Re: Cool old picture
Posted: Sun Nov 24, 2013 11:54 am
I also recognized the young Lew Ayres. In later years he appeared in four episodes of the original "Hawaii Five-0," among many, many other TV credits; see http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000817/filmoseries.
As for the film used, this image is very contrasty: the shadow areas are completely blocked up, while the highlights (windows, reflection on table top) are blown out. It's a difficult challenge for any film to deal with an extreme range of lighting such as this, plus there's no telling how many times this particular image has been reproduced: we may be looking at a 2nd or a 200th generation copy, and copying generally degrades the image quality every time it's done if you're making copies of copies of copies, etc. My favorite b/w film was Panatomic-X, followed by the old reliable Plus-X after Kodak, bless their hearts and R.I.P., ditched the Panatomic, but I doubt that these were available when this picture was taken (late '20s-early '30s?). I daresay that either film, if properly exposed, would have handled this lighting situation somewhat better. But it's great to have this image, nevertheless. Thanks for posting!
As for the film used, this image is very contrasty: the shadow areas are completely blocked up, while the highlights (windows, reflection on table top) are blown out. It's a difficult challenge for any film to deal with an extreme range of lighting such as this, plus there's no telling how many times this particular image has been reproduced: we may be looking at a 2nd or a 200th generation copy, and copying generally degrades the image quality every time it's done if you're making copies of copies of copies, etc. My favorite b/w film was Panatomic-X, followed by the old reliable Plus-X after Kodak, bless their hearts and R.I.P., ditched the Panatomic, but I doubt that these were available when this picture was taken (late '20s-early '30s?). I daresay that either film, if properly exposed, would have handled this lighting situation somewhat better. But it's great to have this image, nevertheless. Thanks for posting!