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George Lawrence Photography Revisited
danlor writes "We were all taken aback 4 years ago when someone linked us the history of George Lawrence and his photos of the aftermath of the 1906 San Fransisco earthquake. I personally thought to myself: man, I would love to make one of those cameras. The idea of flying 2,000-pound cameras with kites... Well, someone has actually recreated the feat. They even provide links to get large prints of the original and recreated scenes."
That's was my first thought, too, but look at it this way: They used a century-old camera, with the great-grandson of the original photographer in the helicopter, using the exact same lenses and photographic techniques. You might ding them for the helicopter -- I congratulate them for everything else.
Yes, and so the 'feat' isn't anything comparable.
For all the whining about not using kites, etc., no one has acknowledged the recreation of the camera. They did recreate a century old piece of equipment and used it to take an extremely high quality photo. I went to school from junior high through college with Ron Klein, and I guarantee that he built a meticulous reproduction of the original camera. It wouldn't surprise me if he used 100 year old brass screws to put the thing together. Let's give some props to some extremely cool retro-tech work instead of bashing it.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.