Pioneer Spotlight: Charles Hulcher and his Beloved High-Speed Film Camera
By Rob Scott
August 23, 2012
August 23, 2012
- Wired has posted an interesting article this week on the Hulcher film camera and its unfortunate decline in a digital world.
- “For more than five decades, the Charles A. Hulcher Co. filled an important niche in the camera world,” explains the article. “Their cameras, which shot up to 100 frames per second, were used to make photos of everything from Space Shuttle launches to Major League Baseball games.”
- But today the company has only four employees. “Digital has pretty much killed film cameras,” says Richard Hill, a Hulcher employee since the 1950s.
- The original Hulcher 70 was built in the 1950s so that NASA scientists could study rocket launches in slow motion. The camera was capable of shooting 50 fps on 70mm film. When Charles Hulcher’s cameras became popular for other applications, the company produced 35mm versions that eventually reached 100 fps.
- “The cameras achieved this high speed by running 100 feet of film between two large spools like a movie camera,” reports Wired. “Unlike a movie camera, however, Hulcher ran the film horizontally instead of vertically, creating a larger image area and in turn a high-resolution negative.”
- The U.S. Navy used Hulcher camera technology in submarine periscopes. The Royal Canadian Air Force used the cameras for aerial surveillance. Sports photographers were fans of the Hulcher cameras because they were affordable and could be outfitted with lenses from other companies.
- “One of the most famous photographers to use the Hulcher was John Zimmerman, who worked for Sports Illustrated, and made several well-known shots with modified Hulcher cameras,” notes the post. “Instead of just allowing the camera to fire multiple shots on sequential frames of film, Zimmerman would often disable the film-advance mechanism, creating vivid multiple exposures that captured the graceful movement of various sports figures.”
- Golf Digest photographer Dom Furore says he used his Hulcher camera up until four years ago when he finally made the switch to digital with a modified two-camera system using Casio EX-F1s. Sports Illustrated photographer Heinz Kluetmeier claims the Hulcher images are sharper than those created with digital alternatives. “I wish we had a better digital equivalent,” he says.
- Charles Hulcher passed away in 1994, but his company remains in operation five days a week, building the occasional custom high-speed camera, performing repairs on older models and producing small parts in the machine shop for NASA and other customers. “We just do this because we love it,” Hill says. “We’re always here for our customers.”
No Comments Yet
You can be the first to comment!
Leave a comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.