In 1966 in Australia, some loyal die-hards still used the Speed Graphic. I was a staffer on The Australian and had been issued with a Mamiya twin lens camera but my heart had already gone out to the Nikon F and so I bought my own outfit (body, 28mm, 50mm and 135mm lenses). Actually we were banned from using 35mm because it was believed the format didn't offer enough quality but because I was working in a city (Melbourne) about 500km from the head-office supervision of what I used was minimal. They only ever saw the prints and I could easily produce what was required with 35mm.
Anyway, covering a major football (Australian Rules) Grand Final I was in a melee of photographers trying to get a shot of the winning team captain with the trophy raised over his head. Those of us using 35mm with wider lenses were getting in the way of the older guys with the Graphics. We were crouching and kneeling low to give them a view, but not low enough.. There was much shouting and abuse from behind us. A photographer at my elbow with a Nikon turned and insulted one of the Graphic users and turned back to take a shot. As he did the lens board of a Speed Graphic came down on his head with a loud bang and he keeled over onto the grass. The Graphic user having disposed of the 35mm upstart didn't miss a beat, turning his camera from a weapon to cut a space in the crowd of bodies, he then put it to the use it was designed for. It was just such a smooth action: bang, click:-)
Greetings from Van Diemens Land...
Since writing to you with those stories, Jo, I have been dredging my memory for more. I know I mentioned using the Graflex RB with the Big Bertha lens to photograph cricket, but that was only half the story. What I didn't tell you was that this particular sport bores me stiff. A test match runs for several days and it has been likened to watching paint dry (though with modern paints that is a more exciting activity when compared to cricket).
I was assigned to use that Graflex with another more experienced photographer and we took shifts of operating it for a couple of hours apiece. One would operate the camera while the other would be working in a makeshift darkroom processing, making prints, captioning them and putting them, on the picture transmitter. Two hours seemed like an eternity to remain alert for some eventual quick flurry of action, a catch or a batsman caught or bowled out. the great thing was that you didn't have to follow the action because the large negative and the distance we were from the game meant it would be there on the film. All you had to do was respond with lightning reflexes and fire the shutter.
During my shift on the camera I caught quite a reasonable action shot, nothing so special that it would require immediate developing, so I settled down to wait for something better. My colleague was following the action downstairs in the darkroom on the radio. Suddenly there was a spectacular catch and I triggered the camera. Hearing it on the radio and knowing that this was a pivotal moment in the game, my colleague rushed up to see whether I had caught the picture. I turned and gave him a "thumbs-up" and he grabbed the dark slide and raced off to process it.
Fifteen minutes later he was back with a look of thunder on his face. It was then I discovered that I had forgotten to reverse the dark slide between shots. I had double-exposed! I was mortified. He barely exchanged a word with me for the next three days.