Originally Posted by
LabRat
I remember bits and pieces of the story...
Before the turn of the century, it was common to use an 8x10 on tripod with flashpowder... It was also common to retouch negs to cover up and bring up important details and persons...
In the first decade, the new Graflex (SLR) became the camera of choice by the "young turks" due to handheld capabilities and use of available light... And the 5X7 negs could still be retouched...
Different size formats were chosen to fill standard newspaper column layouts, and printing plates could be made directly from negs...
Enlargers were scarce until after the '20's, but there were still extra steps to make printing plates from paper prints...
Film into the '30's was still ortho, where darkroom techs routinely developed by inspection under safelight, but resisted the change to pan films, and deal with a long strip of roll film with many little images on them... Hollywood labs didn't have time for standard long development times then, so often used hydrazine based developers that developed quickly, but with horrible resolution, but they were 8X10's ment to be retouched, printed on automatic contact roll paper printers...
WWII also was a rise for roll film use from roving correspondents overseas, and due to the freestyle of new photo news magazines where spontaneity of images also came from shooting and editing of many images allowed new layout styles and freedom...
Smaller cameras were first viewed as toys by professionals and public, but serious work produced started changing minds... (A pro that mentored me way back when told me not to even consider shooting a wedding or baby with anything smaller than 4×5 as it was a show of disrespect...) It became clear by the Vietnam era that without 35mm, most of the war images would not be made...
After digital images could be sent in real time from the China uprising, it was almost pointless to consider still shooting news film anymore...
Steve K
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