Inside history

Worldwide, 1900-50

Explore the flash bulb camera

For over half a century, wherever a pack of newspaper photographers gathered to get a picture of a glamorous Hollywood star or a grizzly murder scene, the sound of an exploding flashbulb was not far behind. Black, boxy and able to fold up like an attaché case, this camera was most likely a Graflex Speed Graphic.

Photojournalists used this iconic camera to capture some of the greatest press images of all time – most notably Joe Rosenthal, who won a Pulitzer Prize for snapping six US Marines raising the flag at Iwo Jima in 1945. It could be used almost anywhere for anything: as a handheld while chasing a story, to capture action shots at sports events, or as a top-notch studio camera.

First produced in 1899 by WF Folmer, the original featured a built-in focal plane shutter, which meant that you could use lenses that did not have a shutter themselves – known as barrel lenses. However, future versions did not have a focal plane shutter. The camera was available in a range of formats, most famously 4x5 inches.

Despite its name, the speed graphics camera was painfully slow to operate. The focal plane shutter speed had to be set by selecting both an aperture and a spring tension. For each shot, the photographer had to change the film holder, open the lens shutter, cock the focal plane shutter, remove the dark shade from the film holder, focus the camera and then release the shutter.

If using a lens with a shutter, then the photographer would have the task of setting that too. Plus if they were shooting indoors, the photographer would also have to change the flashbulb each time. Missing a perfect picture must have been all too familiar for the press photographers at this time. When the easy-touse 35mm film hit the market in the 1960s, the Graflex rapidly faded into obsolescence.