I think the news photogs of the 40's and 50's with their speed graphics had "simple" down pat. Leave the camera on a box camera style setting and point the camera in the general direction of the desired shot, and enlarge the desired portion of the big negative and send the print to the editor. Good enough for 75 line letterpress plate on newsprint. Not so many luxuries on a 35mm when your negative was the size of a postage stamp.
This is a good point. Also these guys were using flash bulbs the size of a 60W light bulb. 127mm lens set at f16, zone focus. Those old flashbulbs would burn so long that 125th gave you twice the exposure as 250th. Not like today's 1/10000th s electronic flash.
The press guys especially, everything looks like it was shot after dark. Mostly because they used small aperture and huge flash. I sold off my horde of flashbulbs, darn things are dangerous in quantity. Still they were fabulous lights.