So I quit model railroading (called painting benchwork before wiring) a little early tonight because my back hurts. I started off watching an older (2001) video on UP 3985 and when it was done changed to another old Pentrex video "Union Pacific Big Boy Collection". Most of the footage is black and white and shot in the 1950's. They make mention of the fact most of the video cameras back them were spring-wound and could record for about 10 seconds. The high-tech battery powered units could record an entire train! The last time I looked my cell phone has better resolution and can easily record for over an hour.
There are a lot of very cool cars in this video as well. Lots of fallen flags, and one I would not expect where the Big Boys operated. LOTS of Southern Pacific cars in the trains, but so far I have seen Wabash, N&W, Pennsy and C&NW cars in the trains. And so far I am only on 4004!
Good Luck, Morpar
Have you heard them talk of probbaly never seeing a 4000 class ever running again?
A pessimist sees a dark tunnel
An optimist sees the light at the end of the tunnel
A realist sees a frieght train
An engineer sees three idiots standing on the tracks stairing blankly in space
Morpar Most of the footage is black and white and shot in the 1950's. They make mention of the fact most of the video cameras back them were spring-wound and could record for about 10 seconds.
Actually, in the 1950s most video cameras were non-existent.
Videotape was developed in the 1950s, but only the networks could afford to use it and the bulky cameras it required. President Eisenhower took part in the first broadcast of something recorded on color videotape in 1958.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKqHZcXvUAs
NBC was the first network to be all-color, which is why they chose the peacock as their symbol / mascot.
Portable videocameras weren't 'a thing' until the 1970s, and weren't common until the 1980s. Events shown on the local evening news generally had been filmed on 16mm film earlier. It was very rare to cover something remote "live" until videocams became common later.
p.s. Some of the early battery powered Super-8 and 16mm cameras weren't all that reliable, sometimes the old 'wind up' cameras were better.
Back in the 1950's a video camera would have required a truck to carry it and all its related equipment. No videotape until later in the decade, and the truck would have gotten larger in the process.
It wasn't until the 1970s when Sony invented "Electronic News Gathering" with their PortaPak, but being portable came at a cost: 20 minutes per tape. For TV news purposes, that was fine.
When consumer versions appeared, they were often black and white to keep the costs down. Still bulky though.
Super 8 and 8mm ruled up into the early 80s when the cost of using a video camera became not only competitive, but small and portable. Video came with both colour and sound and the recording medium cost a lot less per minute than film.
Now we get all these portrait format videos shot using a smartphone...
Sorry guys, I guess I used the wrong term. I should have said "movie camera" in lieu of "video camera". I figured everyone would get the jist of what I was getting at, which is we can much more easily record moving images for longer periods of time than our predecessors could with hand-held equipment which is easily transportable.
I was explaining to two 20 something guys about how when I was their age, you had to plan what pictures you wanted to take. I might have only 2 rolls of film and each roll had 24 or 36 shots on it. A photographer had to allocate and plan ttheir shots carefully so they "saved" a couple shots for things that were going to happen later.
With digital cameras, you just take pictures of everything and anything you want. When I go taking pictures I will shoot hundreds of pictures. Electrons are cheap.
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com
The top railfan photographers back in the 1950's generally shot stills with black and white film, mostly because magazines like Trains only published photos in black and white (except perhaps the cover pic). Professional photographers also liked b&w because they could process the film in their own darkrooms. Some would keep a second camera with them on railfan excursions to shoot a few Kodachrome color slides.
Home movies were 8mm and later "Super 8", but some railfan photographers used more expensive 16mm movie cameras. Sound movie film for home movies didn't come along until much later though, so when they were transferred to videotape or DVD later for sale, sound had to be dubbed in.
BTW I agree we have it much better now for railfanning - except, it would be nice to go back to 1954 and be able to see working steam engines and streamliners in real life!
dehusman I was explaining to two 20 something guys about how when I was their age, you had to plan what pictures you wanted to take. I might have only 2 rolls of film and each roll had 24 or 36 shots on it. A photographer had to allocate and plan ttheir shots carefully so they "saved" a couple shots for things that were going to happen later. With digital cameras, you just take pictures of everything and anything you want. When I go taking pictures I will shoot hundreds of pictures. Electrons are cheap.
So true, and after getting my first digital camera there was a brief period of having to get used to the idea that I did not need to economize when taking pictures. Just shoot and delete later if you want. It worked the reverse way, too: sometimes you were out shooting slides but you already had ASA 64 in the camera when it was a dark and cloudy day. As a result sometimes an entire day's worth of slides were badly subpar. So you tossed them or put them aside in a box of "so-so" slides never to be looked at again most likely. Or you showed them anyway and people concluded you were just a bad photographer.
And then you discovered what you could do with (and to) a bad slide during the scanning and editing process. Result: some of those banished slides have seen the light of day again and NOW I regret the ones I threw away prematurely.
Even though I am now totally used to the routines of digital photography I still sometimes fall into the old habit of being miserly and thus fall short on documentation. I find an interesting old depot or grain elevator or MOW freight car and for some reason I sometimes forget to document all four sides, or neglect to zero in on interesting details for modeling. It costs nothing to do a better job yet sometimes I still don't do it.
Writing this reminded me of something retired MR staffer Jim Hediger remarked at an operating session when we were talking about the "old old" days of B&W prints, the "old" days of 35mm color slides, versus the brave new world of digital. He quipped "Beware of railfan side shows where the slides are in exact multiples of 36." Or 24. What he meant was, unfussy guys who would show every slide taken on a roll, even if it was subpar or duplicative, or 6 almost identical views of the locomotive getting closer and closer. It took discipline to edit what you showed back then because darn it, each slide was an investment of $$.
Dave Nelson