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Photography Lessons from a $2.95 Camera
This 1951 article written for the Life Magazine is my answer to the critics who say that a waterproof camera is not good enough for recording their once in a lifetime vacations or action packed adventures. As always, I sincerely think that the artist is more important than the tool.
Action Pictures are Possible with Equipment Worth $2.95
Reproduction courtesy of Life Magazine (1951)
Camera equipment normally used by Hy Peskin for baseball coverage cost a thousand times price of his $2.95 Baby Brownie Special (bottom)
When Brownie camera was developed 51 years ago, the age of snapshot really began. With the simple black box camera anybody could take a picture and almost everybody did. But the results invariably were simple scenes of motionless subjects. Even now no one thinks of trying to take action pictures with a Brownie. That is left for ambitious camera bugs with money to spend on high speed equipment.
Hy Peskin, a man who spends a lot of money on the high speed equipment with which he takes his notable sports pictures, still has a high respect for the Brownie as a photographic tool. Not long ago he bought a Baby Brownie Special ($2.95) and used it to photograph a baseball doubleheader between the Phillies and the Cardinals. He discovered that the Brownie’s limitations are also advantages, especially for an amateur.
It has a permanent shutter speed of about 1/30 of a second, and it’s F15 lens is irrevocably set for eight feet to infinity. But this relieves the amateur photographer of making any decisions except what to shoot and when. The camera’s depth of focus gives perspective; the ye level view finder makes it fine for following action.
Naturally Hy Peskin knows more about action pictures than most other Brownie owners and he did not have the shots shown on these pages developed at the corner drugstore. But his Baby Brownie pictures should be a spur to the thousands of box camera owners who don’t know what they could do if they tried.
1) Camera Panned makes the runner sharp and blurs the background, giving atmosphere of violent action and often better effect than wholly sharp picture. In panning, a method of shooting action at a low shutter speed, the photographer follows a runner in view finder and snaps picture as camera moves.
2) Camera Stationary blurs the runner, leaves background and first baseman sharp but still communicates high action. Box camera is most limited when the action moves across its field, as in this shot. Peskin took as an experiment to see what effect it would produce. He prefers the panned shot above.
3) Depth of Focus in Brownie gives clarity and detail to both foreground and background. Here Peskin used this characteristic to show an “on-deck” batter practicing timing by swinging at pitches as though he were at the plate.
4) Shooting angle is exceedingly important in photographing motion with a Brownie. If the subject is running directly toward the camera (above) or directly away, the action can be stopped without producing blurred image.
5) Distant Action can be sharp when a close up picture would be blurred. Here, by drawing well back from the base home plate, Peskin caught Stan Musial hitting a home run. The action, tiny in the original print, was enlarged, a device which can sometimes compensate for the deficiencies of a Brownie camera.
6) Suspended Action can be caught at the moment when motion in one direction has stopped and new motion has not begun. Here a slide into third base, shot by expert-eyed Peskin at the split second when the base runner hot the bag, is sharp at the Baby Bronie shutter speed --- 1/30 of a second
7) Crowd Action should be taken head on when spectators are animated and so interested in what is happening in the game that they ignore the camera. Here faces in back rows came out with surprising clarity. In front row are the wife and baby of St. Louis Pitcher Crimian, who is winning his first big league game.
Knowing that Bronie owners will never get his chance to photograph big league players in action, Hy Peskin stayed on the ball field after a game to show the kind of pictures than can be taken by a box cameraman at the sandlot game.
He applied the same techniques in photographing these kids at play that he used in shooting the game itself. And he also avoided what he considers the greatest pitfall of amateur photographers: allowing the subjects to become conscious of the camera.
8) Future Philly pitches for a one-man grandstand after the game. This candid was shot at the moment of suspended action.
9) Proud father gives his son the thrill of touching the Shibe Park home plate. Peskin says the blurred figures in the background add to picture, give it life.
10) Second Base Slide mimics the big leaguers and also shows what kind of photo album shots a parent can get of his own children with a Baby Brownie.
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