re: #25 Decatur Deb

Went back and did some checking—used to have a Mamiya C33. It had a complex system for moving information from the 3 common interchangable twinlens sets to the manual focus scale. It didn’t carry a DoF indicator.

Image: Mamiya_C33_Professional_-_focus_chart.jpg

Image: Mamiya_C33_Professional_-_film_roller.jpg

Strangely, my first adjustable camera was my highschool’s Speed Graphic. Nothing like 4x5/2x3 film on a zero budget to teach discipline. Later our studio used 8x10 and larger Deardorffs, with reducing backs if we wanted 4x5. (I was a mere ‘camera operator’. The ‘photographer’ was the guy who yelled at the models and pushed the button.)

Oh my, a fellow old fart. And a C33, not a C330 to boot. I too learned by being yelled at. There’s nothing like being an assistant after years of school.

Large format taught many skills, frugality being one. 35mm taught me creativity after I burned out my first slr from cycling so many rolls.

Things have changed so much in the last 15 years. What we spent careers learning is now a push of a button on screen. It’s not a bad thing, mind you, but we have lost some history. I recently had a discussion with a young man buying some studio gear of mine. He said digital to inkjet yielded better prints than silver based. He based that on what he saw from prints recently produced. All I could do was laugh.

Here’s a photo assembly from the 90s before the times of photoshop. 5 separate shots, all shot to scale for quick assembly by layered optical masking and duplication on to a single 8X10 transparency film. That one shot took a week to produce. Photoshop could do it in a day.
Before photoshop