"Speedy GoneGraphic"

Graflex Speed Graphic
(for History of Photography - Assignment #4)

The Classic Equipment Museum at Photo Central is quite the place. It’s hard to believe that the nifty cameras we use today are the descendents of a long line of gizmos and gadgets of all sizes, shapes and styles. Although many of the cameras caught my eye, the Graflex Speed Graphic was the chosen one. I won’t lie – it was one of the only ones not caged and given that Dick, the owner, was not around to show the cameras, the Speed Graphic was the most accessible to me. Plus of course, it has a little piece of trivia on it stating that it was used in the Oscar nominated film “Capote.” Not that I’m superficial by any stretch of the imagination…but come on – any camera that contributes to Oscar-worthy films deserves a little of my attention!

In its day, the Speed Graphic was the camera – particularly for the press photographer, although it was also engineered to be used by professionals and amateur photographers for various types of photography – wedding, portraiture, commercial, landscape and documentary. The original Speed Graphic was patented in 1912 by Graflex, a Rochester, New York based camera producer. With the success of their older SLR cameras, Graflex decided to design a camera specifically for the emerging press photographer. From 1912 through to1968 (some sources say 1973), the Speed Graphic was manufactured, redesigned, remanufactured etc, etc, in the hundreds of thousands. Tim Takahashi from photo.net describes the Speed Graphic as “workhorses,” arguably the most influential camera of the 20th century, the quintessential “professional” camera from the 1930’s to the 1960’s. Thanks to these babies, we have a strong record of the early to middle decades of the 20th century.

The particular Speed Graphic model that I photographed is a Kalart Synchronized Range Finder that was in production between 1940 and 1947. As the most common “press” camera of its time, the Speed Graphic had unique characteristics that made it portable and user-friendly for the photojournalist. The camera folds into a box, is quite light (around 5 pounds) and durable, has flexible bellows that accommodates interchangeable lenses (90 mm to over 300 mm), has accessories such as flash, uses sheet film (the most common size being 4 x 5 “), has a ground glass focusing screen, has an optical viewfinder and can be used handheld.

On a more challenging note, Speed Graphic users had to be savvy enough to work their way around the potentially problematic features such as the three viewfinders (ground glass, optical, wire frame), three focusing aids (ground glass, scale, rangefinder) and two shutters (leaf / in-lens shutter and focal plane shutter). The lack of automation meant one could easily double expose, shoot blanks, shoot out of focus images or fog previous exposures. But no automation also meant no batteries! The two shutter system allowed for greater shutter speeds (the leaf shutter was good for flash photos and the focal plane shutter for fast speed requirements). A subject could be viewed with both eyes through the wire-frame viewfinder. So in the end, there were plenty of perks to the multi-features of the Speed Graphic, if one knew had to maximize its performance.

The Speed Graphic is still a very popular camera today for large-format enthusiasts. Given that it was manufactured in such large numbers, it is probably the least expensive large format camera available. There are sites on the internet with detailed information on how to use these cameras. Hmmmm, you never know…I just might get me one of these babies – maybe even audition it in some upcoming Russell Crowe flick!

Well, it was a nice thought anyway.


References:
Graflex.Org “History of the Graphic Cameras”
Photo.net “Graflex Pacemaker Speed Graphic” by Tim Takahashi

Nilufer Rahman
February 6, 2007