Cameras and film

[Nick Charles]

Does anyone out there use a vintage camera? I'm thinking about getting a vintage Kodak six-20 Jr Camera. I wanted to know how easy they are to use and can I get the film developed for a resonable cost. The film is about $6.00 a roll.

 

[Doctor Strange]

Nick, you'd be much better off sticking with a camera that uses either 120 rollfilm or 35mm film, as they're a lot more easily and cheaply available than now-obsolete sizes like 620.

Yes, there are outfits making discontinued film sizes - like Efke in Croatia who make 127 rollfilm - but given the rapid implosion of the film market in general in the face of digital photography, it's unclear how long these boutique film companies will be able to stay afloat. 120 and 35mm are likely to be the last widely used film formats. Even old standbys like 4x5 sheet film are now getting scarce. (Kodak has discontinued most varieties of theirs, Agfa's stopped making it altogether, and Ilford just laid off half of their staff and is in receivership!)

On the plus side, all kinds of vintage cameras and darkroom equipment are currently dirt-cheap (as folks dump their film stuff for digital equipment like rats leaving a sinking ship!) So it's a very good time to get into this stuff.

For myself, I shoot with all kinds of old cameras, including a pair of Minox "spy cameras" that I always carry. These are classics from 1956 and 1963 - and they produce splendid results!

Anyway, I'm always happy to discuss old-school photography, so just ask. And feel free to email me directly if you want.

 

[Andykev]

My neighbor is a very famous photographer, doing great commercial jobs, etc. He uses antique wooden cameras...etc.

I asked him about cameras and film, as I was thinking it would be neat to have one of those 1940 Speed Graphic in the large negative format.

He said stuff was available, but expensive.
I asked how and what? He said it was about $5 bucks a picture by the time you developed the large negative and printed it. Most photo places feed the 35mm roll film thru the machines..the big stuft has to go to a special lab. That setteled it for me!



Stephen Joseph Photography

 

[Doctor Strange]

True enough, shooting sheet film isn't cheap - but it wasn't always so...

My parents are retired pros. My dad had learned photography in the 30s/40s and opened his own little commercial studio after the war, and he always preferred shooting 4x5 to anything smaller. So I spent *years* after school, starting at about age 9 in the mid-1960s, developing 4x5 b/w film, not to mention reloading the film holders with fresh film. By using large tanks of standing chemistry, it was dirt cheap. (The film itself was also quite cheap back then - a 100-sheet box of 4x5 Plus-X was about $20!)

We've still got an old 4x5 Crown Graphic, and several other 4x5 cameras, and some 120-film cameras, early Nikons, and lots of others... When you're a pro, your friends give you their old cameras when they retire and move! We've got a filing cabinet full of old Polaroids, 8mm movie cameras, stereo cameras, assorted antiques they haven't made film for in decades... Most of them are pretty worthless, but there are a couple of real beauties.

Since my folks still have a darkroom in their basement, I keep my hand in, doing my own processing/printing of my 35mm and Minox b/w film. The old technology gives great results! (Of course, my dad's now only shooting digital!)

There are actually quite a few of us old-school photographers around. I'm not the only one who prefers using old manual cameras to today's auto-everything and digital wonders... Anybody's who has ever handled an old Nikon, a Rolleiflex, a Leica, a Minox, will tell you that they have a special feel that newer cameras can't match. It's the same thing that people find in older cars, motorcycles, guns, clothing, etc. Great, beautifully designed and made things from the golden age of mechanical engineering...

 

[Quigley Brown]

I shoot professionally for a local daily paper and have had to make the switch to digital...really no choice in that matter. Digital cameras can do some amazing things, but I don't let them do the thinking for me. On the other hand I've kept every camera I have ever owned and then some...blame those derned cheap auctions and yard sales for all my vintage equipment that leave me little room for anything else on all my bookshelves. I still use the 35mm ones that date back to the 1950s, but never any other out-dated formats because of the expense. I would sure like to find a cache of 8 and 16mm movie film, though. I just love the fine purring sound those cameras make after winding them up.

Anyway...while on the job I may be carrying a piece of 21st century technology around my neck, but at the same time I'm wearing mid-20th century necktie around my neck, also.

 

[The Wingnut]

Doc's got it right.

(Hi, Doc!)

I grew up around Rolleis and Hasselblads, my dad used them exclusively for weddings. He stopped using 35 mm SLR cameras for portraiture in the late '70s. The larger film allows much high negative and print quality. Now his weapon of choice is a Canon 20D for candids, portraiture and low lighting, and two last remaining Hasselblads(he once had 7) for still artistic shots.

I think we're losing a considerable portion of culture and craftmanship in the transfer to digital. True, the only expense after the purchase of a camera is batteries and media cards, and those are reusable. You cut out the lab almost completely with a good printer and a decent photo editor.

The major problem is now the basic knowledge that led to people becoming dead-on experts in color balance, tonal quality, composition and the like is relegated to software and self-goverened hardware; most people can take beautiful snapshots with expensive cameras, but have no concept of the reason the colors look so good, the tonal range is so broad, and the resolution is so crisp. They point and push a button, and that's it, viola, great photos. The soul of photography, the craftsmanship, is gone.

 

[PrettyBigGuy]

I've always thought that the old Leica cameras were pretty cool looking. One of these days I'm going to have to pick one up.

 

[Doctor Strange]

Well said, Wingnut!

I'm of two minds about it: It's surely the golden age of point&shoot photography. People who know nothing about photography can get great pictures out of everything from $15 simple p&s cameras from Wal-Mart on up to $1K autoeverything SLRs and digicams... When I think of the results I used to get with my first camera in the early 60s - a fixed-focus, 2-f/stop Kodak Brownie Starmite that took 127 rollfilm: typically 8 out of 12 shots were out of focus and/or over/underexposed - this is a remarkable technological improvement!

But true enough, the need to understand exposure, depth-of-field, the magic relationship between shutter speed and aperture, the logistics of making sure that you're loaded/advancing and in focus, has largely been lost. Those of us who learned in the old days, and who still prefer completely manual cameras, are seen as crackpots. Or members of an unnecessary, outdated, and arcane discipline.

Well, there's room for both schools, I suppose... It's just odd how, as a kid, I was sort of equally split between my sci-fi fan futurist side and my historian retro side. As I've gotten older, and much that used to be sci-fi has become reality, I find myself ever less attracted to new technology and more and more the champion of the old...

 

[filmnoirphotos]

The digital technology is fantastic; I'm a material science technician in the real world and it has made my work more efficient and easier. But digital/computer technology is still just a tool, like film and paper. As has been pointed out, most folks don't get much beyond point and shoot. Some tinker with the image processing typically with amateurish results. The reality of it is, as it has always been, you need to know and understand the technology to go beyond the very basics and the vast majority of people trying to shoot more than birthday/vacation photos simply don't.

I do vintage style portraits in my spare time using 35mm and 120 film cameras and print 8x10 black and white prints from the negatives in my home darkroom. I have started to experiment with 4x5 and retouching the negatives and thusfar results are promising. I have also started to shoot with a 1950s Crown Graphic 4x5 press camera. Very cool. The difference in image quality between 35mm and 4x5 is phenomenal.

Another area where most photographers fall short is in lighting. Today, as in the last few decades starting in the 60s the standard practice for studio shoots has been to flood the subject with broad, soft light. For som

 

[filmnoirphotos]

For some reason the end of my post dropped off...here it is.

Another area where most photographers fall short is in lighting. Today, as in the last few decades starting in the 60s the standard practice for studio shoots has been to flood the subject with broad, soft light. For some types of photography this is great, but frankly after decades of seeing window light on everything from gals in bikinis to kitchen sinks, I have come to really appreciate the lighting skills of 30s and 40s photogrphers and cinematographers such as Hurrell and Alton. There is so much exceitement in the mood created by multiple focused lamps used creatively on a human subject.

Today, we are beginning to see some of that coming back in film and television commercials, along with fashion ads in the media. Very cool. Even Afflack (sp) has a commercial with a very Film Noir look -- great fun.

The end....

 

[Doctor Strange]

True enough, old style studio lighting is a bit of a lost art nowadays. Between through-the-lens flash control and softboxes, the old hot light look is largely gone.

My dad was primarily doing tabletop product shots, but he had two basic b/w lighting approaches for all his 4x5 studio work (which included occasional PR portraiture):

Hot lights: basically photofloods and theatrical spotlights, with some oddball stuff like ceiling-mounted lights and clamp-on reflectorfloods used when needed. Key, fill, background light, hair light. Hard shadows, major contrast. He sometimes used a gobo on a flood or a focusing lens on a spot to create interesting background shadow shapes.

Flourescents: WWII-surplus landing strip lights - units with 6 2-foot or 4-foot tubes on rolling stands. Key, fill, sometimes a background light or top light. Very soft shadows, but lots of "pop" and brilliance on b/w films like Tri-X and Ektapan. To my knowledge, very few other pros in his timeframe used such a setup. (My avatar pic was shot with these lights - Tri-X in a Nikon F2 - but it's so rezzed-down that the detail is lost and the contrast is brutal. I'll have to put up some better examples!)

And yeah, going to a sheet film negative is a whole other thing over 35mm, and even medium format! A totally different look... Understandable why the late Richard Avedon used 8x10 sheet film for his famous recent b/w portraits... nobody's gonna mistake them for medium format or digital images!