What equipment did John T. Daniels use to photograph the Wright Flyer in 1903?

[Oren Grad]

The other day on TOP, Mike Johnston had a post about John T. Daniels' wonderful photograph of the Wright Flyer in flight:

http://theonlinephotographer.typepad...t-daniels.html

Scott Kirkpatrick has been trying to determine what was the likely configuration of equipment (and settings) and emulsion (type, speed) used for the photograph. For starters, the blur of the propeller combined with information about the engine allows an estimate of the shutter speed. Can anyone here venture an informed opinion as to a lens, shutter and plate type that would have been plausible at the time for use with a 5x7 Korona?

[rdenney]

Rick "Moved at the (agreed to) request of the OP" Denney

[goamules]

It would be a Rapid Rectilinear (Called a Symmetrical by them) Rectigraphic (Asymmetrical), or a convertible Turner Reich in a Gundlach shutter. Interestingly, an early slogan of theirs was "It's all in the Lens."
http://historiccamera.com/cgi-bin/li...et&app_id=107&

Here are some early Korona catalogs to peruse, the second link has several pages about their lenses in 1902, including the Turner Reich:
http://www.piercevaubel.com/cam/catalogsgundman.htm
http://www.piercevaubel.com/cam/cata...dlachlp335.htm

Koronas were originally made by another company, until Gundlach bought them out.
http://www.antiquewoodcameras.com/milburn.html

Dryplates were about ISO 10 if I recall.

[William Whitaker]

It might be worth contacting the museum at the Wright Brothers National Memorial at Kill Devil Hills. When I visited in 2003 they had a display about the Wrights' use of photography and a Korona like the Wrights used (not the original, as I recall). There may be information that would help you there or in the heads of the staff and docents.

[scott kirkpatrick]

Two sources on the Wrights' photographic passions are:

http://wrightstories.com/wright-brot...take-pictures/ and
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/wrighthtml/wrightphot.html .

From these and some other sites, I conclude that they used a Gundlach Korona V with the convertible Turner-Reich lens. I haven't seen a picture of the original camera that would say what shutter speeds were available (Their "Wrightstories" chronicler says that most often they used 1/25 sec), but the propellers on the Wright flyer rotated at 6 revolutions per second, and in the famous picture the leading edge of the prop seems to have moved by about 1/20 of a revolution. The prop blades are rather fat, so this estimate is based on half of the blurred area. This suggests a shutter speed of 1/100. But what aperture was used? If it was, say, f/8 that's a film speed of ASA 25 on a bright sunny day. More if there were clouds along with the high winds that day... The Wrights were said to meticulously log their exposure data, but this information doesn't seem to appear on the web.

Anyone know what effective film speed could be obtained back then?

scott

[scott kirkpatrick]

It might be worth contacting the museum at the Wright Brothers National Memorial at Kill Devil Hills. When I visited in 2003 they had a display about the Wrights' use of photography and a Korona like the Wrights used (not the original, as I recall). There may be information that would help you there or in the heads of the staff and docents.

I just did that. Will post any answer that I receive.

scott

[scott kirkpatrick]

Thanks for the catalog links, above. From the 1900 and 1902 catalogs, and the observation on one of the Wright sites, where they say the Wrights purchased the best Korona V, for $85, this pinpoints the rest of their gear as the Turner Reich convertible, with both sides present to allow a maximum aperture of f/7.3, mounted in the "D" shutter, which offered speeds of 2, 1, 1/2, 1/4, 1/50 and "I." The catalog describes "I" (instantaneous?) as a maximum speed of 1/100. So f/8 at 1/100 is a reasonable lower bound on the amount of exposure available to make the first flight picture. Requiring ASA 25 on a normal sunny day, a piece of cake, it turns out, if you develop by inspection under a yellow safelight, as the Wrights did.

Commercial plates available with gelatin-silver emulsion in 1903 were certainly fast enough for this picture to be possible. Actually we underestimate available light photography in the 1800s. Think of the multiple images shot (with extra artificial light) by E-J Marey and then by E Muybridge, which involved much higher shutter speeds. H&D did their work starting around 1880, and English, German (Speicher and DIN), and American (Weston, which much later became ASA) exposure ratings existed and were used by quantitatively literate photographers, like the Wrights. I haven't found catalogs for the "Rapid" and "Extremely Rapid" gelatin dry plates available from Kodak around 1900, to see how speed was defined then. One person I queried by email who had researched European photography in the 1870's (before Hurter and Driffield's papers as well as after) thought that ASA 32 and 64 would be modern characterizations of typical sensitivity for those emulsions.

scott