1930s

Why the 1930s look like this

Home movies got cheaper in 1932, in the middle of the Depression. The new 8 mm system used 16 mm-wide film with twice as many perforations. You ran it through the camera once, turned the spool over and ran it through again to expose the other half. The laboratory split it down the middle and joined the two halves into one 8 mm reel. Each frame had about a quarter of the area of a 16 mm frame, so the picture was grainier and softer when projected. But a minute of film cost much less, and that put a cine camera within reach of many more families. Amateur cameras ran at sixteen frames a second on a spring motor, wound by hand before each shot, and most were held in the hand. The shots are short and a little unsteady.

By now most amateur black-and-white film was panchromatic, sensitive to red as well as blue and green. Skin looked like skin and a sky could hold its clouds. Then came color that anyone could shoot. In 1935 a multi-layer reversal color film appeared for 16 mm, and in 1936 for 8 mm and for 35 mm slides. It gave dense, saturated reds and deep blues. It could only be processed by the maker's own laboratories, and it needed bright sun. Late in 1936 a German reversal color film with its color couplers built into the emulsion followed, with softer color, olive greens and deep reds.

In the cinema, synchronized sound had fixed 24 frames a second. Newsreels were sharp, contrasty and steady. A three-strip color camera, which split the light through a prism onto three black-and-white negatives, appeared in a cartoon in 1932 and in a full feature in 1935. Its dye-transfer prints were richly saturated, and the camera needed floods of light. 16 mm film with a sound track also ran at 24 fps.

Snapshots changed as much. In 1931 a roll film with wider latitude forgave the box camera's fixed exposure, so fewer pictures came back too dark or too pale. The 35 mm cassette arrived in 1934, and 35 mm color slides followed in 1936. Flashbulbs, first sold around 1930, gave press photographers a hard frontal light that burned out faces and dropped backgrounds into black. Studio portraits of film stars used big lights, glass plates and lenses wide open for a glowing face and a background melting away. Surrealist photographers revived solarization, a partial reversal of tones by re-exposing film or paper to light during development, which leaves dark outlines along bright edges. Photo booths spread to stations and fairgrounds, and some print shops cut snapshots with a wavy deckle edge.

What the camera rebuilds

The 1930s base is double 8 mm home film: panchromatic black and white at a 16 fps cadence, held inside the 24 fps file, with grain, softness, a vignette and handheld shake. Flicker and gate weave are now light, lighter than in the 1920s. 16mm Amateur Film is finer and sharper. Handheld Holiday Film shakes more. Indoor Low-Light 8mm sits a full stop under, with heavy grain.

Saturated Colour 8mm and Saturated Color 16mm give warm, dense color with yellowish highlights; the 8 mm is grainier. Muted Colour 16mm has gentler color and contrast, with duller greens. Three-Strip Colour Process pushes saturation hard and lifts the reds, at the full 24 fps with almost no weave, as does Thirties Newsreel 35mm. 16mm Documentary B&W also runs at 24 fps.

In STILL, the base is a 7:5 roll-film print with a white border. You also get a deckle-edged version, two 35 mm slides in rounded mounts, saturated and muted, documentary and candid 3:2 prints with 35 mm grain, a press shot with flash fall-off, a glamour portrait with halation and shallow focus, a solarized print, a photo booth strip, a hand-colored portrait and Faded Depression Album.

With SOUND on PERIOD, your audio goes through an electrical disc recorder of the kind used to cut home and radio recordings on the spot: about 100 to 6,000 Hz, a valve warmth, light disc crackle and hiss, and only a trace of wow. Home cine cameras still had no sound; SILENT gives you a quiet bed of the decade's noise instead.

Shooting tips

• Picnic in color. Lay out a red-and-white cloth in full sun and film with Saturated Colour 8mm at DEGREE 7. Red was the color these films were known for.
• Short shots, many of them. Spring motors ran for only a short burst per winding. Tap REC for a few seconds, pause, move, and tap again; the camera joins the parts into one clip.
• Make it a picture palace. Three-Strip Colour Process wants a lot of light and strong colors. Shoot a flower stall or a costume party in bright sun, at DEGREE 5 to keep it clean.
• Fire the bulb. Press Flashbulb with the FLASH on, at night, gives the hard-lit face and black background of a 1930s press photo.
• Glamour shot. Hollywood Glamour Portrait wants one light from above and to the side, a dark background and a still sitter. Solarized Print is at its strongest on a face against a bright window.

The color story continues in the 1940s; for how each look is built, see how it works.