Do you remember photography in the 1970's?

[John Perriment]

Born in the 1950's, it was in the 1970's that I really became interested in photography. Obviously a lot has changed technically, but also fads and fashions have changed. Here are some of my memories of the 1970's.

*Using my Dad's old Zeiss Ikonta with a Weston Master, which metered in Weston film speeds and had to be converted to DIN (the forerunner of ASA, then ISO).

*Cokin graduated filters in tobacco, fluorescent pink, green, blue, purple, orange - in fact any colour you can think of apart from a tuely neutral grey!

*Starburst and prism filters, oh what great effects!

*Adhesive rubber light baffle kits, often necessary for Soviet cameras which came with standard light leaks, and often irregular winding - sometimes, if you were lucky, with overlapping frames.

*Shooting ISO 400 film was fast. GAF 500 gave you grain like golf balls.

*Olympus were a major camera manufacturer. You saw far more OM1s and OM2s being used than Canons or Nikons.

*The Olympus Trip and the catch-phrase "Who do you think you are, David Bailey?"

*Most print films from Olympus Trips had a Christmas tree at either end and a summer holiday in the middle.

*Magazines like Amateur Photograper, Practical Photography, SLR Photography, Photo Technique, Photo Answers. The first two have proved to be very enduring, but oh for the days of Victor Blackman and Ron Spillman.

*Ever ready cases, cynically known by some as "Never ready" cases.

*Mercury batteries with which we could polute the environment with impunity.

*The little yellow boxes which came back from Kodak after about 2 weeks with 36 slides, of which you would keep 2 or 3.

*The significance of "PO Box 64, Hemel Hempstead."

*Hemel Hempstead was en route when driving west from Essex, before the M25 was built. If I remember correctly, it had a curious double roundabout.

*Scotland was even wilder and more photogenic than it is today, with more ferries, less bridges and more single track roads with passing places. Also, I could afford the petrol to get up there.

*Dedicated flashguns were a new idea and often just meant that a "flash ready" light appeared in the viewfinder. Most flash photographers used Vivitar 283s

*There was a profusion of 3rd party lenses available for almost every mount, from brands such as Vivitar, Tamron, Tokina, Hanimax, Cosina, Mitakon, Paragon, Soligar, Bushell, Bell and Howell, Kiron to name but a few.

*Auto diaphrams and open aperture metering were hi-tech.

*Seperate, bolt on auto-winders enabled you to shoot at a rapid 2 frames a second and the much more expensive motordrives provided a lightening fast 5fps.

Anyone of the same generation got any other memories to add to this list?

[David M]

Re: Do you remember photography in the 1970's?

You forgot Camera Weekly, Camera, Camera User, Creative Photography and the BJP magazines although a couple of those could be from the 80's.

And I think the David Bailey line is from the 80's.

[David M]

Re: Do you remember photography in the 1970's?

The plethora of medium format systems from Bronica, Mamiya, Pentax, Hasselblad and others.

And there was a dozen or so makers of large format cameras.

[OlyPaul]

Re: Do you remember photography in the 1970's?

I was a late starter John and did not get into photography till 1992 and before that it was a Kodak Instamatic.

So I'm not as experienced as you John even though I'm older. but a lot of those things still applied to the early 90's.

[John Perriment]

Re: Do you remember photography in the 1970's?

You forgot Camera Weekly, Camera, Camera User, Creative Photography and the BJP magazines although a couple of those could be from the 80's.

And I think the David Bailey line is from the 80's.

Thanks, David, my memory lets me down at times. I need a new hard drive!

[David M]

Re: Do you remember photography in the 1970's?

I only remember some of the magazines because I was featured/published in some of them.

Remember when you had a choice of a heavy aluminium case or a poorly made gadget bag with little or no padding.

[jamie allan]

Re: Do you remember photography in the 1970's?

I was working as a radio/TV/audio technician in a Glasgow school from 74-79 and was asked to look after the camera club equipment. My quid pro quo was that I was allowed use the equipment when others weren't using it. That introduced me to the Konica Autoreflex TC and the Konica C35. I then was introduced to the education support centre who loaned out OM-1's. That's when I really took to Olympus. I took loads of images of the destruction of the old Glasgow tenements in the 1970's only for them to be destroyed when they pulled down the school itself.

[John Perriment]

Re: Do you remember photography in the 1970's?

I was working as a radio/TV/audio technician in a Glasgow school from 74-79 and was asked to look after the camera club equipment. My quid pro quo was that I was allowed use the equipment when others weren't using it. That introduced me to the Konica Autoreflex TC and the Konica C35. I then was introduced to the education support centre who loaned out OM-1's. That's when I really took to Olympus. I took loads of images of the destruction of the old Glasgow tenements in the 1970's only for them to be destroyed when they pulled down the school itself.

It's a shame you lost those pictures of the destruction of the old tenements, they would have historical value now.

[Guest]

Re: Do you remember photography in the 1970's?

Hi John - As a reident of Hemel Hempstead I can tell you that it still has curious roundabout and it is not double, it is in fact a huge one at the the junction of six roads and at each junction there is a small roundabout at which one can go either left or right. On the first morning when it was opened there was utter confusion with people not knowing how to negotiate it and most people were late for work that morning. One can now easily recognise a driver new to the town as they hesitate quite a while at the small roundabout before deciding how to proceed.

[Kurt]

Re: Do you remember photography in the 1970's?

I obtained my first SLR during the 70s. It was a Zenit-B. I had no other equipment, but managed to bag some fine images of my children. Although I did use colour film, my favourite was high ISO mono film, taking images by window light.

[Ian]

Re: Do you remember photography in the 1970's?

In the 1970s I was a teenager at school and I spent many hours hidden away in a tiny dark room under the stairs in one of the classroom blocks Managed to skive off cross country runs and other sporting 'events' many a time this way!

I developed E-4 transparency film, which had the stage where you had to expose the film half way through the development proess. E-6 later did this chemically. I had a nice business in school developing class mates' films

Black and white was the staple of course and we often relied on cheap out of date film and paper (I have used Ilford HP3 that was well out of date even in the mid-70s!). But the late 70s did see some interesting innovations appear, like Ilford XP1-400 C-41 colour process (chromogenic) black and white film, plus Cibachrome.

I preferred centre-loading film dev tanks and had several Gepe tanks, loaders and reels.

One thing I am not sad to see the end of was screw thread lens mounts and stop-down metering!

In the late 70s I had a summer job in the local camera store; Marston & Heard in Lea Bridgr Road, Leyton. I later went back full time and ended up managing the store. I also managed another of the group's stores, Harringay Photographic, and under my management we won the Amateur Photographer Dealer of the Year award.

There is some background to the company and group I worked for here:

http://www.photomemorabilia.co.uk/Phototec.html

Cameras I can recall using at school: Canon FTb, Minolta SRT-101, Olympus 35RC, Minolta XE-1, Praktica LTL, Zenit B, Zenit E, Agfa Silette, - a couple of well-heeled friends had a Canon A-1, Minolta XD-7, and an Olympus OM-1 (about the time it first came out). Maybe after the 70s I also had lots of Miranda kit, like the Sensorex EE2 and DX-3, and quite a few lenses.

I can remember using very weird and wonderful lenses - lots of cheap manual T2-mount telephotos. 135mm lenses were very popular in those days. I had a 90-230mm zoom lens (not sure of the brand but it was the same one that was also branded Soligor). I lost it by leaving it on a Tube train 50mm standard lenses were all the rage of course. Wide angle was a 35mm, or, if you were really lucky, a 28mm. Later on I was lucky enough to briefly own a 21mm lens for my Mirandas.

At school I served a stints as treasurer and organiser of the school photogtraphic society and we put on exhibitions of members' work on school open days. And of course we were a vital source of photos for the school magazine

Yes, those were the days!

Ian

[David M]

Re: Do you remember photography in the 1970's?

Ian, ZP1 dates back to the early 80's, I was one of the field testers for Ilford prior to its launch. I think that was late 1980/early 1981 as I remember using it in the winter in North Wales.

[John Perriment]

Re: Do you remember photography in the 1970's?

In the 1970s I was a teenager at school and I spent many hours hidden away in a tiny dark room under the stairs in one of the classroom blocks Managed to skive off cross country runs and other sporting 'events' many a time this way!

I developed E-4 transparency film, which had the stage where you had to expose the film half way through the development proess. E-6 later did this chemically. I had a nice business in school developing class mates' films

Black and white was the staple of course and we often relied on cheap out of date film and paper (I have used Ilford HP3 that was well out of date even in the mid-70s!). But the late 70s did see some interesting innovations appear, like Ilford XP1-400 C-41 colour process (chromogenic) black and white film, plus Cibachrome.

I preferred centre-loading film dev tanks and had several Gepe tanks, loaders and reels.

One thing I am not sad to see the end of was screw thread lens mounts and stop-down metering!

In the late 70s I had a summer job in the local camera store; Marston & Heard in Lea Bridgr Road, Leyton. I later went back full time and ended up managing the store. I also managed another of the group's stores, Harringay Photographic, and under my management we won the Amateur Photographer Dealer of the Year award.

There is some background to the company and group I worked for here:

http://www.photomemorabilia.co.uk/Phototec.html

Cameras I can recall using at school: Canon FTb, Minolta SRT-101, Olympus 35RC, Minolta XE-1, Praktica LTL, Zenit B, Zenit E, Agfa Silette, - a couple of well-heeled friends had a Canon A-1, Minolta XD-7, and an Olympus OM-1 (about the time it first came out). Maybe after the 70s I also had lots of Miranda kit, like the Sensorex EE2 and DX-3, and quite a few lenses.

I can remember using very weird and wonderful lenses - lots of cheap manual T2-mount telephotos. 135mm lenses were very popular in those days. I had a 90-230mm zoom lens (not sure of the brand but it was the same one that was also branded Soligor). I lost it by leaving it on a Tube train 50mm standard lenses were all the rage of course. Wide angle was a 35mm, or, if you were really lucky, a 28mm. Later on I was lucky enough to briefly own a 21mm lens for my Mirandas.

At school I served a stints as treasurer and organiser of the school photogtraphic society and we put on exhibitions of members' work on school open days. And of course we were a vital source of photos for the school magazine

Yes, those were the days!

Ian

Some interesting memories and background information, Ian. I understand that Tokina made most of the lenses that were branded Soligar, Vivitar, Sun and Kiron. I expect you was gutted to leave it on the train.

You mention not being sorry to see the end of the screw mount; I can remember that debate raged at the time about potential long-term wear problems with bayonet mounts, leading to a slack fitting. These days that issue is not even on the agenda.

[Ian]

Re: Do you remember photography in the 1970's?

Ian, ZP1 dates back to the early 80's, I was one of the field testers for Ilford prior to its launch. I think that was late 1980/early 1981 as I remember using it in the winter in North Wales.

XP-1 400 Yes, you're right

Ian

[Barr1e]

Re: Do you remember photography in the 1970's?

I'm too young to remember!

Regards. Barr1e