CHANGES COME TO THE AVEDON STUDIO
CLICK HERE for the previous entry in this thread.
After I became Richard Avedon's studio manager in early 1962, I began adopting new photographic technologies that were cutting edge in that pre-digital era — but may be more than a bit quaint today. If these things fascinate you for historical reasons, stay with me. Otherwise, you might find something of interest elsewhere on this blog. Or not.
This may get somewhat technical. You have been warned.
Actually, we had already adopted the Thomas Strobe Meter(photo, right, in its carry case) a year earlier, in 1961. Until then, getting a correct exposure with electronic "strobe" lights was a hit-or-miss experience. Oh, there was an earlier meter made by, I think, General Radio, but it was a nightmare to use. Fred Thomas, a photographer with a background in electronics, set about solving the problems and invented a compact unit that really worked. Other photographers took note, and asked him to build them one, too. Soon Fred set up the Thomas Instrument Company to manufacture these goodies. With this hand-held unit, all you had to do was walk out on the set, aim the meter at the camera lens, and fire off a flash. It then told you the exact f/stop, to a small fraction, to use. And it was deadly accurate. Of course, it worked on analog principles and used tiny vacuum tubes, so it had to be "warmed up" and "zeroed in" before use. Today's meters are smaller, all digital, and usually measure both flash and ambient light.
Soon after that, in late 1961, we began using BALCAR portable studio strobes for location work. These were a immense improvement over the ASCOR units we used in the studio — which weighed a ton (or more!), occupied at least 12 square feet of floor space, moved on casters, and required a special high-voltage electric feed. Each BALCAR unit (and we had about six of them) put out 1,200 joules of discharge power, recycled in about two seconds, could be plugged into just about any household outlet, and was light weight and easy to carry. For comparison, typical flashes on cameras put out a mere 20 joules, if that much. BALCARs were made in France and imported by the abovementioned Thomas Instrument Company.
For outdoor and other ambient light conditions, we had been using the industry-standard Norwood Director meter, which was good but never quite accurate enough, especially for cosmetic photography where precise skin tones were critical. Then in 1963 the Spectra meter became available. It was somewhat like the Norwood, but more sensitive and with finer gradations. So I ordered one for the studio. A few days later the famous photographer Alfred Eisenstadt was visiting, saw it laying on a table, and said in his German accent "Ach, you have the hundred-dollar meter!" To which the boss turned to me and shouted "You paid a hundred dollars for a meter?" At this time Norwoods cost about thirty. But he was so happy with the results that he forgave this bit of extravagance.
Then there was the matter of the huge studio camera, a wooden 8x10 Deardorff that was cumbersome to operate. First you had to open both the shutter and lens, compose the picture on the ground glass, then close the shutter, set the f/stop, put in the film holder, and pull the slide. This operation was repeated for each exposure. When a new model SINAR 8x10 camera came on the market, I explained to Avedon how it would speed things up as most of these steps were now automatic. Inserting a film holder caused the shutter to close and the lens to go to its pre-determined stop. Removing the holder opened everything up again. Reluctantly, he agreed to purchase this shiny Swiss beauty along with a new 300 mm Schneider Symmar lens, which together cost several thousand dollars.
Several darkroom improvements were also made at this time, which are discussed on the "How We Did It" entry. CLICK HERE TO VIEW.
And now for the biggie. Having gained confidence from implementing these small improvements (and not getting fired!) I went whole hog and asked him to invest in a new, unproven, and thoroughly unconventional color film processing machine that Kodak said wouldn't work.
I first heard of the Color Automat(photo, right) from Fred Thomas, the genius behind the strobe meter and by now an importer of strange professional studio gear from Europe. He had seen it at a trade fair in Germany, and wanted to be its U.S. distributor. But first he needed a leading photographer to adopt it before the others would follow. The natural choice was Avedon.
The macine was ordered with the understanding that if it didn't meet specifications, back to Hamburg it would go. It arrived via Lufthansa on a pallet, complete with two technicians who spent the next two days installing and testing it.
Until then, all professional color processing was done using the nitrogen-burst system in which the film hung in a large tank of chemicals as bursts of nitrogen gas were released from a bottom manifold. This moved the chemicals around the film surface without oxidation, as nitrogen is inert in this regard. The Color Automat, on the other hand, sloshed the film around in a drum, in and out of a puddle of chemicals, with just plain air touching it. Kodak was incredulous that we would even think of doing something this foolhardy. But the proof was in the results. In fact, Kodak sent a team of "experts" down from Rochester to watch as we processed 8x10, 120, 35mm and 16mm Ektachrome films.
The results were astonishing, the best film processing any of us had ever seen. I even wrote an enthusiastic article about it for Photo Methods for Industry magazine. That's me leaning on its control panel in the photo on the left.
For reasons best known to Avedon's accountant, the machine became a separate corporation, which we named Tech Photo Inc. It was still in operation several years after I left the studio in late 1965. More Color Automats were imported and sold to processing labs as well as to large studios, but in the end maintenance became a problem as Thomas Instrument went out of business for other reasons and there were no longer trained technicians to service the machines.
As a postscript, by 1965 Kodak began marketing a small color print paper processor for home use that used a suspiciously similar method — and no nitrogen!
Since 1963 I had been writing for two photographic trade magazines, Photographic Product News and Photo Methods for Industry. One of these articles concerned a state-of-the-art darkroom complex that I and Dick Balli (of Balcar fame) worked together on for the Paris office of Harper's Bazaar Magazine.
By the summer of 1964 it had become apparent that Harper's ancient Paris darkrooms were no longer viable, so since I was there to help cover the Fall Couture Collections, I was asked to design the new operation. This I later wrote up for the November 1965 issue of Photographic Product News(above).
Essentially, the problem was that literally hundreds of photos had to be processed and printed within a few days, and these had to be edited, laid out in pages, and prepared for the printer fast enough to meet the competition, namely Vogue Magazine, which had full facilities right there in Paris. They also came out every two weeks, whereas New York-based Harper's Bazaar was a monthly. Whoever got into circulation first got the ads. Speed was of the utmost concern.
Just as soon as the film was developed, the negatives were fed into a continuous contact printing machine that worked in tandem with a rapid-access stabilization processor, delivering damp-dry proof prints within minutes of the shooting. After choices were made, scaled layout prints were made using automatic equipment. At the same time, high-quality finish prints were being made in another room. Both were shipped by air to New York only hours after the photos were taken. Just days after the collections closed, the magazine was on the presses and enroute to newsstands.
Of course, today this is all ancient news. Digital photography is vastly more efficient and has rightfully won out. But I hope that the processes of the not-so-long-ago past are not forgotten, at least not for a while.
I stumbled across this page while looking for information about the Thomas Strobemeter 1b, a unit which I had just picked up from a flea market for 6€. It was cool to get a little bit of the history, but I'm eager to know more. Do you have any other titbits about this little bit of history?
Posted by: Jon Senior | October 18, 2008 at 03:12 PM