How did press photographers use their Graflexes, Pressmans, etc.?

[BerndR]

Hi,

I am wondering how the "old guys" actually used their cameras, especially how they tripped the shutter when hand holding the camera.

One fairly obvious way is the button on the flash that activated a solenoid that pulled the shutter. But without flash, how did they do it?

Looking forward to some war stories

[IanG]

Same way I and many others still do when hand held either with a cable release to the leaf shutter or with a Speed Graphic the shutter button on the body which can be set to release either the FP shutter or the leaf shutter (built in cable link).

Ian

[BerndR]

Same way I and many others still do when hand held either with a cable release to the leaf shutter or with a Speed Graphic the shutter button on the body which can be set to release either the FP shutter or the leaf shutter (built in cable link).

Thanks for the quick answer, Ian. Sounds slightly acrobatic ... or do you have three hands?

Bernd

[IanG]

Thanks for the quick answer, Ian. Sounds slightly acrobatic ... or do you have three hands?

Bernd

It's very easy especially if you use the release on the body, but it's not at all difficult to use a cable release it's harder to talk about than it is to do I can work very quickly with my speed/Crown or Super Graphics hand-held. I prefer to focus on the GG and sometimes use a bit of front tilt.

Ian

[Patrick13]

Well, they did it like this:

[Tin Can]

Cool film. And I learned how to hold the camera!

[Jac@stafford.net]

You can still trigger the shutter solenoid without a flashbulb in the unit. It is a useful handle.

[Bill_1856]

One interesting (if Apocryphal) story is that the Speed Graphic was invented after the Graflex was banned from many sports venues, especially races, because the photographers were looking down into the hoods and paying no attention to the competitors, who occasionally ran into/over them.

[Harold_4074]

If you were Dudley Campbell, chief photographer for the Huntsville (Alabama) Times as late as 1967, you would have had a Stroboflash IV on your Speed Graphic, and pretty much always fired it, day or night. (At least, that was how he taught me, although I had to make do with a used Yashica-Mat and a hammerhead Honeywell Strobonar.) Dudley carried about 25 film holders in a bag, and could manipulate them with amazing speed and precision.

When I told my father about this, he said that in his Army Signal Corps photography course (in the late 1930s) the three rules were:

1) Always use a flashbulb;
2) The correct aperture is f/8; and
3) Never, ever, touch the focal plane shutter controls!

[HMG]

If you were Dudley Campbell, chief photographer for the Huntsville (Alabama) Times as late as 1967, you would have had a Stroboflash IV on your Speed Graphic, and pretty much always fired it, day or night. (At least, that was how he taught me, although I had to make do with a used Yashica-Mat and a hammerhead Honeywell Strobonar.) Dudley carried about 25 film holders in a bag, and could manipulate them with amazing speed and precision.

When I told my father about this, he said that in his Army Signal Corps photography course (in the late 1930s) the three rules were:

1) Always use a flashbulb;
2) The correct aperture is f/8; and
3) Never, ever, touch the focal plane shutter controls!

AKA F8 and be there.