[HN Gopher] Cameras of 1930s Era
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Cameras of 1930s Era
Author : Tomte
Score : 58 points
Date : 2025-02-06 08:43 UTC (14 hours ago)
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| tompccs wrote:
| Quite amazingly - I never realised how good photo quality was in
| the 1930s (and presumably earlier too). Look at these examples
| which were immediately digitised (one of a WWII reenactment scene
| which enhances the effect) - they don't look anything like how we
| expect a 1930s-era photo to appear.
|
| https://licm.org.uk/livingImage/Leica_II-Results.html
| lqet wrote:
| > they don't look anything like how we expect a 1930s-era photo
| to appear
|
| You should have a look into Autochrome photography. The photos
| look amazingly realistic for their age. For example, these are
| from 1913:
|
| https://edition.cnn.com/2015/06/03/world/gallery/autochrome-...
|
| Wikipedia also has an amazing collection of works by Sergey
| Prokudin-Gorsky:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Prokudin-Gorsky#Gallery
|
| From 1909:
|
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/ff/Gorskii_...
|
| Autochrome of the 1909 Paris Air Show:
|
| https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg...
|
| Also Paris, 1910:
|
| https://the-public-domain-review.imgix.net/essays/albert-kah...
| card_zero wrote:
| They're not using 1930s film, which would be early Kodachrome
| and somewhat blurry, I think.
| kqr wrote:
| I mean, sure, but it depends a lot along which dimension you
| make the comparison. There, you are looking at a shot in broad
| daylight, on modern film, printed at a small size. To make it
| more obvious, here's a comparison: The daylight shot printed at
| small size[1] appears fairly detailed. The same film, same
| photographer, same camera, etc. only at night and presented as
| an ostensibly high-resolution picture[2] starts to reveal the
| problems with the older tech.
|
| Usually the cameras themselves are fine - we perfected optics
| enough to not be a problem on 35 mm film in the 1800s - it's
| the medium on which the image is recorded that is more finicky.
| However, if we put the old optics onto modern sensors, we would
| start to notice its problems too. I don't have an example at
| hand, but there's noticeable chromatic aberration (no problem
| on black and white film!) among other things.
|
| [1]: https://i.xkqr.org/22067536038_1aa2f85cc0_o.jpg
|
| [2]: https://i.xkqr.org/25120912716_d3822007b9_o.jpg
| foldr wrote:
| Nit pick: chromatic aberration is a significant problem on
| panchromatic black and white film. (You don't get color
| banding, for obvious reasons, but you do lose sharpness.)
| This is why the development of achromatic lenses long
| predates the widespread use of color photography.
| kqr wrote:
| That makes sense but I had never considered it. Thanks!
| darkfloo wrote:
| Medium to some extent and large format can produce some
| exceptional image quality (Sharpness, details and contrast).
| Cliche at this point but Ansel Adams work still look very
| modern today. They where however slow, heavy ,difficult to work
| with and extremely expensive so most people stuck to small
| format when they became available . In fact I would bet that
| most pictures taken before small format took over look better
| technically than after it took over
| foldr wrote:
| There are lots of high quality photos from the 1930s. Look at
| studio portraits of movie stars, for example. I'm not sure
| where the expectation of low quality would come from.
| guax wrote:
| I think there is a conjunction of factors at play. Only
| slower film available means no clear images of action. No
| digital copies means that most pictures have had LOTS of time
| to deteriorate before being digitised and reproduced. Most
| people see images from the 30s as a one copy of a picture the
| great great grandpa had in a shoebox kept in a moist cellar
| and no negatives to recover.
|
| I think most people would have had contact with old pictures
| from newspaper and books that did not prized image quality so
| you mostly see bad quality pictures with low dynamic range.
|
| The most important pictures of the olden eras, in an artistic
| setting, would also be experimental photography which is not
| necessarily concerned with sharpness and traditional
| qualities, so you see weird stuff.
|
| And, the main culprit, as for most of society misconceptions.
| Movies and tv shows, you have to age and crap out a picture
| to look old. I am certainly that the screwed up videotape
| effect will skew a lot of the expectation of old footage from
| the 80s-90s.
|
| Put all of that together, there is where I think the
| expectation comes from.
|
| I have the book Great War, Photographic Narrative. With
| images from the first world war, the quality of some of the
| images is outstanding. Those same images would've look
| terrible on old mass produced books and newspapers.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| And all of those factors get compounded when the resultant
| picture is then a) poorly digitized b) compressed for
| upload.
| i_am_proteus wrote:
| 1930s films were slower (lower ASA/ISO) than "modern" films.
| Focusing mechanisms were worse: the SLR was developed in the
| 1930s; most cameras used in that era were rangefinders (or
| 'point-and-shoot').
|
| Cameras and lenses were technically capable of high-quality
| images, but actually making such a photograph required skill or
| luck; the results were otherwise blurry and poorly-focused.
| Studio portraits in those days used extremely bright lights to
| compensate.
| ghaff wrote:
| In general, the ISO capabilities of modern digital
| (especially larger sensor cameras but even good phone
| cameras) is a remarkable advance over film even relatively
| latterly.
|
| With digital, ISO of 3200 or 6400 is nothing (probably better
| today with full frame). B&W film really topped out at about
| 400 in normal use and couldn't really be pushed past 1600 and
| even that required chemistry tricks and resulted in
| noticeably lower quality.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Nitpick, no (edit: chemical) tricks needed, just double the
| developing time.
| ghaff wrote:
| I did this for years. I tended to use different
| chemistries for pushing Tri-X or HP5 to 1600+. Don't
| remember the details, but didn't tend to use D-76 for
| pushed film as I recall.
| i_am_proteus wrote:
| I get pretty decent, if high-contrast results pushing 320TX
| and 400TX to 3200.
|
| Pushing does increase grain; but using a larger format (6x7
| or 4x5) reduces the apparent grain in resultant prints.
|
| I can't say enough good things about HC-110 as a developer:
| pushes well just by increasing development time, shelf-
| stable for years as a concentrate, and not particularly
| toxic compared to other developers.
| ghaff wrote:
| Approximately never used anything larger than 35mm. I
| don't remember all the developers I used over the years
| (though I used D-76 for a lot of standard Kodak Tri-X ISO
| 400 stuff). May have used some HC-110 (forget when that
| came in), definitely Diafine/Acufine, probably something
| from Ilford after I largely switched to HP-5 film, some
| homebrewed stuff...
|
| But it's been decades since I have done film processing.
| After I graduated, did a brief stint using an apartment
| half bathroom and drove me crazy after good school
| darkrooms.
|
| [ADDED: I've never used B&W film emulsions from the past
| 40 years or so; they're presumably at least a bit faster
| than what I used. 1600 was pretty much the practical
| limit when I was shooting B&W on film.]
| hackingonempty wrote:
| > most cameras used in that era were rangefinders (or 'point-
| and-shoot')
|
| Rangefinders from that era are not point-and-shoot. They have
| two separated windows allowing light into the viewfinder and
| you turn the focusing mechanism until the two views of the
| subject merge perfectly. They use parallax to find the
| distance to the subject with a mechanism linked to the lens
| focus, hence the name rangefinder.
|
| Point-and-shoot cameras from that era were fixed focus.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| Photo quality could be really good with lots of light, the
| right exposure, and fine grained film.
|
| Age can also be unkind to old photo's. Especially color I swear
| the dyes fade causing the colors to be muted and muddy. And
| tend to slowly bleed making them blurry.
| Etheryte wrote:
| By the 1930s, photography as a field had already existed for a
| century or so, so I'm not sure why you'd expect it to look
| terrible in any meaning of the word. For comparison, here's a
| photograph taken almost a hundred years earlier in 1845 [0],
| aside form lacking colors, it too is already high quality.
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Portrait_of_a_Daguerreoty...
| gyomu wrote:
| Well, I'm not surprised they're surprised. The two main
| factors in image quality are optics (which has been a solved
| problem for a long time), and imaging surface area.
|
| Even what is considered "full frame" today is ridiculously
| small from a historical point of view, when 8x10 plates were
| common (that's 60x the surface area!) and not even the
| largest format in use.
|
| Cell phone photography has made us used to imaging surface
| areas that are not even a centimeter on each side - it's a
| miracle of engineering we can get decent pictures out of
| those constraints, but image quality is as low as it gets,
| even though the marketing tells us those are the most
| advanced cameras ever.
| ghaff wrote:
| >image quality is as low as it gets
|
| I'm going to dispute that. Given some constraints in both
| the subject and the use of the image, certain cell phones
| can really take pretty good pictures. I have a bunch of
| bigger gear and I mostly don't find it worth taking on
| trips any longer. Yes, it's older gear but I doubt I'd find
| it worth spending thousands of dollars to upgrade. I know
| other serious photographers who feel similarly.
| Etheryte wrote:
| I agree with you only so long as you want to look at
| those images on those same small devices. The moment you
| want to print something, the difference is night and day.
| That being said, I'm a very big believer of the best
| camera being the one you have with you, so.
| ghaff wrote:
| I'm not sure I completely agree with respect to small
| prints. I probably do for 11x14s and beyond. (Which I
| basically never do any longer as I'm well out of wall
| space.) But, yeah, it's almost always display on computer
| and I just don't have a lot of interest in lugging a
| medium/large camera everywhere like I used to.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > certain cell phones can really take pretty good
| pictures.
|
| They look pretty on LCD screens but once you print them
| they look awful compared to professional gear. Like light
| and day.
| bbatha wrote:
| Optics were not a solved problem in the 30s they wouldn't
| be until the 80s at least for camera lenses. 30s camera
| lenses were optimized for black and white and very poorly
| corrected for chromatic aberrations. Well corrected color
| lenses wouldn't become common until the 50s. Optics bigger
| apertures than f4 were expensive and often had severe
| aberrations. Coatings which prevent internal reflections
| didn't mature until the late 60s/early 70s. Up to this
| point lenses had concentrated on a few well known good
| optical formulas. In particular high quality zoom and ultra
| wides were tremendously expensive r&d efforts with bespoke
| manufacturing[1]. This local maxima wouldn't be breached
| until computer aided design and manufacturing processes
| became the norm leading to aspherical, extra dispersion
| elements and much higher element counts becoming common. By
| this point camera lens development has become much more
| iterative many lenses from the 90s and 2000s are 70s/80s
| optics with slight coating updates with a plastic auto
| focus housing.
|
| 1: see the achromatic Takumar with quartz elements that was
| produced in a very limited run for scientific laboratories.
| And aspherical low aperture lenses like the leica noctilux
| which required hand grinding the aspherical element.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Agree.
|
| I have digitized family photos from a tintype in 1880 or so all
| the way to Polaroids from the 1960's and it is clear to me that
| peak consumer-photography was late-stage B&W photography.
|
| I shouldn't have mentioned the tintype above (I just wanted to
| indicate the temporal range here) because I would exclude
| professional "portrait" photos. And my relatives were blue-
| collar farmers and factory workers in the Midwaste, so their
| "gear" was modest for the times.
|
| The oldest "home photos" look poor and likely came from a
| Brownie or similar. But then a decade or so on and the photos
| take on a whole new level of clarity and sharpness. That level
| of quality persists until the arrival of color, Polaroids....
|
| It seems we traded color for quality sometime mid-Century.
| lqet wrote:
| > It seems we traded color for quality sometime mid-Century.
|
| Absolutely. My parents have crisp B&W snapshots from their
| baby years in the early 60ies. They even have old B&W party
| snapshots from my grandparents in the 50ies, all of which
| look still great. Then around 1965, the snapshots become
| colored (not Polaroids), and the quality is... not as good. I
| wonder of the photographs just aged badly, or if they already
| looked like that 60 years ago. I also suspect that color film
| was _much_ more expensive back then than B &W film, and the
| average consumer just bought the cheapest color films they
| could get.
| ghaff wrote:
| With old color prints (or slides, non-Kodachrome in
| particular) there's a lot of fading relative to B&W of the
| equivalent era.
|
| There was definitely a period, when there were really
| crappy cameras (e.g. Instamatics) for the mass market which
| were far crappier than any random smartphone these days.
| And there were really good, often (West) German-made,
| cameras. I'd have to look up exactly when the good Japanese
| cameras came along.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Nikon wasn't exactly consumer gear, but they popularized
| single lens reflex cameras in the late 1960s.
| ghaff wrote:
| Even a decade later, I as a high school student really
| into photography wasn't getting a Nikon. Started with my
| dad's Pony and then Retina and then used a Konica system
| through university and beyond until it was stolen in a
| break-in.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I feel like the Canon AE/1 and less expensive SLR's broke
| down that barrier (Minolta, etc.).
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I understand they were either the first, or at least very
| early, to take standard cinema film (35mm) and run with
| it. Were the press some of the early adopters? (Tired of
| lugging their monstrous Graflex cameras around.)
| armadsen wrote:
| No, that was Leitz (Leica). Nikon didn't start making
| cameras at all until 1948. Their first cameras were
| rangefinders, sort of a cross between a Contax and a
| Leica. They were very good (some of my very favorite
| cameras), but not super popular.
|
| Their first SLR, the Nikon F, came out in 1959 and
| quickly became a sensation with professionals. They're
| built like tanks, and still very usable.
| flyinghamster wrote:
| I'd say they started getting into their swing in the
| 1950s, if my father's Yashica-A twin-lens reflex is any
| indication. That camera produced absolutely gorgeous
| shots in square format on 120 roll film.
| ghaff wrote:
| The square format TLRs were an interesting format, My
| high school had an ancient one and I think I shot a roll
| of film once for fun and giggles. Never owned one. As I
| recall, Rolleiflex were the kings in that category.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| They are still (and although not twin reflex, Hasselblad
| are of course king of the medium format). And the prices
| of used gear reflect that.
|
| I own some several Japanese medium format and love the
| photos they take.
| eschneider wrote:
| Rollies are ok (I have one :) but for TLRs, the thing to
| have is the Mamiya 330C. Great viewfinder, optional
| prism, and interchangeable lenses. I have one and have
| used it quite a lot. Lovely photos, but heavy camera.
| OTOH, completely indestructable. You could pound nails
| with the thing.
| macintux wrote:
| I own a Yashica, and bought a 330C to supplement it, but
| decided the weight was just unmanageable. Very cool
| camera, and if I ever worked in a studio I'm sure I would
| have appreciated it, but too much for me in the field.
|
| I seem to recall that ergonomically it was a bit iffy
| too, but that may have just been the fact that I was more
| familiar with the Yashica.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Agree (because I own a few Yashica twin reflexes) but
| those weren't the cameras normies like my family were
| using. If only....
| kmoser wrote:
| Crappy cameras; smaller format films (e.g. Kodak Disc);
| weird hues from color photos taken in fluorescent and
| other non-natural light; inconsistent dyes among
| manufacturers (compare Fuji film to Kodachrome); an
| inherently lower resolution in color film. These all
| combine to make color photos of that era tend to look
| worse than b/w.
|
| I'd also speculate that because color film _on average_
| is less sensitive to light than b /w film, it led to more
| blurry photos at the time, especially when taken by the
| many amateur photographers with their cheap cameras.
| ghaff wrote:
| Yeah, there was a period when color photography was
| enabled for the plebes with really crappy cameras and
| film formats--I had even forgotten about the Kodak Disc.
| So a lot of stuff that survives from that general era in
| shoeboxes looks almost uniquely horrible. There were
| Brownies and the like before but they were still a lot
| less widespread.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I assume too that three layers of emulsion vs. one is not
| going to improve quality.
| ghaff wrote:
| Don't forget Kodachrome, especially Kodachrome 25.
|
| But, yes, even Leicas aside, Kodak Retinas among others where
| pretty darn good. I got my dad's Retina IIIc which I used
| until it just wore out eventually. And both the Nikon and
| Canon SLRs in particular were great once they came on the
| scene though some of the rangefinders from Olympus, Pentax,
| Canon, etc. weren't half-bad either.
| quercusa wrote:
| > It seems we traded color for quality sometime mid-Century.
|
| As well as convenience for quality. 35mm -> 126 -> 110 ->
| Kodak Disc
| ekianjo wrote:
| They had much bigger negative surface. Medium and large format
| have a resolution that digital cameras can only dream of
| EncomLab wrote:
| Film grain resolutions for high quality emulsions can result in
| nearly perfect image representations, even under pretty high
| magnifications. Digital imaging is limited to the pixels on the
| sensor and/or the display.
| merelysounds wrote:
| I sometimes shoot on film, my IG is in my profile.
|
| I find it surprising and often understated how good is the UX of
| old film cameras and how well it holds up when compared to modern
| digital gear.
|
| Simple, well designed, often very portable - you can take these
| for your next trip or for a street photography session and
| depending on your approach the process and the results can be
| very enjoyable.
| gyomu wrote:
| Well, of course - the only film cameras anyone cares about
| today are the top 0.01% of camera models ever produced. No one
| cares to collect/use the cheap crummy ones, of which there were
| plenty :)
| stevenae wrote:
| Disagree with the first piece about only using the top 0.1%.
| I grew up (through my 20's) shooting on a Pentax K1000, cheap
| workhorse of a camera, and I preferred its ergonomics to top-
| end mirrorless cameras I use today.
| dagw wrote:
| The K1000 is generally considered among the best film SLRs
| ever made, especially for the price, and easily falls into
| the top 0.1% category in my mind. There's a reason why it
| was in continuous production for 20 years with hardly any
| changes to its design.
| stevenae wrote:
| I guess my quibble is with the percentage, then. A good,
| cheap, plentiful camera belies the idea that only the top
| 0.1% of cameras were good.
| bdcravens wrote:
| My grandfather, born in 1908, was a professional photographer, so
| I'm certain he used some of these models. My regret is not
| knowing him when he was younger, as my only memories are from
| when I was a young child. I learned he was a writer, amateur
| electrician/tinkerer, etc.
|
| One of the funnest things I've bought on eBay was a photograph of
| a circus elephant that he did.
| lizknope wrote:
| I have a Leica IIIf with a 1954 serial number. It looks extremely
| similar to the Leica III on the web site.
|
| It belonged to the grandfather of a friend. I sent it and the
| collapsible 50mm lens off and had the rangefinder mirror
| resilvered and everything cleaned and lubricated. Then I shot
| some pictures of my friend's daughter with what was her great
| grandfather's camera.
|
| It's pretty cool that I can mount these lenses on many cameras
| like my new Nikon Z camera with a $10 adapter.
| anta40 wrote:
| May I know who did the mirror resilvering? It's very common to
| see those old rangefinders' patch fade away.
| lizknope wrote:
| I just checked my emails and it was done in 2006 by John
| Maddox. These are posts from 2015 and 2019 and it sounds like
| he is still doing it.
|
| https://www.photo.net/forums/topic/483606-for-those-of-
| you-w...
|
| https://rangefinderforum.com/threads/how-do-leicas-
| break.173...
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I have only one or two family photos from that era where there is
| someone holding a camera in the shot. These are not shoot-
| yourself-in-the-mirror shots so I can only guess as to what the
| camera was that _took_ that photo. Perhaps though other photos in
| the album are from the one that was photographed?
|
| I have wished for some means to deduce the camera a photo was
| taken with -- or at least reduce it to a range or family of
| cameras.
|
| In terms of aspect ratio though, as an example, a lot of that
| will come down to the lab the processed the prints as the
| negatives are no longer available to me.
|
| EDIT: Some family photos from the 1920's. In the 3rd one, dated
| 1924, a woman sits with a 1920's camera on her lap.
|
| https://imgur.com/a/1920s-family-photos-wygcrLH
| actionfromafar wrote:
| One can often deduce the focal length, if there are somewhat
| knowable features in the image to compare against.
|
| Also, if there is a lot chromatic aberration and the image
| perspective seems somewhat corrected in one axis but not in the
| other, chances are it's from a disposable camera. (They often
| have a curved film plane to compensate for simplistic lens
| distortion.)
| anta40 wrote:
| I think I still have a camera from the 30s: the 6x9 Ikonta.
| Compact, easily fits inside your pocket/small camera bag, and
| shoots pretty big negative. And oh, with a coupled rangefinder.
|
| One fun camera :D
| jve wrote:
| Miniature Minox camera of 1930s: https://3seaseurope.com/minox-
| spy-camera-latvia/
| fallinditch wrote:
| I bought a couple of old Zeiss Ikon folding cameras from ebay, a
| 6x6 and a 6x9. They are from the 1950s and so have coated lenses,
| but are otherwise quite similar to the 1930s models. Both cameras
| are still in perfect working condition, accurate shutter speeds.
|
| It's such a pleasure to use them: compact form factor, requires
| deliberation, they smell good too :)
|
| The aesthetic quality of the images they produce is well worth
| the effort - pretty sharp when you need it but soft around the
| edges when aperture is wide open which can look lovely, nice
| color rendition, amazing bokeh.
|
| I take a lot of digital photos but for me using vintage cameras
| is so much more rewarding.
| fallinditch wrote:
| And I love the happy accidents that happen when you process
| your own films.
|
| I recently processed a box of old films I had been storing at
| room temperature for >15 years. Got some beautiful effects from
| the expired emulsions. Best (wackiest) results came from cross
| processing the old Velvia 50 medium format films.
| etrautmann wrote:
| Can you elaborate on cross processing and what effect it has?
| quercusa wrote:
| It's usually processing in something other than the native
| chemistry (e.g., E6 in C41)
|
| https://thedarkroom.com/cross-processing-film/
| fallinditch wrote:
| Yes. I used the Cinestill CS41 color developing kit,
| which is for color negative films. The Velvia films are
| (positive) slide. You get somewhat unpredictable color
| shifts, generally increased contrast. The age of the
| films added to the unpredictability because the emulsions
| change over time and there may have been some light
| leaking too.
|
| Velvia is known for its strong colors and I was very
| impressed with how colorful the films were after all that
| time. Their longevity is probably why they still cost
| about $90-100 for a 5 pack of expired 120s.
|
| Here's an example image https://imgur.com/a/nQ0ltav
| quercusa wrote:
| Very cool. I loved Velvia...
| scyclow wrote:
| Great website. I love that it treats each page like a physical
| room in a museum. The landing page directs you to the "reception
| foyer". The foyer has a floor plan of the other pages. Each era
| has its own "room" (this links to 1930Room.html).
| parkersweb wrote:
| I inherited an N&G Sibyl [1] plate camera from my father-in-law
| when he passed a few years ago. I'd love to be able to take a few
| pictures on it at some point - it's such a beautiful piece of
| machinery.
|
| [1] : http://camera-wiki.org/wiki/Sibyl
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