The 4x5 Speed Graphic is my favorite camera for shooting black & white. It allows me to continue using my favorite film, Tri-X 320 (now discontinued in rollfilm sizes). Typical exposure is 1/250 @ f11 with yellow filter. Prints are grainless with beautiful tones. The Speed Graphic has a vertically traveling focal plane shutter which, when shooting a fast moving object, will make the object lean in the direction of travel -- the faster the object, the more the lean. in the attached 1978 photo, the train was traveling approx. 80 mph and the image shows it!
It was a cool show, I saw it a few months back at the ICP. They had a recreation of his room as well as a wall of how his first show was setup. Many of his shots were done with a flash.
Flash was definitely part of Weegee's look, but it was also a way to get consistent exposures. One of the techniques he mentions is to practice focusing at two distances, like 10 feet and 6 feet, so that you can focus quickly when you don't have time to use the rangefinder or the groundglass. If you always use a flashbulb as the main light, then you can also determine the exposure for those two distances, and you could learn how to adjust the exposure for a small room, an auditorium or outdoors, and a #5 bulb outdoors at 10 feet, EI 100, 1/100 sec. should give you about f:16 according to the table from GE (http://graflex.org/flash/ge-5.html)--or the same amount of light as sunlight, and with a 127mm Optar, everything will be in focus from about 8 to 14-1/2 feet. So you get to the scene, tip up your fedora, stand 10 feet from the subject, set the focus and exposure for that distance, point the camera at the dead guy and shoot. Simple!
Last edited by David A. Goldfarb; 06-02-2012 at 11:24 AM. Click to view previous post history.
Reason: Fixed auto URL parsing.
One of the reasons that many of Weegee's photographs were taken with flash is because he had a police radio that he listened to at night so he could rush to a crime scene.
Warning!! Handling a Hasselblad can be harmful to your financial well being!
Nothing beats a great piece of glass!
I leave the digital work for the urologists and proctologists.
One of the reasons that many of Weegee's photographs were taken with flash is because he had a police radio that he listened to at night so he could rush to a crime scene.
At one time, the Police band was just above the AM broadcast band, right next to the 160m Amateur band. Many small table radios covered it.
if you watch the movie private eye, with joe pesci you might get an idea what arthur fellig was like ...
he was often at the scene before the police, and he sometimes "adjusted"
the scene so it looked good compositionally
(morey amsterdam was the human joke machine
arthur fellig the human ouja board )
If you can hand hold a medium format camera or a 35mm camera then you can do the same with a Speed Graphic. In the same lighting conditions with the same speed film you can use the same shutter speed and aperture.
The advantage you have is its bulk. i.e. its inertia means you are less likely to get camera shake (unless you have puny muscles which will shake due to its weight!).
Steve.
My big problem with my Pacemaker is that between the weight of the camera body and the weight of the Kodak Aero-Ektar 178mm/2.5 lens, my arthritic wrists just can't hold it steady. It weighs just over 10 lb.! I gotta use the tripod for that one. I can still hand hold my Pre-Anny Speed without too much problem.
Michael Cienfuegos
If you don't want to stand behind our troops, please feel free to stand in front of them.
When people tell me a 4x5 is too complicated for them, I remind them that Jimmy Olsen used a Graphic on Superman, and he wasn't the brightest bulb in the case.
If you can hand hold a medium format camera or a 35mm camera then you can do the same with a Speed Graphic. In the same lighting conditions with the same speed film you can use the same shutter speed and aperture.
The advantage you have is its bulk. i.e. its inertia means you are less likely to get camera shake (unless you have puny muscles which will shake due to its weight!).
Steve.
I missed this but only partially agree. The problem is that with LF and 5x4 often you need to use smaller apertures to get similar sharpness/DOF etc, so it's a slightly different mindset.
On the other hand perehaps we start with too great an expectation. maybe it's time I used LF and my Speed graphic for some action images, maybe a visit to the local race track
Adv Reply
Originally Posted by Newt_on_Swings
