Back in the Longago, press photographers tended to use zone focusing. That is, the police would have a line outside the door where the recently indicted Archbishop of Gastric Reflux was to appear following his appearance in Court on the charges of pawning the Cathedral's silver. Well, these guys knew the 'zone of confusion' for their particular set-up and knew the distance and could make a fine estimate of how the picture should be taken, so all they had to do when the defendant appeared in his purple garb, smiling like Al Capone was to get the fellow in their viewfinder and shoot. This was still common up through the 1960's, though today's press photographers tend to look blank when you mention the 'zone of confusion'.
The same system worked for event photography. When you were shooting a game or a race, you set your camera in advance for a given location and took a shot when the action got there. The BALTIMORE NEWS-AMERICAN always sent two guys to cover football games, with one setting his camera on one goal line and the other on the other line.
Of course, when a really hot event broke, these guys were trained NOT to flip over double film-holders to avoid the risk of double exposures. They would take a shot, then drop the film holder on the ground and put in a fresh one and pull out the dark slide and shoot the next one. These guys all had helpers to pick up the discarded holders.
Again, that was all back in the Longago. Marc msmall@xxxxxxxxxxxx Cha robh bàs fir gun ghràs fir! --- Rollei List - Post to rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx - Subscribe at rollei_list-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'subscribe' in the subject field OR by logging into www.freelists.org - Unsubscribe at rollei_list-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'unsubscribe' in the subject field OR by logging into www.freelists.org - Online, searchable archives are available at //www.freelists.org/archives/rollei_list
