More Images from the Forties

If you have looked here over the past few months you may have already seen the galleries I made with some negatives I found in old film containers.  My best guess is that this was from a family centered around Saint Joseph, Illinois. And were mostly taken during the 1940's.  Here are some of the other galleries:

Found Negatives
Found Film 2
A 1940's Visit to the Country
Family Reunion at Crystal Lake Park

This roll of negatives is all of people. Some of whom you may have seen before in other galleries, and at least one new family member.

When I first saw this image the word, "King Baby" popped into my head.

Notice the women reflected in the mirror.  I was hoping that I might also be able to see the photographer in the reflection, however I could not.  Still don't know what camera was used for these pictures. 

This couple and the child have been other rolls of film. Until now I had thought thin ties were the fashion of the Forties.

I don't mean to be unkind, however my first thought about this image is that she reminds me of Margaret Hamilton from the Wizard of Oz.

Lastly, here is a man who makes some appearances on other rolls.  He appears to be in the Army Air Forces. I talked some about him in an earlier post.




















So far I have scanned maybe ten rolls of film for the images in the various galleries.  And while they all have been very curled, along with dust spots and scratches, they again show films value for the long-term storing of images.

Family Reunion at Crystal Lake Park

It is not easy to see, however there is another photographer at this event.  The man in the middle is holding some kind of TLR.  TLR's were a popular style of camera in the 40's and 50's.









I had not scanned any of the rolls of negatives that I bought earlier this year in a while.  So last night I figured it was time.  What I found in the next roll appears to be a family reunion that took place at Crystal Lake Park in Urbana Illinois. Going by the cars and the clothes the time appears to be in the late 1940's.  There aren't any images that stand out like the little girl with the gun, or the couple hopefully just carving a turkey from past found film. Still it is pretty good coverage of a type of event that I think was once more popular than it is today.

Looks like there was a good turnout.

There was even some live music. Radio or recorded music wasn't easily portable in those days.














These negatives were in the best shape of any of this group that I have scanned so far.  They required very little in the way of cleaning up.

Here is the rest of the Family Reunion Gallery.

Agfa Ansco PB20 Plenax

Made: 1934 to 1938
Film: PB20 which equals 620
Lens: Hypar Anastigmat 75mm f6.3
Shutter: Wollensak Plenax 
Shutter speeds: T, B, 1/25, 1/50, 1/100
















Another camera that I got in a box with some other stuff.  It sat around for months before I took a good look at it.  When I did I was most surprised to find that the bellows seemed to still be good.  I couldn't find even a little pinhole.  Considering that this is a cloth bellows and nearly 80 years old that was amazing to me.  The lens was also clear and the shutter sounded okay.  So I realized that there wasn't any reason I could not take some pictures with it. 

The Agfa Ansco PB20 Plenax is one of those cameras that uses the discontinued 620 film.  So I had to wind some 120 film onto a 620 spool. I am actually getting pretty comfortable doing that now that I have some practice.  For this experiment I used Tmax 400.  Because of the slow shutter speeds of the Plenax I would have liked to use a 100 IS0 film, however the Tmax is what I had on hand.  Fortunately the day became cloudy and the light became acceptable for this camera and film combination.

The Plenax may look more imposing in the image at the top than it is in reality. For a medium format camera it is almost pocket size.  The Plenax was an inexpensive camera in its day, however it appears to have been well-made. I suppose some evidence of that is in the fact that it is still functional after almost 80 years.  I have no sales figures, however I would guess that a lot of these were sold.  I have three of them that have been thrown in with other stuff, so I would guess they must be plentiful.  The other two are made for 616 film and are larger than the 620 version.

The Plenax makes 8 2 1/4 x 3 1/4 negatives.  That was a common format for snapshot cameras back then.  The reason was that images would be printed directly from the negatives without enlargement.  If you have come across snapshots from that era you might have noticed 2 1/4 x 3 1/4 is a common size. 

I found myself pleasantly surprised by the Agfa Ansco PB20 Plenax.  Especially for a medium format camera it is easy to carry around.  And the images it gives are while not outstanding, are still much better than I expected.  One thing I would like is a faster shutter speed than 1/100.  A funny thing to me at least, is that I have gotten to where the range focusing for this camera isn't much of an issue for me.  I have used enough cameras of this sort that I am now used to it.  At least for general shooting I have found that getting familiar with distant/aperture/depth of field combinations for the camera frees me from having to figure out exactly how far away things are most of the time.  So my conclusion is that I can see why the Agfa Ansco PB20 Plenax was a popular camera back in the day.  And it's not a bad camera to use today.  I honestly don't know if I would ever actually seek one out, however I am glad that this one did turn up.

Anhydrous ammonia tanks are a frequent site in rural Illinois this time of year.

More Found Film and some World War II History

Since I found some old negatives in a box of film containers I bought a few weeks ago I have been working on doing scans to see what images they hold. The negatives are extremely curled from decades spent wound up in a film container.  It takes some patience to coax the negatives into a film holder so they lay flat enough to scan.  Until you have actually experienced it you might not believe the spring that a strip of coiled up film has.  Because of that the scanning has been slow work.  And if it wasn't that some of the images I have found are very interesting to me I would have little enthusiasm for it. 

The most recent roll that I scanned had an image that helped me better tell when it was taken and also made me feel more connected to that time. 

As I was editing this photo I noticed that there was a Blue Star Flag in the entrance of the house.  You will probably need to click for the larger size to be able to see it.  The Flag is to the left above the soldier's head.  I remember hearing about these from my grandmother, however I had never seen one.  There also is a Gold Star Flag for families who lost a member in the war.  Unfortunately my grandmother became eligible to display both flags. The Blue Star Flag is a flag that families with members in the military can display. There is one star for each family member in the service. Although this started during World War I and continues to this day it was most frequently done during during World War II. The movement to display these flags was started by the Blue Star Mothers of America. This group first organized in March of 1942.  So my speculation is that while it is possible that a Blue Star Flag might be displayed at a later date it is most likely that it was displayed during WWII.  So that would date this picture from somewhere between 1942 and 1945.  The climbing rose in the picture may indicate that the picture was taken in early summer probably June.  At least that is when most of the climbing roses grown at that time tended to bloom.

                                                                         
                             

The Badge on his shoulder appears to be for the Army Air Forces.  The Army Air Forces existed from 1942 until 1947.  So this again points to the likelihood that this picture was taken between 1942 and 1945.  At least that is my best educated guess and I could well be off.  if someone has better information I would be glad to hear it.  I imagine that someone who is familiar with the uniforms of the time could also tell about the wings on the shirt and the meaning of the hat badge. 

Lastly, there is this photo from some that I had uploaded earlier.  While this man resembles the man in the earlier photos, he does look older to me.  I am wondering if this is a brother represented in the other blue star? Although the service ribbons that aren't present in the other pictures could just mean this is a later picture of the same man after the experience of war had aged him more quickly than I would have expected to occur within the likely time frame for these pictures. 

Hopefully one day I may be able to find out more about these pictures instead of speculating about them.  To me it is a wonder that these negatives have survived for around 70 years.  I wonder how many of our digital photos will still be around in that many years.  One difference with these negatives and film found in cameras is that I am pretty sure that the people in these pictures saw and may still have prints made from these negatives.  In most of the film containers there is a little piece of paper with negative numbers that indicates a certain number of prints were made.

The entire gallery is here.

Upset Stomach Prevents a Profound Post Today

During the night my stomach was bending me to its will in various unpleasant ways.  I feel better now, however I am low in energy so my plan to reflect on why I decided to do a blog will be put off to another day. Instead I think it is a good day to share a couple of things I have come across in the way of images.

The first is a collection of digital images that the Villa Grove Public library has listed.  Actually the library is called the Camargo Township Library, however I call it Villa Grove because it is in Villa Grove Illinois.  Villa Grove was for a site of maintenance of Steam Engines for the Chicago and Eastern Illinois Railroad. When the age of steam died out in the 1950's the shops in Villa Grove were closed. Some ruins still remain of the roundhouse and a few shop buildings.  The wonderful thing about the images in the Camargo Township collection is that they show the time when the shops were thriving.

Man holding flowers in the C&EI shops. I wish I knew the story behind this image.










I took the image above from the collection and cleaned it up and enhanced it some back when I was learning more about Photoshop.  I was particularly interested in the railroad images because my grandfather worked for the C&EI most of his life.  There also are images for local people, for something called the Pancake Festival, and for reunions of the Villa Grove High School classes.
Digital Images at the Camargo Township Library

I think the Camargo Township Library and its volunteers should be commended for making the effort to put these resources online.

One of my favorite sets of images on Flickr is from Flickr user GaleChicago . The images are from a road trip that she made in 1975 through central Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin.  They were taken with a Minolta SRT 101 on Tri-X.  I feel they are wonderfully evocative of the time.  Also the set contains the only photos that I know of for the departed Philo Illinois Dog & Suds.  Viewing these photos was partially an inspiration for me to do B&W film again.
Small Towns, 1975

Gale is also responsible for saving the sign for the Chuck Wagon Diner formerly in Champaign Illinois, now in Princetown, New York.
Chuck Wagon Sign Leaving Chicago For New York

March of the Toy Cameras

Toy may be the kindest categorization that these cameras get. Here I am talking about the simple amateur-oriented cameras of the age before digital. Still when looked at in the long arc of human history these cameras are a marvel. If in the middle-ages you had a Polaroid Color Pack and a supply of film you might have been seen as a great wizard or as somebody to be burned at the stake.

Throughout most of the time in which there have been people it has been very hard to make images or save descriptions of the things that mattered to us. I used to wonder why in the Bible there are few if any descriptions of what the people looked like. I thought maybe appearance didn't matter as much to the ancients as much as it seems to matter to us today.  Then I realized that in those times the materials to write on were often expensive and making copies was a pain. So it is likely that only what was essential was recorded. I have not researched this, however I would not be surprised if descriptions of people in literature did not become common until the printing press and cheap paper became available.

And while making and transmitting verbal descriptions used to be hard, making illustrations was even harder.  Even though literacy was rare in the olden days someone with the skill to make a reasonable representative of what he saw was probably even rarer. Today ancient forms of illustration like the reliefs in the Parthenon or the statutory in a Gothic Cathedral are still admired. However I think it is hard for us to appreciate that at one time such illustrations were about the only show in town.

The birth of photography in the 1830's started a progression to where almost anyone could capture an image of what mattered to him.  By the 1950's in the US almost every family had at least one of the simple box cameras that we now call toys.  Most of the time you could take a decent photo with these cameras without a lot of expense or trouble.  You could even make copies of your images to send out to family and friends.  An amazing advance that seems to have been quickly taken for granted and probably is under-appreciated.

Maybe some day in the distant future someone will come across a cache of ancient photos from the 50's and 60's and wonder why all the children were gathered around a circular object with burning candles on it. I imagine even then there will be little appreciation for the cameras that made this puzzle possible.

  


Taken with Kodak Duaflex II

Taken with Kodak Duaflex II




















More Information about the Kodak Duaflex II at Matt's Classic Cameras.