Looking back at Film Cameras

in Digital photography and film: looking back and wondering what we have lost  I pondered on the move to digital photography. Here I look at cameras in the film age.

Before the digital revolution photogrpahy meant film. And there was an amazing variety of film in sizes from microfilm to at least 10" by 8". Film needed chemical processing and the images would be lost if the film was exposed to light and there were always worries about airport X-Ray cameras fogging film.

As well as size the photographer had a choice of slide or print, black and white or colour and specialist films like infrared and lith film which rendered everything into two colours.

All that has gone though the digital darkroom gives the chance of recapturing many of the choices open to the film photographer - while in turn making fakery much easier.

Which makes it a good time to look back at what went before

Before  the digital revolution the dominant film format was 35 MM, based on a frame size of 24 by 36mm and  a good lens could resolve over 100 lines per millimetre.  Smaller formats never took off  though the specialist format of microfilm,  was used to store library catalogues and  in espionage.

Above the 35 MM format  there were medium format  roll film cameras took  6 by 4.5, 6 by 6 6 by 7 and 6 by 9 ( all measurements in cm).  The more expensive professional  cameras in this range had an interchangeable back letting the cameraman switch instantly from slide  to print and colour to black and white.  I  must mention the humble box camera my ancestors used. This took roll film, often 120 format, sometimes 620,  and had a small viewfinder on the top and sides of the camera.  The cameraman had a choice of a fixed shutter speed or leaving the shutter open and timing the exposure with a watch. They had the advantage that  for long exposures (minutes or hours) no tripod was needed, only a flat surface not subject to vibrations.

Large Format cameras, 5 inches by 4 and 10 inches by 8, expensive descendants of early plate cameras were used mainly by wedding portrait and landscape photographers:. These leviathans needed a tripod and a weightlifter to carry them. The photographer had to learn how to compose a picture upside down . Taking a picture was long and complicated and they did not take roll film: the cameraman had to insert a fresh back holding a single plate of film of the appropriate size for each picture. They survived because they could be adjusted to control the distortion that appears when the camera is pointed upwards, the 5 by 4 and 10 by 8 plates allowed contact printing to the size needed by publishers, and the resulting quality was excellent because there was no distortion from an enlarger lens.

There are some (EXPENSIVE) medium format digital cameras on the market as well as digital backs for existing medium format cameras. These are for the very wealthy or the professional with a high end clientele. Large format digital cameras are hard to find.

In the 35mm and Medium format arena  the early cameras were what  would now be called compacts. They had a viewfinder separate from the lens. The invention of the  Single Lens Reflex  camera allowed the photographer to see exactly what he camera would record ( except perhaps a small border). This was achieved by using an arrangement of mirrors  with the mirror in front of the lens being swung out of the way as the shutter opens.  This  resulted in  large bulky cameras ( surrogate penises??)   which could take interchangeable lenses. The SLR has survived till today and is only now being replaced by digital SLRs without mirrors.  Early digital SLRS   had only an optical viewfinder. More recent ones have live view where the view is shown on a screen at the back of the camera ( ironically just like in the early plate cameras)  to the predictable scorn of those who were used to seeing an image through a viewfinder.