Like most people of my age - a certain age - I get nostalgic. It's sort of a mental version of acid reflux. But not near as much fun.
The good old days for me were the 1950's and 60's - and as a photographer they were a pretty good combination of then-new analogue tech and much older equipment. Things were around, and famous names were still famous. And you could get real hamburgers for 25¢...
Leaving the burgers aside, you were expected to shoot movies on 8mm or 16mm cameras and then either ket the labs process the film or become a hero and process it yourself. I never actually saw anyone attempt this, but I do remember there was a sort of tinned gefilte fish market for bakelite Soviet movie film tanks - with thermometers and rubber hoses and winding handles. I think if you actually succeeded in getting a reel processed you were given a medal and if you managed a colour reversal film like Ektachrome you were elevated to Marshall and they let you stand on Lenin's tomb for the annual march-past.
Lesser lights like myself certainly mastered the art of loading the 8mm reels onto a variety of cheaper cameras and then switching the reel over half-way after the first 25 feet had been exposed to let the other 25 go through. We let Kodak process the Kodachrome II film and send it back to us on 50 foot plastic reels. We little realised at the time that we were doing ourselves some good - the Kodachrome that went to Melbourne for processing has retained its colour and contrast to this day.
If we were rich and/or ambitious we looked at 16mm film. It was much larger format than the 8mm and many of the cameras that used it were professional instruments that had all the controls we though we needed. Indeed, some of the most iconic amateur and professional movies we saw at school or in the newsreels were taken using 16mm film. Perhaps there was more local processing for it, as well.
The camera for most to lust after was the H16 Bolex. Swiss-made, styled and trimmed like an art-deco masterpiece, and of undoubted precision. I mean, it was Swiss, right?
There were any number of lens and body combinations that could be had - single lenses, zooms, turret assemblies. And a great many lens makers like Paillard, Angenieux, Bausch & Lomb, Kodak, etc. who could supply lenses in " C " mount for the body. Film flowed form Kodak, Agfa, Perutz, Fujifilm, Orwo, and several Soviet sources. And we never knew how hard it could all be to work until we tried to work it. Consider the making of a 3 minute film:
- Buy fresh film from shop. Keep it cool in the tin.
- Load it in semi-darkness according to the complex film path. Mind the tension and make sure there is no dust in the film chamber and the pressure plate is clean.
- Set the speed - 18to 24 frames per second for normal projection.
- Select one of three lenses.
- Set the focus by either looking through the reflex housing or measuring it with a tape measure.
- Set the aperture from a separate hand-held meter.
- Make sure the film counter is on full.
- Wind the spring.
- Look through the separate viewfinder set for the focal length of the lens.
- Pull back on the motor release.
- Pray.
When the first scene was taken, rewind the spring and do most of the above for the next one - continue until all the film was exposed. Then:
- Unload in semi-darkness.
- Wrap the film in paper and back into the tin.
- Send it away to the lab in Melbourne or to the local developer.
- Pray
Once the finished film came back,:
- Load it onto a 16mm editor.
- Cut, cement and restring whatever looked like it actually worked.
- Load it into a 16mm projector.
- Dim the lights and start the projector.
- Pray.
By now you can get some idea of the amount of work and faith that was required. Until you hit the switch on the projector it was all running on faith, hope, and the charity of the audience.
Please don't ask me about sound, as I don't feel capable of doing this all again. I saw a man synchronise a Grundig reel to reel tape reorder to an 8mm movie projector once and I still feel a flash of admiration for his bravery.
