Large format Kodachrome - WWII Images

airfrogusmc wrote in post #14140448
I know a photographer when I first got into it that had scars on his finger tips from changing flash bulbs (burns). He shot most of his career with crown or speed graphics. I think the last time I saw him (20+ years ago) he was shooting with a Rapid Omega.

He didn't know about the ejector button on the back of the Graflex flashgun? Those could be a little dangerous too though, on one of my first jobs assisting another photographer he ejected a bulb into a can he had for that purpose, it bounced off and burned the carpet of a hotel lobby. A reason to have insurance for sure. I actually still have a few of those old Graphlex flashguns.

I met a guy once who shot factory interiors on 8x10 using sometimes a hundred bulbs per shot. He had a special synchronizer that used 120V AC and allowed for testing the circuit before the shot. Beautiful stuff.

When electronic flash came along there were a lot of photographers who stuck with bulbs because of the quality of the light.

My first strobe was a Honeywell Press Master with low and high. IIRC with strobe on high if the subject was 12 ft away at 100 ASA the exposure was f/8.

airfrogusmc wrote in post #14140026


In the day there were those that bickered over things like med or large format. Adams called Hasselblads a small camera. 35mm didn't enter into his mindset.

Sorry Allan, But I have to hit the BS button, Adams used all formats including 35mm Contax, and later in life he used Koniflex. He shot pictures of Steiglitz with the Contax. He used nearly every type and format, for his work. Including Polaroid. He shot boatloads of Pos/Neg polaroids to get the negs and preserved them in the field.

LBaldwin wrote in post #14140726
Sorry Allan, But I have to hit the BS button, Adams used all formats including 35mm Contax, and later in life he used Koniflex. He shot pictures of Steiglitz with the Contax. He used nearly every type and format, for his work. Including Polaroid. He shot boatloads of Pos/Neg polaroids to get the negs and preserved them in the field.

All I said was he said that a Hasselblad was a small camera and he may have used 35mm but it was clearly not his camera of choice.

He along with Weston both shot 4X5 Kodachrome.

So I should have said didn't enter into his mindset for what he considered his serious work.

One of the big reasons Adams preferred large format and mostly used that for his serious work was that he could adjust development time for each negative:
N, N+1, N+2, or N-1, N-2 etc. Its much harder to do that with roll film because you have to shoot the entire roll in the same light so you can process the entire roll at whatever the proper time would be. He also preferred color over B&W because if you start altering dev times with color film you run into color shifts that can't be corrected.

airfrogusmc wrote in post #14140751
All I said was he said that a Hasselblad was a small camera and he may have used 35mm but it was clearly not his camera of choice.

He along with Weston both shot 4X5 Kodachrome.

So I should have said didn't enter into his mindset for what he considered his serious work.

Again I hit (playfully) the BS button. He loved 35mm. He used it for quite a few different jobs. Remember he was for the most part poor most of his life, and had to resort to commercial work to eat and pay bills. Most folks think he was well to do, but in reality he had limited education, not much cash on hand and had to buy most of his gear 2nd hand. It was not unitl later in life when his fame and then his fortune were to actually meet. So he did lots of stuff in 35mm. BUT where I think you probably are getting to was not his commercial or everyday stuff but the Yosemite, and AZ scenics. But to be honest he used 35mm there too. He used it to record views that the LF and MF cameras would be too slow to be practical. His negs from several shoots are in collections all over the place. he really did cover quite a bit of ground... and ate lots of beans doing it.

Edit:
John Huszar interviewed Adams for his 1981 film, Ansel Adams: Photographer. Adams recalled:


"Well, people have asked me what kind of cameras I used. It's hard to remember all of them. Oh I had a box Brownie #1 in 1915, 16. I had the Pocket Kodak, and a 4 x 5 view, all batted down. I had a Zeiss Milliflex. A great number of different cameras. I want to try to get back to 35 millimeter, which I did a lot of in the 1930s. Using one of the Zeiss compacts. In the 20s and into the 30s, I would carry a 6-1/2 x 8-1/2 glass plate camera -- that was a little heavy. And I had a 4 x 5 camera, then of course we went to film, to film pack, things became a little simpler.

"Item: One Hasselblad camera outfit with 38, 60, 80, 135, & 200 millimeter lenses. Item: One Koniflex 35 millimeter camera. Item: 2 Polaroid cameras. Item: 3 exposure meters. One SEI, and two Westons -- in case he drops one.

LBaldwin wrote in post #14140873
Again I hit (playfully) the BS button. He loved 35mm. He used it for quite a few different jobs. Remember he was for the most part poor most of his life, and had to resort to commercial work to eat and pay bills. Most folks think he was well to do, but in reality he had limited education, not much cash on hand and had to buy most of his gear 2nd hand. It was not unitl later in life when his fame and then his fortune were to actually meet. So he did lots of stuff in 35mm. BUT where I think you probably are getting to was not his commercial or everyday stuff but the Yosemite, and AZ scenics. But to be honest he used 35mm there too. He used it to record views that the LF and MF cameras would be too slow to be practical. His negs from several shoots are in collections all over the place. he really did cover quite a bit of ground... and ate lots of beans doing it.

He has some interesting comments about format in his book The Camera.

I have shot with instamatics and point and shoots but never took any of that very seriously. Just a way to record something. You're right about the money; he didn't actually do well financially until late in his career. He had a lovely home in Carmel with an amazing darkroom. He felt pretty much the same way Weston felt about commercial work.

The reason he didn't like to use roll film for his serious work is the zone system is full appreciated one sheet at a time for negative development reasons.

And in the book The Camera he said he liked the 120mm Zeiss. Said it had decent sharpness.

Has anyone deduced for whom this series was actually shot? LIFE? LOOK? TIME? War Department?

If it was for a publication, I'll buy high-power flash as the source of light.

If it was for the War Department, there's a very high probability that Hollywood was involved and in that case I'd say Hot Lights.

FlyingPhotog wrote in post #14140981
Has anyone deduced for whom this series was actually shot? LIFE? LOOK? TIME? War Department?

If it was for a publication, I'll buy high-power flash as the source of light.

If it was for the War Department, there's a very high probability that Hollywood was involved and in that case I'd say Hot Lights.

Good question. I would guess some gov dept. Doesn't the Smithsonian house them and the gov own them? Kinda like the FSA photographs from the 1930s?

Those slow emulsions and very small apertures required for any DoF one would definitely need some power.

Mmm it's right there in the captions...

http://en.wikipedia.or​g …Office_of_War_I​nformation

http://memory.loc.gov/​ammem/fsahtml/owiinfo.​html

Stunning images!

joeblack2022 wrote in post #14141069
Mmm it's right there in the captions...

http://en.wikipedia.or​g …Office_of_War_I​nformation

http://memory.loc.gov/​ammem/fsahtml/owiinfo.​html

Stunning images!

THanks Joe..

I saw Gordon Parks speak in the 1980s. He was an amazing photographer and one that worked for the gov agency that did this kind of work during the war.

airfrogusmc wrote in post #14141010
Those slow emulsions and very small apertures required for any DoF one would definitely need some power.

Or a tripod and models who could sit still.

Curtis N wrote in post #14141151
Or a tripod and models who could sit still.

No doubt a tripod and some killer lights + models that were very still.

I would really like to see the emulsion edges of the films themselves. That would tell you what flim stock was used. Most likely it was hot lights, with some serious color correction filters in place, to get it to the right color temp. KR or KM or KL are some of the stock codes for 35mm.

It orginally came in 8mm in 1936 and then to still cameras in '38. You can date some Kodachrome films shots by what the codes are on the edges, or if on 35mm what the slide itself says on the paper frame.

Kodachrome was originally processed by EK until the mid '50 or so when the supreme court said it was a monopoly. So Technicolor and Drewery were some of the other larger labs that processed the film. There was at one time a home kit to process the film, but it was so tough and temp sensitive it never really sold well, and the chemistry was horrible for the manual darkroom. Oddly enough, the Soviets, hand processed the films a great deal more than any other country.

There was a plan for Wing-lynch to build a "field" version of the proccessor for the DOD, but instead Ek opened a lab with proper clearances to process classified images. They used special aircraft to transport the films during WWII, Korea and Vietnam, usually Navy.

I shot my very first roll of Kodachrome in 1968, I was 7 and learning photography from a Navy Medical Photographer. I spent months of 5th and 6th grade looking at body parts shot on Kodachrome.

Now, you can process Kodachrome as B&W, I don't remember the process at the moment but it could be fun, if you find the film to shoot. I have thousands of Aircraft shots on KR and KM. So far never a decent scan. Computers rarely show anywhere near the color, vibrance and rez. Your DSLR sucks compared to a Kodachrome from a Hassy or LF camera, and decent lens.

FlyingPhotog wrote in post #14140981
Has anyone deduced for whom this series was actually shot? LIFE? LOOK? TIME? War Department?

If it was for a publication, I'll buy high-power flash as the source of light.

If it was for the War Department, there's a very high probability that Hollywood was involved and in that case I'd say Hot Lights.

My first thought was hot lights, but seeing how there is no motion blur at all even in shots with multiple models I thought of the possibility of flashbulbs as the source. It could be done either way, but if I had done this job I think I may have opted for flash. If nothing else just for creature comfort, they don't call them hot lights for nothing.

I used to shoot boat interiors at 125th and f/22 with a single Rollei flash gun bounced against a white bulkhead using a Press 5 flashbulb. It made me remember how much light they put out.