An Interesting Story About Black And White Photography

This is a fully manual Pentax Spotmatic 35mm film camera with a 50mm f/1.4 Super-Multi-Coated Takumar lens attached.
This was with what we photographed everything from a multiple victim homicide scene to a public relations assignment
and everything in between.  The image below shows what we used for auxiliary lighting—a huge Honeywell Stobonar
manual flash with a 510 volt battery attached.   Say what you will, but this camera and lens combination produced 
sharp and highly detailed photographs.  This lens is still highly praised as one of the best 50mm lenses made.

As some of you long time readers may know, I 'accidentally' became a police officer in early 1974.  If anyone is interested in how that came about, let me know and I may write about it one day.  But I digress.

Because my university education was mostly science based and because I had advanced photographic skills and knowledge, early in my law enforcement career I was assigned as a forensic detective.  This was long before the days of the CSI programs you saw on television.  But what we did was apply the natural sciences to the criminal justice system in the form of the examination and documentation of crime scenes and various kinds of evidence.  I loved it.  Science and photography!  A perfect job for me!  At the end of my years as a forensic detective, I had examined and photographed thousands of crime scenes including over 100 death investigations.  (Did I mention I was an expert fingerprint examiner as well?  Yep.)

Being especially adept at photography and darkroom work, I was put in charge of the police darkroom.  Back then we shot only Kodak Tri-X black and white film with all manual Pentax Spotmatic 35mm cameras.  We bought the film in 100 ft. rolls and then re-rolled it into film cassettes ourselves to save the taxpayers a little money.  The only lens we were issued was a 50mm f/1.4 Super-Multi-Coated Takumar.  The reason will become apparent.  

We were also issued one other accessory.  We were given a large Honeywell Strobonar "potato masher" flash unit, which only operated manually.  What that means is that every time you changed the distance between the camera and your subject, you had to read the distance off the dial on the back of the flash then manually adjust your camera's aperture, otherwise risk severe over or under exposure as the light from the flash was constant.  From the Stobonar we hung a 510 volt battery on our belt which attached to the flash via a coiled rubberized wire (see image to the right).

You can see the edge of a 35mm camera on the left.
That gives you a sense of just how big this thing is.
One wire to the camera and the other from the flash to the
huge battery.  No automation.

The reason why we used only black and white film was because at that time the courts would not accept color photographs.  True.  Color was deemed too inflammatory for jurors.  I guess the jurors would have their objective fact gathering and judgment task influenced by the red color of blood!  But here is the irony in all of this.

As a forensic detective and photographer, anytime we testified at a trial as to the veracity of the photographs that we took, we had to certify that each was "a true and accurate representation of the scene as we found it."  That was the key phrase.  That is why we only used the 50mm lens with a "normal" perspective.  A telephoto or wide angle lens can skew perspective and two objects could be made to look very close to each other or very far apart.  That could be considered photo manipulation and fool jurors.

Get the irony?  Think about it a minute before reading the next paragraph.

As a photographer, I did not find the crime scenes in monochrome tonalities!  I found the scenes in full color.  Yet, at that time, we were forced to use only black and white film and prints.

I now contend if color film would have come before black and white film, black and white film would have never made it into evidence because it is NOT a true and accurate representation of a scene as we found it.

Thankfully, in the late 1970s the courts in southeastern Virginia saw fit to accept color  photographs at trial.  Once they did, we had to change our photography and darkroom work over to color negative film, C-41 color processing (film development was +- 1/2 degree from 100 F), and color printing.  

Being the photographic guy, I was the one designated to research color processing machines for small scale operations (about 10-20 rolls of film a day), learn densitometry to daily monitor chemistry as well as teach my fellow forensic detectives color theory and how to color correct while printing.  There wasn't much available in the 1970s for a small operation that was automated.  We had to color correct each enlargement by hand and, if we didn't get it right, we had make it again until we did.  We did, however, use roll paper which helped with speed.  This change was a major shift in everything anyone had known how to do at the time.  Now with digital, everything is so easy and straightforward.

I thought some of you may enjoy this story.  It is amazing how mindsets remain long past when they should have been changed.

Join me over at my website, www.dennismook.com.  

Thanks for looking. Enjoy!  

Dennis A. Mook  

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