The Newspaperman's Standby

Jacques-Henri Lartigue : A Delage Racer at the Grand Prix, 1912

Early In the 20th Century, the public was introduced to a new dimension in journalism: action news pictures made with the high-speed, single-lens reflex camera. The first real "press" camera, it was portable, its fast lens and focal­plane shutter could freeze even a speedinq car, it tocusedeas­ily through the taking lens, and its large picture size allowed the high-quality prints needed for engraving. For nearly half a century many of the most mem­orable news photographs were taken with the German lCA or its near­twin, the American Graflex. 

The versatility of the big reflex made it equally popular with photographers who were not journalists. It capitalized on odd distortions in the pictures caused by the focal-plane shutter. In the photograph at rig,ht by J.H. Lar­tigue, the impression of speed is con­veyed by the apparent forward lean of the car's wheel and the backward lean of the spectators. Both effects are due to the shutter, a fast-moving slit that moves vertically across the film, exposing different parts of it at dif­ferent instants in time. Thus, in taking a picture of a fast-moving car, the bottom of the wheel will be photographed at one point, but when the slit in the shut­ter reaches the top of the wheel, the whole car will have moved to the right, so that the wheel comes out looking eggshaped. In taking this picture lar­tigue had to move his camera to keep pace with the car's movement This,in turn, gave the spectators their odd ap­pearance, for when the shutter's slit passed across their legs the camera was in one position, but by the time it exposed their heads the camera and film had moved to the right.

While looking down into the tall, light-shielding hood of an lCA like this one, the French photographer Jacques-Henri Lartigue took the picture shown at right in 1912. The certiere worked much like modern 35mm single-lens reflexes but used 4 x 5 inch glass plates and was fitted with an f /4.5 lens, very fast for its day. Its distorted freezing of motion, so obvious in the racing car oicture, ties over t.he decades become an ittustretors' convention; today an artist drawing a movinq object may deliberately make it lean forward to convey an impression of speed.