INDY’S INNER SHUTTERBUG
What does your favorite adventurer use to snap snappy snaps in tombs?
By MICHAEL PERKINS
THE HISTORY OF THE MOVIES IS LIBERALLY SPRINKLED with images of cameras used by its heroes on-screen, whether it’s a hard-boiled detective snapping spy photos of a suspect or proud parents posing the family for key moments. Many, if not most of the cameras shown in the films are composites of design cues from various devices cobbled together by the prop department, either for visual effect or to avoid copyright infringement or both. And then there are characters that you’d figure would be armed with a camera for certain occasions, but, oddly, never are.
Like Indiana Jones, for example.
Across the span of half a century and five theatrical films, Indy has concentrated on locating all the items on his archaeological bucket list, but shooting images of his finds? Not so much. Until now. The creators of the video game Indiana Jones & The Great Circle have finally put a camera in the legendary digger’s mitts, and, unlike everything else in the game, it’s something that actually existed. A very special something, in fact, that quietly revolutionized personal photography. Meet the Argus “A”, the camera that got the world hooked on compact 35mm photography.
It’s true that many archaeological digs were documented in pictures, but most of said pictures were made on medium or large format rigs that were tripod-mounted for long exposures in dimly lit rooms. However, their sheer stationary bulk argues against their use by a guy who’s always leaping across craggy chasms or trying to outdistance giant boulders, and so the producers of Great Circle have given Jones one of the first successful compacts of the 1930’s, a dandy little number that actually outsold the main competition at Kodak. The “A”, launched in 1936, established Argus as a major player in the camera game, so much so that it sold off all its other holdings to concentrate totally on photographic products. The “A” came with a collapsible lens for a slim pocket profile, a light body of bakelite and chrome, a nifty 50mm prime lens, an aperture range from f/4.5 to f/11 and shutter speeds from 1/200th to 1/25 plus “Time” and “Bulb” settings. The viewfinder was small but serviceable, and, most importantly, the “A” accepted the new Kodak film “cassettes” for easy loading. Moreover, they delivered all this for just $12.50. The initial model reportedly sold 30,000 units in its very first year of release. More models, including one equipped with a flash shoe, would be introduced through 1941.
For Indiana Jones, a guy known to travel light, the “A” would have taken up very little real estate in even a modestly sized valise, leaving plenty of room for his signature Webley and Smith & Wesson revolvers, with which he did far more “shooting” in practical terms. It’s ironic that an iconic fictional character should finally get a camera that not only came from the real world, but, in photographic terms, changed it as well. And, in case of nuclear attack, it would fit neatly beside you as you huddled inside a refrigerator.
So there’s that.
A BOX FULL OF ALMOSTS
Shooting for 3D (top image) often cost me a lot of composition space, forcing me to frame in a narrow vertical range, but learning to frame my message in those cramped quarters taught me better how to draw the viewer “in deep” when composing flat 2D images.
By MICHAEL PERKINS
I RECENTLY SPENT AN ANGUISHED AFTERNOON sifting through a box of prints that I shot from about 1998 through 2002, a small part of my amateur work overall, but a particularly frustrating batch of images to revisit. Even given the high number of shots of any kind that one has to take to get a small yield of cherished images, the number of “keepers” from this period is remarkably low. It is a large box of almosts, a warehouse of near misses. Still, I felt that I needed to spend some “quality time” (strange phrase) mentally cataloguing everything that went wrong. I could have used a stiff drink.
One reason that the failure rate on these pictures was so high was because the pictures, all of them stereoscopic, were taken with one of the only cameras available for taking such shots at the time. The Argus 3D was an extremely limited film-based point-and-shoot which had been introduced for the sole purpose of producing cheap prints that could be developed by any vendor with conventional processing. The resulting 4×6 prints from the Argus were not the red-green anaglyph shots requiring the infamous cardboard glasses to decipher their overlaid images. but single prints made up of two side-by-side half-frame images in full color, which could later be inserted into an accompanying split-glass viewer that came with the camera.
The 3D effect was, in fact, quite striking, but the modest camera exacted a price for producing this little miracle. Since stereo works more dramatically at longer focal lengths, only shots made at f/11 or f/16 were offered on the Argus, which also had a fixed shutter speed and could not accommodate films rated higher than ASA 100. As for better 3D cameras, most available in the late ’90’s were dusty old relics from the late ’40’s and ’50’s, meaning that any hobbyist interested in stereo photography had to pretty much accept the built-in limitations of the rigs that were available. As a result, I had only basic control over exposure; light flares would invariably create huge streaks on one of the two angled lenses, creating a headache-y “flicker” in the viewing of the final print; and, worst of all, you had to compose every shot in vertical orientation, regardless of subject, in half the width in which you normally worked.
Worse for the artistic aspect of the project, I seem to have been sucked into the vortex that traps most shooters when learning a new technique; that is, I began to shoot for the effect. It seems to have been irrelevant whether I was shooting a bouquet of roses or a pile of debris, so long as I achieved the “eye-poke” gimmick popping out of the edge of the frame. Object (and objectives) became completely sidelined in my attempts to either “wow” the viewer or overcome the strictures of the camera itself. The whole carton of prints from this period seems to be a chronicle of a man who has lost his way and is too stubborn to ask directions. And of the few technically acceptable images in this cluster of shots, fewer still can boast that the stereoscopic element added anything to the overall impact of the subject matter. Can I have that drink now?
A few years later, I would eventually acquire a 1950’s-vintage Sawyer camera (designed to make amateur View-Master slides), which would allow me to control shutter speed, film type, and depth of field. And a few years after that, my stereo shots started to be pictures first, thrill rides second. Grateful as I was for the improved flexibility, however, the Argus’ cramped frame had, indeed, taught me to be pro-active and deliberate in planning my compositions. Learning to shoot inside that cramped visual phone booth meant that, once better cameras gave me back the full frame, I had developed something of an eye for where to put things. Even in 2D, I had become more aware of how to draw the eye into a flat shot.
Today, as I have consigned 3D to an occasional project or two, the lessons learned at the hands of the cruel and fickle Argus serve me in regular photography, since I remain reluctant to trust even more advanced cameras to make artistic decisions for me. Thus, even in the current smorgasbord of optical options, I feel that, in every shot, I am still the dominant voice in the discussion.
That makes all those “almosts” worth while.
Almost.
Bartender? Another round.
Thoughts?
