Film Cameras: A brief history, and stellar images created with it

GRAFLEX Speed Graphic  | 1948-1958 
“Get a Speed Graphic….with a camera like that, the cops will assume that you belong on the scene and will let you get behind police lines,” said the celebrated press photographer Weegee who prowled the seedy underbelly of Manhattan’s Lower East Side at night with a Graflex and a flashbulb during the 1930s and ’40s. Truly serious photojournalists used the Graflex, despite it being a slow process that took practice. Nothing in the Graphic was automated; the operation of manually changing out each film holder, opening the shutter, cocking the focal plane, removing the dark slide, focusing the camera and releasing the focal plane could be very time consuming. If you didn’t pay attention, you could double expose, shoot blanks, fog previous exposures or shoot out of focus images, or miss a shot completely.