the surrounding kids would throw debris under my desk and I was unable to remove it in time. Result? I was given punishment and had to stay after school several days and had to have my mother pick me up. This was a truma for me at the time that I only gradually recovered from. On the bus, the kids would save a seat for me so that they could punch me from behind, from the front, and from both sides was also something that I was unable to escape. NOTHING said to an adult mattered, as 'pansies' did not have any rights. Period. In second grade I almost had my right eye punched out by a girl sitting in front of me who purposely jabbed my eyesocket with a pencil as she was passing me paper that the teacher initiated at the front of the rows. My mother noticed a scar there and I told her what had happened and she wrote a note to the very young teacher. That teacher (who is still living in Wolcott, CT but APUG would not want that name published) simply laughed out loud and crumpled it up and threw it away with arrogance and more laughter. It WAS that way at that time. When I had to stay in Wolcott for six weeks in the summer of 2013 watching my father die and, afterwards, then empty his apartment, it was very tempting to go to her house and literally strangle her. I did not do that.

You see, as crazy as it sounds now, back then kids did not DARE to refute what adults said. If my teacher accused me of being a litterbug, I was, in fact, a deemed litterbug, it was that simple, as reason was always trumped by authority when I was young. This and similar incidents carved out my cynical and excessively paranoid personality for life and I cannot escape its focus no matter how much I try. To live alone, as I have for all my adult life, is NOT lonliness, but, in fact, 'refuge'. I have NEVER been lonely and cannot understand why people are, since there is so much to do regarding helping others. (Honestly, I believe lonliness to be a form of selfishness, as severe as that sounds.) In some ways I have benefited, in other ways (careerwise) I am surely defeated (even after having passed the formidable CPA Exam three years ago). But I have learned how to survive with my 'handicap' and credit such cynicism with literally saving my life many times over. As a result, I think that I can 'see' people better than most. I know that I am healthier than most, at nearly 65. - David Lyga

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+1

Sounds like you are a succesful person to me. You manage to overcome very strong, undeserved hostility. And you have managed NOT to kill that teacher. That's a major feat as well.

I do thank you for your kind words. flavio81, but I think that the secret is that when all of this was happening I actually thought that I had an obligation to go through with the suffering. This is easier to understand when you also understand that, as a child with little outside influence (Wolcott, CT, was rather rural at that time), this was standard treatment for me. I had, in a sense, no perspective like I do now. No one who was an adult reacted negatively so, as a child forever looking towards adults for 'perspective', I found that there was nothing disturbing them.

Yes, flavio81, there was good that came out of that: I think that I am more prepared now for unforeseen negativity in life. Some who have experienced little other than good luck in life fall apart at the first sign of bad news. As my maternal grandmother used to often say: "Today, if people do not have a Kleenex, they think that they are mentally ill." It is true, negativity can be a mighty good instructor. I can honestly say that I am a rather content person in many ways. I do know myself. - David Lyga

David Lyga said:

Yes, flavio81, there was good that came out of that: I think that I am more prepared now for unforeseen negativity in life. Some who have experienced little other than good luck in life fall apart at the first sign of bad news. As my maternal grandmother used to often say: "Today, if people do not have a Kleenex, they think that they are mentally ill." It is true, negativity can be a mighty good instructor. - David Lyga

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I'll make sure i always have Kleenex with me, thanks for the advice.

Jokes aside, in the last 18 months three close persons died - my grandma, one of my best friends (like an older brother to me), and finally my father. I think i have had a lot of good luck in life before. But i don't consider their deaths "bad luck". Actually, i have great luck -- in having spent enough quality time with the 3 persons mentioned above.

Cheers!

Perhaps, flaqvio81, you are also guilty of knowing yourself. That is good. Life is certainly going to end: its temporal aspects should be kept subordinate, You succeeded with that here. - David Lyga