[rollei_list] Re: Pan or Ball
- From: David Sadowski <dsadowski@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 5 Mar 2009 09:19:58 -0600
Years ago, I met Torkel Korling, who invented what later became known
as the Tiltall tripod. He was an interesting character, and also was
one of the leading photographers of the 1930s.
He received three different patents related to photography. The first
was for the aperture mechanism we are all familiar with on SLRs. This
was first used on a Graflex camera.
This invention allowed you to see what you were doing via an SLR lens
at open aperture, and then the aperture stops down to your preset
f-stop the instant the picture is taken. He said he got the idea for
this when photographing children, who tend not to stand still.
Mr. Korling told me that the Japanese camera makers did not want to
pay him a royalty for his invention, so they waited until it expired
and then it appeared on all their cameras starting in the 1950s.
If you look at his tripod patent from WWII, the drawings look exactly
like what was later sold under the brand name Tiltall, although I
don't know if he got any royalties from that either.
He was peddling his third invention when I met him (Triaxial camera
mount - US Patent 4341452), but this seemed to me much less practical
than his other two. He was looking to partner up with someone who
could make and sell the thing for him, but I don't know if he ever
did.
Anyway, Korling was a top industrial photographer in the 1930s, but he
also did a lot of work for the early Life magazine, including one
cover where he talked them into leaving the Life logo off(!)
I saw a bunch of his pictures in an exhibit one time showing the
construction of the Johnson Wax facility in Wisconsin that was
designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. He was later a very notable nature
photographer who published his work in books, I think in conjunction
with the field Museum here in Chicago.
Mr. Korling died in 1998, aged 95. I met him when he was in his mid-80s.
I asked him what he thought of contemporary photographers and he said
he did not have much respect for them. Their approach, he said, is
completely the opposite of what his contemporaries did.
In the old days, film was expensive. So, he would set up his shot
exactly how he wanted it to be, and then he would take maybe one or
two pictures. That's it- he got what he wanted, and he didn't waste
any film.
By comparison, he noted that modern photographers took an endless
number of pictures without knowing what they really wanted, hoping to
find something usable out of quantity instead of concentrating on
quality.
---
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