Camera spotting in old films

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Kiloran
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Is surprisingly good fun.

Recently bought an HD-DVD player and one of the landmark early releases is "Grand Prix" - the late '60s 70mm Cinerama extravaganza. The quality of the transfer and detail is such that you can easily spot a whole range of interesting cameras in the crowd. Interesting to see that even in '66/67 TLRs were still the weapon of choice. Never seen the technique before but a lot of shooters were holding them upside down over their head so that they could shoot over the heads of the crowd. I would think a surprisingly effective technique given the size of the image on the ground glass of Yashicas and the like. Who needs flip and swivel LCD screens when you have a couple of square inches of ground glass?

Lots and lots of Nikon Fs around as well, and still of course a few rangefinders. It was filmed at the real races in '66 so I guess that most of these photogs were either pros or amateurs at the circuit for the main event - the legendary motorsport photog Bernard Cahier is credited for example. Cahier was a Leica user before he moved to Pentax - of course RFs aren't best suited to objects moving at 160mph so this is understandable, but most of his early stuff will be Leica (when did the Pentax SLR become a reality?)

Cahier's archive is online at https://www.f1-photo.com - fully searchable as well, a very easy way to waste an afternoon if you're a motorsport or camera nut...
 
From reading old magazines, watching older movies and talking to older news photographers, my impression is that TLRs were very common in the 1960s, especially among older photographers. The big negative combined with better films allowed for lots a cropping ability, and uncropped 2 1/4 negatives made for better magazine images. Rolleiflexes were the preferred camera. They were also nearly silent.
 
Many old photo books will advise this use of the TLR, as well as the "monopod" consisting of a piece of string with a washer on the end attached to the tripod screw. Lower string to ground, stand on washer, straighten shoulders to pull camera strap taut. Bingo, your camera is braced for slow speeds. TLR's also lend themselves to laying on a wall and using the waist level finder as a right angle finder. All old PJ tricks with the TLR.

As for SLR vs. rf, don't forget that Leica had the Visoflex for turning your rf into an SLR. Longer lenses were available for use with it. What appears to be an SLR may be a LTM camera with a Visoflex.

This page has a fairly comprehensive list of Leica spotting in the cinema.

(Edited due to appalling spelling)
 
The interesting thing was the absence of long zooms - I think I saw one in the whole film, and that was attached to a Nikon F at Brands Hatch in the UK. Most scenes featured people with 50mm lenses (or there abouts). In terms of cameras spotted there were plenty of Nikons but also quite a few of what looked like the Contax "bullseye". Also lots of fixed lens compact rangefinders that looked a bit like Canonets although not sure if those were around in '66
 
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