Garand Picture of the Day, 29 Jan

[Dan Wilson]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v721/FTFFTW/War%20Photos/Korea/Garand/KoreanWardiggingin.jpg

[Bill D]

Dang, Dan! That one got a little bigger than life! Is the cold getting to you? LOL

[Dan Wilson]

Did the picture come out too large on your computer?
If it did I will try to downsize (decrease the resolution) a little farther on future pics if its a problem.

I already drop them to roughly 85% resolution from the originals, I am not sure what kind of cameras the signal corp were using, 70 mm or something about that size I would guess, but they sure weren't shot with a run of a mill 35mm camera.

[Bill D]

Normally they are good on my confuser but I had to reduce this one to 50% to get most of it on the screen. Not a big problem. I really appreciate your doing the photos. After working all day in the cold, I don't know how you manage it.

Again, Thanks -

[Dan Wilson]

Actually I really like to do the hunt for pics and prep them to publish on the site, its my relaxation :) (besides that, I moved the computer out of the "unheated" living room back out to our trailer where there is some strange thing called heat LOL)

I think that picture I screwed the pooch and linked it up before I reduced the size, it was about ten minuted before I realized I messed up and reduced the resolution.

[rcnixon]

I would bet on a "Speed Graphic" or a "Century Graphic". The first is a 4X5 sheet film format and the second is a 2 1/4 X 3 1/4 roll film format. The Speed Graphics were a blacked-out model called the "Combat Graphic". When I was a young photographer, the family doctor, who was also a friend of the family, gave me a complete Combat Graphic kit. It had the camera, many double-sided 4X5 film holders, the flash bar, a developing tank and film hangers for the tank, all in a leatherette covered wood box about 2'X14"X12". His son later asked for the kit back and I gave it to him. Like those who sell guns and later regret it, I have always regretted that but I do think it was the right thing to do.

I took some very nice photos with that camera and the resolution was fabulous, especially with a slower film like Plus-X. I actually borrowed a telephoto lens once and shot a football game from the sidelines. The details, like the leather grain on the ball were amazing. There was a shutter in the lens that was synch'ed for the flash and strobe and the high-speed shutter was a massive, wind-up focal plane device about the size of a bedsheet!

Those Signal Corps photographers were lugging around some real "stuff". They made beautiful pictures under some of the most adverse conditions imaginable.

Russ

[Doug Douglass]

The 4x5 Graflex is what I used in the USCG. This weekend at our Smokey Mountain Gun Show I will have a display table with a US Army issue 4x5 combat Graphic, a Graflex K20 aerial 4x4 camera and the Signal Corp gear that goes with it all.

[Dan Wilson]

My father in law was a photographer during WWII who spent most of his time in Panama playing the "nonchalant spy photographer" kind of thing (quietly tracking who came and went and what ship what going where), I would have asked him but unfortunately he passes about 8 years ago.