Spiros Boikos

The evolution of the 35mm camera in the 20th century and the amateur

photographer

Introduction

Up to the introduction of the 35mm camera photographers worked mainly on large format

cameras of enormous (compared to the 35mm) proportions and consequently weight, which could

not be operated without a tripod. Their subjects and techniques where confined in mainly

landscapes (natural or urban) and portraits of aware about the photographic event (and of course

still!) people. Photography was either a profession or a hobby for the few ones that could afford the

high cost of a large format camera.

The 35mm camera enabled photographers to “take it to the streets” and shaped photography

as we today know it. Photojournalism and amateur photography are the two main genres which

shaped themselves as a direct result of the introduction of the small format. The camera was now

able to reach public groups, areas of the city and aspects of life which had not until then been

photographed, present them to the (usually middle of upper class) readers of magazines and shape

the public awareness of the social problems which either had to be reformed in the liberal or social-

democratic mass democracy of the 20th century or underlined the decay of the capitalist society and

the necessity of the socialist revolution which the leftists of the period anticipated in the west, after

the October Revolution in Russia.

In this essay we will try to trace how the decisions of the photographic industry in the 20th

century affected the large mass of 35mm cameras consumers, the amateur photographer and their

photographic experience, through the technical developments of this particular type of camera.
Technical characteristics and use of 35mm camera

The early small format cameras where very simple operating machines. Theirs controls

consisted of film advance, aperture selection, shutter time selection, focusing the lens and firing the

shutter.

The use of this camera demanded the evolution on the part of the photographer of the ability

to produce technically “right” pictures, i.e. the ability to use intentionally the possibilities of the

camera to record in film exactly what reality transmitted to the (emotional or intellectual)

sensibility of the photographer. In order to do that, the photographer should estimate the right

exposure, meaning to choose an aperture – shutter speed combination, focus the lens for the

distance between him and the subject and compose the picture.

i. Exposure calculation

Photography, as the name implies, is the recording of differences in light density on a photosensitive

surface. In order to obtain the most possible information on this surface, one should expose the

photosensitive surface so as the limits of the recording capacity of the surface to coincide with the

limits of the available light on the theme. Whats seems black in reality should appear black in print,

and what seems white should appear white. Even in art photography, in which obtaining maximum

information is rarely the goal, quite the opposite, one should have mastered exposure technique in

order to illuminate or darken the areas one wishes to be totally black or white.

Exposure calculation is possible by three ways: a) the use of a light meter, an electrical

device which measures existing light, b) the use of a non electrical device for metering the light and
c) the photographers acquired experience about the quantity of light in a particular scene.

Since no practical and/or accurate light meter was marketed until 1932, and non-electric

light meters were inaccurate and depended on the photographer's subjective perception or, for

worse, human eyesight limitation, varying from person to person (as in the case of extinction

meters) the photographer should develop “an eye for light”, should learn to “read” and understand

the light and estimate empirically the quantitative and qualitative differences of it in each particular

scene. Given that most photographic subjects lightwise fall into 12 distinct amounts of light

mastering this skill isn't particularly difficult for any photographer. But, when one has master it, one

of the basic aspects of photography, the expressive use of light, is then easily achieved.

ii. Focusing the lens

Since the camera uses a lens to manipulate the light hitting the photosensitive surface, the

operator of the camera should also master the technique of focusing, which consist in recording a

clear focused picture (even one not so in focus in some cases, as in a flattering portrait). Early

35mm cameras, such as Leica Standard (1932), didn't bare a rangefinder, but the photographer

could estimate (or measure) the distance between him and the subject, assisted by the technique of

zone focusing. There was an engravement on the “Leitz Elmar 1:3,5 F=50mm” lens which

accompanied the Leica standard, which showed what would appear in focus given the apperture

diameter and the focusing distance the photographer had chosen. Even after the rangefinder was

integrated in the 35mm camera, zone focusing could be used in extreme cases of rangefinder failure

or dim lighting conditions in which the rangefinder could not be used with accurate results. The use

of the zone focusing system and the inscriptions on the lens barel helped the photographer

understand and master another necessary aspect of photography, the expressive use of depth of

field, which consists in what should be in focus in a picture. Again, this skill is easily developed.
 iii.Composing the picture

The composition of a photograph, in much the same way as with a painting, is the

organization of the forms in a pleasing for the eye manner, which will include in the picture all the

basic elements the photographer wants to capture. The subject of choice here plays an important

part regarding the difficulty of this enterprise. When one wants to photograph a stationary subject

one can take his/her time, provided at least that the light of the scene doesn't change. But when the

subject is a fleeting moment of time, like an action or a street scene, or even an expression of a face

or a gesture, the photographer faces a serious limitation.

The film advance knob (or it's evolution in the 50's the film advance lever) armed the shutter

and advanced the film by a capture at a time. The required time for this operation is about 2 seconds

for the knob and one for the lever. One or two seconds when trying to photograph a fleeting scene is

a great amount of time. So photographers had to develop a technique to compensate for this

technical limitation of the camera.

The most famous proposal for the photographer to overcome this limitation is Henri Cartier

Bresson's concept of the “Decisive moment” which appeared for the first time in Henri Cartier

Bresson's book “Images à la sauvette” in 1952,and gave the book it's english title.

Cartier-Bresson writes: “To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of

a second, of the significance of an event, as well as of a precise organisation of forms which give

that event its proper expression.”

This recognition happens in a fraction of a second because time and things happening inside

it's coordinates is constantly changing. As Cartier Bresson says in another part of the book “you

cannot develop and print a memory”.

Thus, if there exists a specific portion of time in place where a good photograph exists, and,

since arming your shutter again would require at least a second of time, the photographer has to be

able to act exactly at this decisive moment, not a fraction of a second before or after, or else he has
to find a way to develop and print the memory of his lost moment. So photographers had to develop

an eye for the decisive moment, had to develop the skill to recognize the significance of a scene and

the precise organization of it's formal elements. The technical limitations of their tool of trade

forced them to. Many master photographers of that time succeeded in that and lots of amateurs tried

to follow Cartier Bresson's guide of the time.

The early, fully manual 35 mm cameras where produced in vast amounts in the first half of

the 20th century. According to information by the company's archives, as seen in Stephen Gandy's

“Leica Screw Mount Serial Numbers 1923-1965”, production figures for Leica alone in the

mentioned period were nearly a million. Millions of amateur and professional photographers around

the world mastered the use of this manual operated camera and developed the necessary skills for

obtaining pleasing pictures. In this early period of the 35mm camera democratization of

photography was achieved by factories which provided affordable cameras for the masses and the

development on the part of the individual photographer of the necessary skills for adequate self

documentation and artistic expression.

Evolution of the 35mm camera and the consumeristic approach

Numerous technical inventions followed the introduction of the small format camera in the 20th

century. Where in the beginning rangefinder cameras where the norm, 20th century ends with three

main types of small format camera, the same three types which dominate the camera market

(though in digital form now) up until today. The two most common being the compact and the

single lens reflex camera, although the descendant of the rangefnder is still around.

The basic innovations of the period after the introduction of 35mm camera and up to the end of 20th

century where:
 – The introduction of a rangefinder (an optical device for the measurement of distance

between the photographer and the subject)

– The replacement of the film advance knob by the faster film advance lever

– The introduction of the faster and more accurate leaf shutter instead of the focal plane

shutter

– the introduction of the pentaprism viewfinder which eliminated the problems caused by

parallax by composing the picture through the lens instead of the separate window

viewfinder.

– The introduction of integrated light meter

– The introduction of electric (and later electronic) circuit which enabled flash

synchronization, electronic shutter speed control, electronic auto focus systems, various

program modes (aperture priority, shutter priority, auto mode) and the film advance motor

drive.

The problems that these innovations declared to technically free the photographer from were

already solved by the operators of the first cameras, the artistic or journalistic achievements of some

have yet to be surpassed. Characteristically, Kostas Balafas, a great Greek photographer of the 20th

century, once ordered a special made SLR camera, which would lack the integrated lightmeter

because as he said “Light meter confuses me. It gets an coincidental light and it gives you different

things from what you want. So we ordered through the local representative of the company a

camera lacking the light meter...” (Astrapellou,2010) (transl. S.B)

But the trend in photographic industry was different. As George Eastman, founder of Kodak

company had already understood by the end of the 19th century * , the photography industry could

reach out to a much bigger market, that of the trademark photograph of the consumeristic society,

the family snapshot. Consequently, the 35mm camera went through so many changes in order to

* The Kodak slogan of the time was: You press the button and we do the rest
allow to virtually everyone to snap a decent exposed and focused picture of one's family or holiday

that from the fully manual Leica of the 1930's to the program cameras of the last decade of the 20th

century, in which was sometimes impossible to be set to fully manual control.

Along with the evolution of the 35mm “professional” camera, like the Leica and Leica type

rangefinder cameras and later SLR's, went the evolution of various types of “amateur” cameras,

from the Kodak Brownie of 1900 to the point-and-shoot electronic cameras of the end of the

century. The cameras had very few or any at all controls and were the embodiment in terms of

photographic equipment of the Kodak slogan. But their image quality was often poor due to the lack

of control of the photographic result on the part of photographer and the cheap lenses used to keep

costs low.

Camera manufacturers tried to get their share of the snapshot market by offering

“professional grade” 35 mm cameras that needed little or no expertise on the part of the

photographer to get an image of adequate quality. In the last two decades of the century

“professional grade” SLR cameras could be operated by anyone with a finger to press the shutter

release button.

While it is accurate that these advances in camera production democratized photography

allowing use of the camera by the uninitiated citizen, at least of the western consumeristic societies,

it is also true that these technological and managerial decisions acted often in expense of the

technical knowledge of the photographer, perhaps even in expense of the quality of the artistic

product in the case of the amateur art photographer.

The introduction of the auto mode, in which the cameras computer decided about the

exposure, the apperture-shutter speed combination, and in some extreme cases even the focus, with

the ease of use it promised, freed the photographers of the necessity of developing the skills

required for the use of early 35mm cameras. But since this uniformly programmed cameras made

all the important decisions besides the ones regarding the composition, the pictures these cameras
made where hopelessly identical.

The photographer then had to find out (counter intuitively) that it was in favour of the

photographic result to use his own judgment about the parameters of the exposure, focus and

composition that the state-of-the-art camera's he had bought, after many exposed, developed and

printed “lifeless” rolls of film, after reading several books on photographic technique and, if he or

her wasn't informed or suspicious enough, several costly “upgrades” of equipment. As Michael F. O'

Brien and Norman Sibley note: The big advantage of a manual camera is that you always control

what it is doing. You make the decisions, and the camera does what you tell it to do. As a result, you

will learn what works and what doesn't. You will also make mistakes (which is how you learn).

(O'Brien & Sibley, 1995, 37)

In the end, the photographer could hope to reach just the level of expertise that the

photographers of the 30's and 40's had reached before him or her, but he or she would have

invested more time and money than them, plus the frustrations he or she had had in the process.

Conclusion

While some of the innovations in the design of the 35mm camera during the 20th century

were of significant help to certain categories of professional photographers (as the introduction of

the motor drive which could achieve up to 10 frames per second for the sports and action

photographers), many of these, especially the various electronic program modes, in reality made it

more costly and difficult to the main consumer of this camera, the amateur photographer, to find his

way to technical adequity so as to document his or hers life and expres artistically his or herself

The marketing and managerial decisions of camera manufacturing companies during the

second half of the 20th century confused the amateur photographer, selling him or her cameras with

features that eased only his way out of what the cameras of the first half of the century and their
technical limitations helped the photographers of the time achieve. The democratization of

photography achieved in the first half of the century was reversed in the name of ease of operation.

Photographers would separate into patricians who knew how to exploit the potential of the camera

and plebeians who would always be disappointed by their snapshots, or, for worse, convinced that

these were “good pictures” taken with a “good camera”.

Bibliography

Astrapellou Marilena, 2010, “Kostas Mpalafas, history in black and white”, Vimagazino, issue 524,

p. 42-47, 31/10/2010.

Cartier Bresson Henri, 1952, The decisive moment, Simon and Schuster / Verve, New York / Paris

Gardy Steven, 1999, rev. 2003, “Leica Screw Mount Serial Numbers 1923-1965”,[online] available

at <http://www.cameraquest.com/ltmnum.htm>

O'Brien F. Michael,Sibley Norman, 1995, The Photographic Eye : learning to see with a camera,

Davis Publications, Worcester, Massachusetts U.S.A.

Ollinger James, n.d., “Who Invented the Modern Exposure Meter?”,[online], available at

<http://www.jollinger.com/photo/meters/other/invention.html>