In the days before slide shows,using a hand held stereo viewer that yields a 3-D effect one could view photos like this one of a train crossing the “Devil’s Gate Viaduct” of the Georgetown Loop between Georgetown and Silver Plume, Colorado, taken with a two lens stereo camera. From the collection of Jane Monroe.
theless, these cameras probably marked the real beginning of the railfan photographer. Fred Jukes, a railfan at heart and a teleg- rapher for several western railroads, is best remembered for his 1908 photo of a little Denver & Rio Grande train passing under the tall old pine that today is known (and is still a popular photo location) as “The Jukes Tree” outside of Chama, N.M., on the Cum- bres & Toltec Scenic. Jukes’ first camera was one of the Kodaks that yielded 60 of those small circular prints. Later he used glass plate 5×7 inch and 8×10 inch cameras, and even made his own cameras with shutters going to ¹⁄₃₅₀ of a second. Serious railfan pho- tography in the early 1900s could be effort intensive!
35mm
By the 1930s, the 35mm camera with inter- changeable lenses, fast shutter speeds and 36 shots on a roll of film was on the scene. This new marvel, along with the new Ko-
dachrome slide film which came out in 1936, soon became the preferred photography method of choice by photographers of all dis- ciplines, including railfans. One of the first 35mm cameras was the Leica rangefinder (the viewfinder did not look through the lens) in 1925. The first SLR (single lens re- flex, with through-the-lens viewing) was the Kine Exakta in 1936. The first 35mm Minol- ta came along in 1947; the Nikon 1 in 1948; in 1951, the first 35mm SLR Pentax (in Japan the Asahiflex I, a.k.a. “Tower” as sold by Sears in the U.S.); and the 35mm Canon- flex in 1959. The Argus C-2 in the 1930s and ’40s was a popular camera Steinheimer also used when he graduated from his original Brownie.
The early 35mm camera’s all-manual op- eration and lack of exposure meter was slow to use compared to modern cameras with autofocus, autoexposure, and motor drives (which did not come on the scene until the 1970s). Also, before the 1970s most inter-
This photo, a contact printfrom the original 4x5 negative taken by Richard Kindig in 1938 and one of several hundred 4x5 photos he made in the 1930s through the 1960s, was given to me in my one brief meetings with Richard when researching for the article “Thirty Y
ears of
Excursion Steam” in the November 1990 R&R. His hand written caption on the back of the print reads “C&S 65 running under the high bridge of the Georgetown Loop, headed for Silver Plume. 3 cars, 5 M.P
.H. July 22, 1938.” 13
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