Formula 1 shot on 4x5

The ultimate clash of technologies ... amazing stuff! I love these, thanks for posting this. :)
 
It's not a 104-year-old Kodak Auto Graflex, it's a 1916 model so it's a 101-year-old camera at max. You can tell by the curve at the top of the front of the body (and the hood door hinge is at the rear instead of the front like on the pre-1916 model)...

.....I'll get my anorak....



I wonder what lens he has got mounted on it.
 
Did anyone see what film he used? Some of the pictures are very grainy while others aren't. The camera is about the same age as the Indianapolis 500; similar equipment must have been used in the early races.
 
sevo said:
No lens on the camera?
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It's a pinhole. You have to track the subject for 30 seconds in order to have it sharp :-D

I really have a lot of respect for him being able to pull that off. But when loking at books about trains that show photos of the '20's - 30's I'm always awed. Those guys where photographing trains running at what were then the highest speeds known to mankind. And they did that with a folder having a 100/4, 25 iso film, front cell focus, a telemeter if they were lucky, a stamped out square in tin sheet to frame and certainly no light meter. And all that costed far more than a decent ff digital now. And they did it. Most of those photos are even sharper than what I manage with a 5Dii and a stabilised lens.
 
Spanik said:
It's a pinhole. You have to track the subject for 30 seconds in order to have it sharp :-D
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Can't be a pinhole as the pictures show very narrow DOF (while pinhole DOF is infinite). But the camera has no protruding lens on all other pictures of him as well, so it will not be a case of him posing with detached Aero Ektar (which I originally suspected). Presumably he uses a shorter than normal lens mounted inside the board rather than on front.
 
I don't know where the author got the "limited to 20 exposures" bit. In the early days, the camera's film options topped out a 6 per "load" until the 16 exp filmpak holders came along. Plate holders held single plates, sheet film holders held 2 sheets, the Graflex holder (the early "bag mag", progenitor to the Graphmatic) held 6 sheets, and the early roll holders held 6 exposures.

Also, while the images are artistically rather nice, they are horrid for 4x5 output, in technical terms. I wonder what lens and what film he was using.

It is interesting to note that he used rather slow shutter speeds for the action shots, thus avoiding the subject distortion commonly seen in pictures from the pre-WWI era, the result of high shutter speeds and a focal plane shutter with slow curtain travel times. The cars would have moved forward between the time the shutter began to expose the bottom of the wheels and when it began to scan the hood of the car. This "flaw" was commonly seen in the day and was mimicked, often in an exaggerated way, in paintings and engravings at the time.
 
for 4x5 I was expecting the quality to be higher and less lomo-esque. Looks like some shots he cropped quite a bit.
 
His lens looks like a soft focus meniscus type, used by the Pictorialists during the early 20th century. They have the iris in front of the glass, which is how this looks. Or it could be a convertible, using the the rear, but those wouldn't be as soft and with the edge aberrations. I'd guess a early Portrait Plastigmat or similar soft focus lens.

It's actually a slow shutter speed and slit shutter that creates the distortion, if panning and/or movement are perpendicular to the slit in the shutter. Like the old Graflex cameras had.
lartigue_car_trip.jpg
 
Dwig said:
I don't know where the author got the "limited to 20 exposures" bit.
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Haven't the faintest. Bag mags hold 12 or 18 sheets, Grafmatics six each, and even the most esoteric German and British bag mag alternatives I own or have seen (which would need conversion) hold less than the 18 sheets of the bag mag. Maybe he is travelling with ten standard two-sheet holders?
 
BLKRCAT said:
for 4x5 I was expecting the quality to be higher and less lomo-esque. Looks like some shots he cropped quite a bit.
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I have to agree with this. I like the pics, but was expecting 4x5 quality. Especially from the static shots.

It had to be a blast walking around w that thing in the sea of digicams.
 
Read somewhere that he didn't do any critical focussing on purpose, to match the look of GP images from the 1950s.

A Kodak Auto Graflex with matching vintage lens like the Ross Xpress is a quite capable picture-taker.
 
goamules said:
His lens looks like a soft focus meniscus type, used by the Pictorialists during the early 20th century. They have the iris in front of the glass, which is how this looks. Or it could be a convertible, using the the rear,
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Period meniscus lenses and half convertibles would all be f/9 or even slower Given that he quite obviously goes for narrow DOF, it should be something faster. Perhaps a Imagon?
 
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