Graflex.org

[Ken Bowman]

I collect vintage cameras (dupicates) that captured parts of history.
I am currently looking to match the camera used by Joe Rosnethal for the Iwo Jima flag rasing

The info I have on the Rosenthal camera is that it was a war vintage Speed Graphic Anniversary 1940, Folmar 4x5. I don't know if this is accurate or not. I don't know the lense data either.


The other camera I am looking for data on is the camera used to photo graph the Jack Ruby shotting of Lee Harvey Oswald. The photograher here was Bob Jackson. I have very little info on the Oswald camera?

Can anyone help?

Merry Christmas
Ken

[alecj]

The Rosenthal camera is in the Eastman Collection in Rochester, NY. You might write them for any further info you want about that one.

[sobahguy]

Hi Ken,
I have here at home an excellent DVD about the flag raisings and those who raised the flags and about the photographers who captured the images. In the History Channel documentary entitled "Heroes of Iwo Jima" there is a brief on-camera introduction by host/narrator Gene Hackman who is standing next to Rosenthal's Speed Graphic in the Eastman Museum. It looks to me to be a 1940 or 1941 Anniversary Speed Graphic, a civilian version as it has much chrome/silver trim---
remember, the military versions were all-black. So whenever Graflex made the transition from civilian versions to military cameras would help narrow down what year the actual camera might have been made, without knowing the serial number.
There is also an excellent book on the subject entitled "Shadow of Suribachi" and in the footnotes of one of the chapters it states that Rosenthal took his famous photo with his 4x5 Speed Graphic set at 1/400th of a second with an aperture of of between f/8 and f/11 and that he was using Agfa Ansco-Superpan Press filmpack.
Also, as an aside, in the same footnotes is a reference to the motion picture camera used to capture filmed color footage of the second flag-raising. Bill Genaust (the motion picture cameraman) used a Bell and Howell Autoload for his 16mm sequence, a frame of which almost exactly matches Rosenthal's famous photo. Genaust used Kodacolor film with an ASA of 10.
So that's a little bit more info than what you may have had. I don't have lens information for Rosenthal's camera at the time of the flag-raising right in front of me, perhaps a Google or Altavista search might reveal more info about that aspect, but I can tell you that the camera in the History Channel documentary is fitted with a Graflex solenoid on its lens-board.
Hope this helps.
SG.

[pv17vv]

Ken, please read this thread first :

http://graflex.org/helpboard/viewtopic.php?t=4364&sid=1bf60c8c4725f84f1dd73e559b9ee8dc

Quote from a webpage of the Eastman House podcasts :

Pictured with ANNIVERSARY SPEED GRAPHIC [Joe Rosenthal’s camera], Folmer Graflex Corporation, Rochester, New York, 1940. George Eastman House collections. Gift of Graflex, Inc.

Another quote from the GEH website :

Included in this collection are the US Navy Pearl Harbor Camera
  (s/n 279280), the Joe Rosenthal camera (s/n 335133), and the "D-Day
  Invasion Camera" (s/n 315353)

Hope this helps.

[sobahguy]

[sobahguy]

I have also just come across someone's blog (thanks to Google!!!) that stated Rosenthal's camera had a 127mm lens fitted for the famous flag-raising photo. So I'd presume that may have been a Kodak Anastigmat or Ektar, which would have been standard issue on such a camera of that era. Looking at Rosenthal's original and uncropped 4x5-inch flag-raising camera negative it does appear that a 127mm lens was likely used.

Also a note of interest is a passage in Tim Takahashi's Speed Graphic article on photo.net which states that the Rosenthal camera in the Eastman House collection is fitted with a 10" telephoto lens, with appropriate matching viewfinder mask and that the camera's rangefinder is adjusted to the 10" telephoto lens.

[Les]

Here's some other facts to ponder.

Graflex "all black for the war" on July 4, 1942, they had been working on a black version for nearly a year, so while you may find the occasional black camera from 1941, you won't find a chrome camera after July of 42. Both civilian and government cameras were all black.

Once "The picture" hit the wires, and then posters, the camera was brought back to the US and two events happened, though I'm not sure I have them in the right order...

1. The camera was auctioned off to raise money for the war.

2. The camera "toured" the US along with many photographs of the war, not in some secure bus, but by crate, from camera store to camera store courtesy of Graflex. So the possibility of the real camera being switched it great.

It's possible Graflex won the auction, it's possible that they bought it from the winner of the auction.

Before Joe died, he declared that "this was the camera I used" and that camera is serial number 315353. which is an all black war time Speed. How accurate is memory was, we don't know. Remember he hadn't seen that camera for 50 years.

I haven't researched Joe Rosenthal at all, I don't know when he became an AP photographer or how many cameras he broke/ had replaced before he got to Iwo.

The best reference for this camera, outside of a trip to Rochester would be the movie "flags of our fathers" as they went to great lengths to duplicate this camera.

I"m not impressed with the History Channel on this subject. They ran a documentary on whether the flag raising was faked, and while they did a good job on explaining the second flag raising, they re-enacted the moment with a Rollei TLR.

As to the Gene Hackman scene, it's possible that they used a prop camera rather than the real one, for any number of reasons.

I was at GEH recently, and while I didn't see the actual camera, Todd had an 8x10 contact sheet of 4 4x5 negatives of a Speed Graphic tacked on a cork board in his research room. As I looked at it he said it was Rosenthal's camera. It did not have a 10" lens on it. And Todd isn't one to switch around lenses and cameras in his collection, particularly this camera.
_________________
"In order to invent, you need a good imagination and a lot of junk" Thomas Edison

[RichS]

Les,

That's the first I've heard of the documentary on the flag raising and whether or not it was "faked"

What was their outcome? I have a natural curiosity as my father was not only there at the time, but was picked out of the line to be in the photograph...

Thanks...
_________________
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"Ya just can't have too many GVIIs"
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[Les]

The problem stems from two events. There were two flag raisings and Joe Rosenthal stated the photograph was staged.

Joe was the part of the second crew. His first shot, THE shot was a grab shot. JOe was talking to the MoPo when he said, "Hey it's going up!" or something to that effect. Joe (according to this HIstory channel documentary) just swung and shot. He didn't know if he got it or not.

He set up a second shot, with the group of guys around the flag. There's no question it was posed. It's a standard group shot.


His film along with others get shipped back to the main ship, processed, and filed. THE shot is immediately wired back to the States, then around the world...except for where Joe is. He doesn't know he hit a home run. Several days later he either gets a wire or a phone call or a message asking if his shot was staged. Not remembering the grab shot, he thinks of the group shot and says, "Yes it was staged"

Once THE photo hit the wires, the first flag raising was ignored, squashed, quelled, covered up, not talked about by the media wing of the armed forces. Not that there was anything really wrong, it just complicated things to have to elaborate that this shot was of the second flag raising.

So now we have a 'secret' flag raising that nobody talks about, a great photograph that looks impossible to get on the fly, and the photographer's erroneous statement that it was staged.

Of course the military can't quell or cover up any event and for the rest of Joe's life he had to keep repeating that the photo heard round the world was not staged (though in most versions it's cropped)

Things had pretty much died down in the 70s until Jack Anderson made a big splash promising to "Blow the lid off the Iwo Jima cover up" and strongly suggested that Joe have his Pulitzer prize revoked. And from the headlines it looks bad... "Photographer admits it was staged! Confirmed two flag raisings!" of course when Jack finally had the facts he was red faced and issued an apology, but in small type, below the fold, In section B.
_________________
"In order to invent, you need a good imagination and a lot of junk" Thomas Edison

[alecj]

To fill in a few gaps, the reason for the second flag raising was the fact a general down on one of the ships decided that first flag was too small. Knowing what a battle this was [it went on for 31 days after Joe's shot], he ordered a larger flag be raised.

Joe just got caught up in the group taking the second flag up the mountain. On the way, he met Sgt. Lou Lowery, a photographer for Leatherneck magazine, who told Joe "the flag's already up, but you should go on up - there's a good view from up there". Joe did, took the shot at the "decisive moment" and history had its say. BTW, Joe and Lou were friends and never let this come between them. Lou's shot, if you can find a copy, is nothing compared to Joe's. The stars just got in line for him.

[t.r.sanford]

The way the story was told when I was in school -- a decade or so after the island was captured -- one of the first few Marines who reached the top of Suribachi had a small flag in his pocket, and he and his comrades tied it to a length of scrap tubing or rod, and waved it to signal the rest of their unit, lower down the slope, that they had attained the crest. Someone who saw that signal sent up a team with a larger flag, which would be visible from a greater distance, and the photographer went with that team to document the achievement. If this version is more or less true, there were two flag-raisings and neither was staged, although the first was unplanned and the second was ordered.

[pv17vv]

Les,

[Les]

I see an Anny Speed, made sometime in 1941.

While I have no proof of this, I contend that after Dec 7, pretty much any Speed Graphic in the pipeline and possibly on the shelf at some camera stores were diverted to the War Effort. Lots of "Civilian" Annies were drafted and I'm certain a good number of chrome Annies were specifically made for the Government before they went all black.

The Folmer Graflex Corp had had several government contracts for Speed Graphic cameras before the war. There are Army Air Corp C-3 cameras with a '41 contract code out there. These will be bright finish. I have one of these and Eastman House has one that was at Pearl Harbor. That one is a bit earlier than yours as it still has the F model Kalart with external adjustments.

Here's the article from the June July '42 issue of Trade Notes

[/img]
_________________
"In order to invent, you need a good imagination and a lot of junk" Thomas Edison

[pv17vv]

Agree !

This pic also means the Military used chrome cameras till late in War, next to black ones. If in the Ardennes, why not at Iwo ?

But back to JR. Beeing a civilian War Correspondant, did he receive his everyday tools from the Military or did he bring his own ones with him.

A pic of him with his camera would help.

BTW my own C3 is #296507 or AC-41-10037.

[alecj]

I found it! A picture of THE CAMERA!

Since nobody else has done the research, I decided to end this debate once and for all (yeah, right?).

Go to: http://podcast.eastmanhouse.org/speaking-of-george-eastman-house/

Play the podcast. Partway through, a picture of the camera and THE PICTURE appear side by side. I'm not technically proficient enough to know how to copy that image off the podcast. If someone else can do it, and post it here, it will be helpful. You can stop the podcast and look at the camera to your heart's content!