Marilyn Monroe 1955 - Which camera is this?

[marcus_lundahl]

What a great forum and great collection of experts!

 

Thank you all very much for being detectives and figuring it out!

 

Kind regards

 

Marcus Lundahl

[steve_levine]

<p>Collection of experts? I know for sure that I'm a general nuisance.</p>

[john_wiegerink1]

<p>I looked at this at 5:00am and I guess my brain and eyes weren't attached enough to figure the shot was taken in a mirror. Stupid me!</p>

[vince-p]

<p>Cliff-- very good.</p>

<p>Meanwhile I've been meaning to inquire from you experts on this mirror thing. When I shoot in the mirror I must focus on the distance of the thing IN the mirror and not focus on the mirror surface... this makes NO SENSE to me.Can anyone explain that? It's kind of spooky really, if you have no optical/engineering knowledge base or skills.</p>

<p>Of course Marilyn knew all this, and more. That's why Sam Giancana and Peter Lawford had her killed. She was a threat to the early space program. And of course there was her rlationship to Castro, who shot only Exaktas.</p>

[steve_levine]

<p><strong>"""When I shoot in the mirror I must focus on the distance of the thing IN the mirror and not focus on the mirror surface... this makes NO SENSE to me.Can anyone explain that? It's kind of spooky really, if you have no optical/engineering knowledge base or skills.""</strong>"</p>

<p>It isn't magic. The reflected image simply doubles the distance, so a mirror five feet away, with a reflected subject five feet from it. You have to focus on ten feet to correctly focus on the subject.</p>

[JDMvW]

<blockquote>

<p>Castro, who shot only Exaktas</p>

</blockquote>

<p>That's simply ridiculous. Castro shot Prakticas.<br>

:)</p>

[JDMvW]

<p>I'd bet money, and I'm not a gambling man, that the camera in the picture is a Nikon. However, after first reading this post I happened across another Contax clone that had escaped my attention before, the Ricoh 500.</p>

<p>I suppose this could be another example of the results of the Allied Control Commission releasing the German patents to the world as war reparations? Was the inside a Contax clone as well, or just the outside? It's got a Seikosha MXL shutter so it's not focal plane, so I guess it's just mimicry-- a viceroy, not a monarch.</p>

<p>Here from <em>U.S. Camera</em> of September, 1957, a Ricoh ad and a closeup of the camera illustration.</p><div></div>

[vince-p]

<p>Sorry I meant Prakticas. One of those ones with a "k" where the "c" ought to be.</p>

[john_golden2]

<p>hmmm looks like a nikon d200 to me : )</p>

[JDMvW]

<p>Vince, I was, of course, "funning" you.</p>

<p>However, it is an actual fact that many of the most known of Cuban photographers working in Cuba, did in fact (and may still) use Prakticas. They had a show on public TV a few years back comparing the work of Cuban photographers in exile and in Cuba.</p>

[vince-p]

<p>JDM no worries I was funning back. although as soon as you said prakticas it made sense to me. meanwhile what i wanted to know is how/where did you just "happen across" a page from a 1957 US Camera magazine? Do you have a microfiche reader in your dining room?</p>

[dweezil]

<p>I've pasted a frontal shot of a nikon S2 in a layer and fitted it to the reversed picture that Jim posted and after some try and error the S2 fits like the proverbial glove.</p>

<p> </p><div></div>

[JDMvW]

<p>As it happens, I got interested in old cameras, and that led me to old camera ads. So having thrown away all those photo magazines over the years, I bought up a bunch of old <em>Minicam Photography</em> ><em>Modern Photography</em> and <em>Popular Photography</em>. Along the way, I got a few other magazines like the one above. At the time I found the Ricoh ad I was tracking down a lead story on which SLR to buy--three well-known professionals--one choosing the Praktina, one the Exakta, and the last, an Alpa. Nikon didn't make one in 1957, but the ads show what turned out to be the cutting edge of the Japanese dominance to come.</p>

<p>And I only wish that this were in microform.</p>

<p>This sort of thing can lead to general acquisition syndrome activities as well. I just bought a Ricoh 500 last night. I'll probably be posting on it in future.....</p>

[brian_m.1]

<p>See what you have done now? They are asking $1300 for them. Gorgeous cameras though.</p>

[vince-p]

<p>Steve L: the mirror answer (sorry I didn't see it sooner) still doesn't add up. If I put a picture of you on the wall five feet away I'd focus on its surface, five feet away, and voila. If you were five feet from the painter / photographer for the sitting that wouldn't matter. So there's the mirror: on its surface is an image, wholly in focus on that surface, so huh? I have to focus at the total distance of camera to mirror to object? In other words what makes the mirror different from a picture?</p>

[steve_levine]

<p><strong>""In other words wha</strong>t <strong>makes the mirror different from a picture</strong>?""</p>

<p>A mirror only reflects what it sees. It is sort of a geometry lesson. And the light falling on the mirror cannot be focused upon, by focusing on the mirror. You have to focus on the light falling on the objects in the reflection. I'm sure one of our resident physics professors can better explain why?<br /> <br />If you are familiar with the inverse square law. You may have noticed that it applies to light bounced off a mirror. As well as light traveling through space<strong>. </strong>So a light reading ten feet from a lamp, will be the same as a light reading 5 feet from a mirror, assuming the same light is being reflected. The light is still traveling ten feet,regardless of the mirror reversing it's direction. Gravity and light falling off are physical constants here on Earth, and cannot be changed.</p>

<p>I used to shoot weddings, and the classic shot is the bride in the mirror. While examining the proofs from many of these shots. I realized that the light on the subject, is slightly more intense than on her reflected self. The reason of course is that my flash is traveling farther to reach the mirror and return to the lens. An auto flashes sensor will automatically account for the distance. Lets say you shoot a flash at an angle into a mirror at a subject ten feet from the mirror. The auto flash will cut off only after the light travels the full distance of twenty feet.</p>

<p><strong><br /></strong></p>

[q.g._de_bakker]

<p>A mirror doesn't show an image. There is nothing at its surface.<br>

All it does is change the direction of light.</p>

[JDMvW]

<blockquote>

<p>See what you have done now? They are asking $1300 for them. Gorgeous cameras though.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Brian is obviously talking about the Nikon, not the Ricoh 500! <br>

When the Nikon F was coming to dominance, there was a time when used Nikon RFs were cheap, even by the standards of the mid 60s. I look at the ads in contemporary magazines and kick myself for not getting one at the time.</p>

[vince-p]

<p>Q. G. de Bakker. : Now I get it. That short answer was the one I needed. Indeed if you had a 50mm rangefinder lens as I do that focuses only to 3.5 feet but I wanted a closer image I could place the camera and the object near each other and a mirror 21 inches away and get the equivalent (if properly lighted and later reversed) of a 21-inch shot, perfectly focused at my minimum range of 3.5 feet.<br>

By the way: have you met JDM von Weinberg? You two should get together and compare bloodlines and ancestoros' involvements in 11th century feudal skirmishes and whatnot. I could be on hand to clean the ashtrays and carry the luggage.</p>

[JDMvW]

<p>I don't know about Q.G.'s "de" but my own "von" is at a low level of "nobility" - merely a Freiherr out of Prussia in the 1630s and hence to Sweden after the 30 Years War. In this case, probably closer to a British baronet than anything else to the west. No Almanach de Gotha for us.<br /> Uncle Hugo (the naval captain) was the last I know of to use the von in day-to-day life, perhaps because during the Third Reich, the "Weinberg" part of the name became a little subject to "misinterpretation", shall we say. :(</p>

<p>By the way, that possible "misinterpretation" is the immediate cause of our having the geneology back so far.</p>

<p>I use it here because<br>

1, I can<br>

2. it sets off my contributions here from my professional life under the shorter version of the name. A nom d'internet, so to speak.</p>

[brian_m.1]

<p>May be this diagram could explain what is going on. <br>

" Each of the reflected rays appears to come from a point image located a distance behind the mirror equal to the distance of the object point in front of the mirror. "<br>

http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/mirror+optics</p>

<p><img src="http://img.tfd.com/mgh/cep/thumb/Formation-of-images-by-a-plane-mirror.jpg" alt="" width="250" height="240" /></p>

<p> </p>

[Brad Cloven]

<p>More importantly, what camera took this:<br>

<img src="http://www.shorpy.com/files/images/Marilyn-Monroe-1947-01.jpg" alt="" width="964" height="998" /></p>

[vince-p]

<p>Brad no image...</p>

[alex macphee]

<p>Just by way of a slight update, and not too irrelevant tangent, I've been watching this morning a TV re-run of 'High Society', the Crosby Sinatra remake of 'The Philadelphia Story'. In it, the character Liz Imbrie is a photographer for 'Spy' magazine, and the camera she uses in the film looks exactly the same, a Nikon S2. Alarmingly, as part of the plot, the camera is 'accidentally' knocked over and smashes open on the stone floor, spilling out the film. One just hopes that not too many takes were required for this scene.</p>

<p>The picture is very poor, because it is a mobile phone screen grab from the TV.</p><div></div>

[paul_k1664875007]

<p>OK, I'm admittedly a bit late in the game (five years after the last message) but I ran into this thread when doing research on Ed Feingersh following the purchase of a copy of a reissue of the 'Marilyn in New York' book with his photographs.<br>

He tragically lived shortly (1925-1961) and I hardly could find any details on his life, career or other work besides the Marilyn pictures.</p>

<p>However I found one Pininterest post with a message of a person who knew him from his days as a Patrol Leader in the Boy Scouts<br>

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.403293302712.166135.285135422712&type=3<br>

He mentions that he remembers the camera Ed Feingersh had brought back from his army stint in Germany, mentioning that maybe it was a Leica, but it could also have been a Contax.</p>

<p>Also found a video on YouTube discussing the Marylin Photo's<br>

and at 3min29 it shows a picture of him with his camera, off which I include a screenprint<br>

I'm not an expert on either Leica or Contax, but from the time I handled a Leica M (a M3) I don't seem to recall it looking like this</p>

<p>My non expert two cents</p>

<p> </p><div></div>