More on Big Berthas

<p>Just passing along the address of an interesting article that Eve Girard, to whom all thanks are due, shared with me:<br /><br /> http://kodakery.com/2013/06/28/big-bertha-and-don-newcombe/ </p>

<p>Very interesting.</p>

<p>Given the physical length, it's a little surprising that the effective focal length wasn't a bit longer. Judging (guessing) from the sample image, it's only equivalent to something in the 200 to 400mm range on a 35mm body. It dramatically demonstrates one of the advantages of smaller film formats.</p>

<p>David, in the days when press photographers used those monstrosities the emulsions and lenses available for small format couldn't produce the image quality newspapers demanded.</p>

<p>I don't know what you mean by effective focal length. Focal length is focal length. The small chip digital types who came up with the idea that cropping increases focal length blundered badly.</p>

<p>Newspapers have lowered their standards quite considerably since then. The rot began with a vengeance in the '80s when workable digital cameras were introduced. Very expensive, and the only buyers were newspapers. The cameras produced terrible image quality but their images could be transmitted over the phone. Rapdily-delivered lousy images displaced good ones that took longer to get to the front page.</p>

<p>Much the same happened with TV station news gathering. They transitioned from film (16 mm and Super 8, did you know that EKCo made a fast S8 processor for TV stations?) to video as soon as portable video became practical.</p>

<p>On the high resolution photography forums (the French LF forum and the US too) people who use both still insist that when large prints that will pass close scrutiny are needed, film, and the larger the format the better, is the way to capture the images. I don't have enough experience with digital to have a well-founded opinion based on my own experience so stay out of film vs. video fights.</p>

<p>I do know that many of the images posted here and elsewhere that started as digital are pretty awful, but that's true of ones that started on on film too. There were lousy photographers before digital came along. Technology won't help a lousy photographer and, as I've said before, image quality is much overrated.</p>

A 210mm lens on a 5x7 camera is the equivalent of a 50mm lens on a 35mm camera; they both give roughly the same angle of view. I think that is what David meant. The "normal" lens for a 5x7 camera is 210mm or 8.25 inches. A 40 inch lens on a 5x7 camera would be the equivalent of, give the same angle of view as, a 240mm lens on a 35mm camera.

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<p>It dramatically demonstrates one of the advantages of smaller film formats.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I'm pretty sure you could enlarge that 5x7 neg from the article to show the expression on the player's face, the stitches on his glove, and possibly individual blades of grass on the field (assuming the photographer was competent). So tell me again about the advantages of small formats?</p>

<p>Jody, on the surface it would appear that small formats displaced large in press photography because of portability and ease of use. </p>

<p>In fact, 35 mm replaced LF in press photography mainly because of advances in, primarily, emulsions. Modern advances in wide angle and long focus lenses (not only telephotos) happened after press photographers had moved to 35 mm. </p>

<p>I think that David and James are making the common mistake of assuming that everything we have now was available in the '40s and '50s.</p>

I don't see anything which indicates anybody is assuming that photographers then had the choice of later cameras, lenses or emulsions to use. Rather the simple idea that there's a reason they didn't stick with large format SLRs for sports photography when more handy tools became available.

<p>Dan, interesting link. I was struck that the press photographers using their big berthas seemed not to use tripods. Given the weight of these things (my 36 in f6.3 Dallmeyer weighed 20 lbs for just the lens) I would have thought a tripod was essential. But most of the photos of the time show them being just balanced on something. Scroll down a bit in the link below to see one being balanced on a low wall pretty much the same as the shots in your link. I suppose it resulted from the Graflex SLR configuration with the vertical viewing hood and gave them as much speed as a tripod and maybe a little more flexibility.<br /> http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/15/the-irresistible-sisto/?_r=0<br /> Below is a shot of the 36 inch f6.3 lens which was a WW II military recon lens. I suppose most of these lenses started off as military as they would otherwise be prohibitively expensive. Or were some made specifically for press use?</p><div></div>

<p>Certainly some could have started off for military use, but I think during the interwar period, the demand from papers was probably greater. The only big bertha I have seen had a f8/36" lens, a "type I telephoto" made by Kodak.</p>

<p>Dave G., "type I" is a USAF designation, means suitable for aerial reconnaissance. But normal ordinary long focal length (not telephotos) lenses were used on Berthas too. See my account of my Baby Bertha disaster at http://www.galerie-photo.com/baby-bertha-6x9-en.html , which has pictures of Eve Girard's Bertha, designed by Jim Frezzolini. Hers has a 50 cm/4.5 Zeiss Tessar. Part of the impetus for my project was acquisition of a 610/9 Apo-Nikkor, which isn't a tele.</p>

<p>Colin, given the typical Bertha's weight nearly any robust support would do. Sports photographers (baseball, American football) seem to have rested them on the press box's edge. Its only when a Bertha is used in other situations that a tripod would be needed.</p>

<p>If Reg Holloway is to be believed (see his book The Evolution and Demise of the Larger Format Press Camera), press photographers moved from 4x5 cameras (press types such as the Speed Graphic and Graflex reflexes too) to 6x6 cameras such as the Rolleiflex in the early '50s. But Rolleis and such aren't suited for sports photography so Berthas seem to have been used for that, and for that alone, until the early '60s.</p>

There was another development in press photography: small cameras made the reporter less conspicuous, creating a whole new type of press photography.<br>Small cameras, fast to use. Fast lenses too.<br>Small film, yes, but sometimes a 'bad' picture is much, much better that one you just cannot get. Fly on the wall type reportage was just about impossible with Graphlex and other LF cameras. You can't hide a Big Bertha behind a bowler hat, shoot it through a hole cut in that. You could hide and use an Ermanox that way. Or a Contax or Leica.

<p>Dan, its a bit before my time but I broadly agree with the Reg Holloway (not heard of that book!) chronology of press cameras. I notice though that if you see pictures of a press scrum of about that period you can often see a range of formats from Graphics downwards so it seems to have been a continuous trend rather than single cut-off. I remember that one of the photos taken of the 1963 JFK assassination was taken on a LF camera - a Speed Graphic if memory serves. I imagine that sports photography went from LF to 35mm more or less directly once suitable 35mm telephotos were available.</p>

<p>Colin, Reg is a Brit now resident in Canada. His book reflects, for the most part, his experience as a working press photographer in the UK. I have the impression (great stress, impression, I'm not prepared to fight to defend it) that standard press photographer practice in the US didn't always match what was done in the UK. Some here have claimed that the Graphic died off as a press camera with newspaper editors who believed that 4x5 was the right format for newspaper work. We didn't have a mass extinction of old editors, they died off gradually.</p>

<p>Re differences between US and UK press photographer practice, after press photographers moved to 35 mm SLRs for nearly all applications, I think that the Nikon F was strongly preferred in the US and the Pentax Spotmatic was equally strongly preferred in the UK. More evidence that the one true 35 mm SLR is a myth.</p>

<p>http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/photoblog/2009/10/stock_shots_from_the_archive_press_photographers.html<br /> Has some nice pictures. The majority of photographers are using Nikon. A few of them have Leicas or TLRs. If you look hard you will see some Pentax cameras, but at least in these photos it seems Nikon was the dominant make in the U.K. too. </p>

<p>Any still in use? For sale? What might be a modern setup but with film, digital?-</p>

<p>Dave G., fun stuff. I was a Pentax and TLR guy in the 1960s, so it's interesting to see a smattering in use by the pros of the time. I had little awareness of Canon in the 1960s and, per my recollection, they didn't start becoming a major force in the USA until the 1970s. I assume that it would have been similar in the UK.</p>

<p>David, much of what made Nikon a major force in the US, especially among press photographers, and made Pentax and Canon also-rans for quite a while was marketing. All three were distributed by US companies. Nikon by Ehrenreich Photo Optical, Canon by Bell & Howell, and Pentax by Honeywell. EPOI was extremently effective at getting Nikons into the hands of press photographers, B&H did a lousy job of marketing Canon equipment and Honeywell wasn't very good either. Canon and Pentax took off in the US after they set up their own marketing branches in the US.</p>

<p>What I've said so far isn't controversial. But IMO (highly controversial) Nikon got the 35mm SLR right from the start. Everyone else fumbled around and changed direction until they converged on Nikon's big ideas: auto-return mirror, full aperture metering (the way the Nikon lenses couple to a clip-on exposure meter pre-adapted them to TTL metering at full aperture), bayonet mount with a wide throat (narrow throat is one of the Exakta/Topcon system's weaknesses), and a full range of lenses. It was only after Nikon's competitors started making Nikons that professionals took them up.</p>

<p>Red Robin, Berthas are around but aren't in use by Sports Photographers. Pros don't need them anymore because of improvements in emulsions and long lenses and lowering of standards. Read my piece on my Baby Bertha in the 10th post in this thread. Eve Girard still uses hers. My Baby was a substantial modernization, failed because the Graflex SLR it incorporates has limitations I didn't anticipate when I started the project. They're for diehard amateurs. I can't imagine a digital Bertha until really large chips are available at affordable prices.</p>