NEW - Ken Gilbert

TIME EXPOSURE By Harold Martin
25YEARS
AGO
MAY 1984
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1. Diver’s license: Amos Nachoum took
this exotic cover photo 40 feet below the
surface of the Red Sea using a Nikonos
underwater camera fi tted with a l5mm
wide-angle lens. Lighting was supplied
by a single electronic fl ash unit. The fi lm?
Kodachrome 64.
2. Expressive hands: During the 1930s,
Russell Lee reported on the burden of
the Depression for the Resettlement
Administration, a federal agency.
Photographer and teacher David Vestal fi rst
saw this picture in Edward Steichen’s offi ce
at the Museum of Modern Art and never
forgot it. Lee probably took this photo, a
print from a 35mm negative, with a Contax,
a camera he used frequently at the time.
3. City promenade: Robert Bracklow,
who died in 1920, attempted to do
for o New e York o what a his s be better-known e o
1. Seasonal
triptych:
ook three
pictures to
portray the
summervel
theme of
ue. Masaharu
ura, a Tokyo
r, shot the
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ng a Nikon
or lens on
Ektachrome fi lm. Wylie Leong of New
York City used a Hasselblad with an 80mm
f/2.8 Tessar for his butterfl y and beach
pictures, both on Anscochrome fi lm.
2. New era in fl ash: General Electric
introduced its jellybean-sized all-glass fl ash
bulb. Filled with zirconium, the new AG-1
bulbs delivered the same amount of light as
the larger PowerMite M2 and came in clear
(10 cents) and blue (12 cents) versions.
These tiny powerhouses made possible
a new generation of ultracompact fl ash
cameras and fl ash units.
3. Zoom revolution: The fi rst zoom lens
ever for 35mm still cameras, this was a joint
contemporary, Eugène Atget, did for
Paris−record the life of the city in all of its
aspects. Unlike Atget, Bracklow was not
a professional but a dedicated amateur
who made his prints using the expensive,
demanding platinum process. This photo,
taken on Riverside Drive shortly after the
completion of Grant’s Tomb in 1897, was
part of a report by Harvey Fondiller on
“Shows We’ve Seen.”
4. Dramatic zoom: The growing use of
zoom lenses by news photographers was
described by Thom O’Connor. Among the
photos in the article was this one by the
author using a Canon 70–150mm f/4.5
zoom set at about 100mm. The subject is
an eye operation in Chicago’s Bethesda
hospital. O’Connor was told he could
shoot but not move during the procedure,
so he ee let his sesdo lens do the emoving o go for him.
1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000
▼
50
YEARS AGO
MAY 1959
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offering from Zoomar
Corp. (Glen Cove,
NY) and Voigtländer
(Braunschweig,
Germany). The
36–82mm f/2.8 lens
fi tted the Voigtländer
Bessamatic 35mm leafshutter
SLR. Mounts for 3
focal-plane SLRs were in
the works when
we wrote about
the lens.
4. No kidding:
John Tassos
introduced
his 4-year-old
daughter Penny
to the Rolleifl ex.
Tassos pointed out that, since a child that
age could not distinguish between a Rollei
and a box Brownie, he started her off with
one of the best. Tassos set the exposure
while Penny did the actual shooting,
showing a very good eye for composition.
By the age of 5, she had become an
accomplished photographer. p
98 WWW.POPPHOTO.COM POP PHOTO MAY 2009
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