A correct attribution for the "Flash Effect" photo?

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Herr Nilsson
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Re: A correct attribution for the "Flash Effect" photo?

Post by Herr Nilsson »

@hans zurbriggen

Thank you very much for the picture. It's from a secondary artillery excercise, isn't it?
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Marc

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hans zurbriggen
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Re: A correct attribution for the "Flash Effect" photo?

Post by hans zurbriggen »

Hello Mr. Nilsson,
good question. I have got the image from a friend who claimed it was Cerberus operation (painting appears to be right one).
I suspect it is not from the Operation itself. I am unaware of Scharnhorst having fired her port side 15 cm during Febraury 12 actions.
Are you aware of any 15 cm guns exercise before Cerberus ?

hans
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Herr Nilsson
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Re: A correct attribution for the "Flash Effect" photo?

Post by Herr Nilsson »

@hans zurbriggen

On February 3rd was caliber shooting.

During Cerberus anti-ship artillery was perpared for anti-aircraft purposes, but wasn't used .
"....wurde in keinem Fall eingesetzt..." [...was used in no case...]
In the meantime I found some very nice pictures of the Arriflex without tripod:
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2.jpg
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3.jpg
3.jpg (24.12 KiB) Viewed 1331 times
Regards

Marc

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Re: A correct attribution for the "Flash Effect" photo?

Post by wadinga »

Fellow Contributors,

We have several photographs here looking significantly aft and in all of them the handrails show significant foreshortening and angularity to the horizontal. There is none in the "90 degree" pictures. The relationship between uprights and horizontals show none of these effects. Up to now there has been acceptance, even from Mr Bonomi, that the camera view is perpendicular to the rails. This was because there was an insistence by him that the rails could not be parallel to the ship's centreline, and a refusal to even identify such a location by him and his faction. Now thanks to some fine detective work we are fairly certain that the rails are indeed parallel to the ship's heading and therefore her course at that moment.

I afraid I must take issue with the observation:
used in all the existing battle maps up to now, and accepted also by people having been on board Prinz Eugen.
It has been at the centre of Mr Bonomi's argument that all the maps produced by people who were actually at Denmark Straits were wrong (and thus his was right), precisely because they do not reproduce the Gefechtskizze course of PG. Schmalenbach's maps in Warship Profile and as supplied to the Baron for his Survivor's Story and Busch's used in Die Erste Gefecht and in his The Story of Prince Eugen are very different. Of course we know the Gefechtskizze was pronounced "useless and worthless" upon receipt by V-A Schmundt and required resubmission after correction and the ship admonished to produce better material next time. This resubmission has not yet come to light. It is a feature of these eye-witness maps that many include the right angle crossing.

As far as I can make out the Arriflex incorporated its motor into the substantial hand grip specifically to allow "action" film-making and various websites credit its hand-portability with revolutionising film making. Herr Nilsson's latest examples illustrate this perfectly including a battery pack(?) either slung over the shoulder or set down nearby.
please show us Prinz Eugen track as you would like it to be from evidences. Else I still accept the Prinz Eugen own track, missing any evidence against it.
Once again the all-too-familiar challenge, with the strange assertion that even if the photographic evidence were to show the Gefechtskizze to be incorrect, unless a comprehensive alternative can be speculated, based on incomplete information currently available, it is therefore to be considered accurate. V-A Schmundt did not trust it, and he had access to many more information sources we do not have (currently).

All the best

wadinga
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hans zurbriggen
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Re: A correct attribution for the "Flash Effect" photo?

Post by hans zurbriggen »

Hello,

to Mr. Wadinga writing: ' the Gefechtskizze was pronounced "useless and worthless" upon receipt by V-A Schmundt '
Schmundt : 'The position of "Prinz Eugen" in relation to "Prince of Wales" cannot be derived from the battle sketch. It is useless and worthless. '
Statement is clear. Schnumdt does not refer to Prinz Eugen track but only to enemy relative position for torpedo launch.

''Schmalenbach's maps in Warship Profile and as supplied to the Baron for his Survivor's Story and Busch's used in Die Erste Gefecht and in his The Story of Prince Eugen are very different. '
They were all proven wrong for evident reasons in the past. Schmalenbach corrected it himself. All recent publications use Mr. Bonomi map as the only consistent one. Lacking any credible alternative it is the reference for everybody. I do not understand your refusal to accept Mr. Bonomi work.

hans
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Re: A correct attribution for the "Flash Effect" photo?

Post by hans zurbriggen »

Hello,
to Mr. Nilsson writing: 'I found some very nice pictures of the Arriflex without tripod:'
thanks for the images.
In all of them cameraman is leaning, kneeling or sitting, never walking around during a gun action. No clear image can be obviously taken when walking with the ship rolling, pitching, turning and firing main armament.
I still think camera was far most probably fixed on tripod, but I agree no firm conclusion can be reached about this fact.
Thanks a lot for info regarding gunnery trials.

hans
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Re: A correct attribution for the "Flash Effect" photo?

Post by wadinga »

Fellow Contributors,

That guy in Herr Nilsson's picture 1 is balancing on the stern of a rocking, pitching, rolling motorboat, and is not leaning on anything, and one might guess the dark strip behind him is the folded tripod in a case, hanging off his shoulder, not being used. It is essential in this situation to use the human body to compensate for vessel motion, surely even more so to insulate from shock waves travelling through the deck when the armament is fired. Human Steadicam. I suppose if Marc can come up with a picture of a cameraman, filming, whilst swinging through the air on a trapeze and simultaneously being shot at, that might convince, but I doubt it.

It would also be useful to know whether there were two movie cameras in use or just one. Someone filming what are asserted to be PoW's splashes landing to starboard cannot simultaneously be on the port side filming the Hood explosion and aftermath. A single cameraman handholding his Arriflex, might with help, be able to film Hood's overs splashing on the unengaged side, and then run through the superstructure doors in time to catch Hood's destruction and aftermath on the port side, if he was told she was already ablaze and he was missing the "Good Stuff". The wartime Arriflex had a 200ft film load. How many seconds duration is that? Is there time to reload?

For Hans: I completely respect your right to continue to believe Mr Bonomi's map in it's entirety. Unfortunately his acceptance, after his many years of study, that the "90 degree pictures" were indeed taken at 90 degrees to the rail, and the new revelation, available only since his self-imposed Ascension from this Vale of Tears, that the piece of rail is parallel to the ship's centreline are not compatible with his conjectural map, at least for me.
Lacking any credible alternative it is the reference for everybody.
This somewhat dogmatic point of view has been stated repeatedly here and saying it again still does not make it true. The specific wording is disturbingly familiar.

All the best

wadinga
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hans zurbriggen
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Re: A correct attribution for the "Flash Effect" photo?

Post by hans zurbriggen »

Hello,
to Mr.Wadinga:
The boat in image 1 is stopped (no wake behind it). Can we see the result of such a movie? I think not a high quality. If the camera was actually operated at all in image 1. Image seems a bit a 'propaganda' for Propaganda. Surely not taken during an action or exercise.
In the image of a warship at high speed firing guns, camera is with tripod, no human body to compensate.
I said to Mr. Nilsson that the usage of a tripod is to me very probable, not proven.
I too respect your right to continue to believe Mr.Bonomi map is wrong. Without any alternative, I still trust it. The same do all authors that recently published a map of this battle. The map puts together all evidences. To me, it means that it is consistent and acceptable.
The above obvious considerations should not 'disturb'.

hans
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Re: A correct attribution for the "Flash Effect" photo?

Post by HMSVF »

hans zurbriggen wrote: Thu Feb 06, 2020 2:01 pm Hello,
to Mr. Nilsson writing: 'I found some very nice pictures of the Arriflex without tripod:'
thanks for the images.
In all of them cameraman is leaning, kneeling or sitting, never walking around during a gun action. No clear image can be obviously taken when walking with the ship rolling, pitching, turning and firing main armament.
I still think camera was far most probably fixed on tripod, but I agree no firm conclusion can be reached about this fact.
Thanks a lot for info regarding gunnery trials.

hans

An observation...

A man holding a camera may well have better stabilisation than somebody using a tripod. We all have an in built sense of balance which adjusts to pitch and roll (if we didn't we would fall over in a minor swell and never made it past the coast).


Best wishes


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hans zurbriggen
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Re: A correct attribution for the "Flash Effect" photo?

Post by hans zurbriggen »

Hello,
to HMSVF writing: 'A man holding a camera may well have better stabilisation than somebody using a tripod.'
Possibly correct for pitch and roll when stopped. Not for gun shaking and shock wave with violent ship turns. The photo of Scharnhorst shows that even in exercise during gun firing (150 mm only) camera was on tripod. Almost certainly a cameraman holding camera in his hands could not walk around deck in action while looking into camera ocular.

hans
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Re: A correct attribution for the "Flash Effect" photo?

Post by Herr Nilsson »

Image
hans zurbriggen wrote: Fri Feb 07, 2020 7:51 am Almost certainly a cameraman holding camera in his hands could not walk around deck under such conditions in action.
I don't think we can talk about "walk". I think it's more like inching forward.

Anyway, my strong doubts in regard of the use of a tripod are mainly caused by the fact that the tripod was biaxial, but we can see triaxial movements.
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Marc

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hans zurbriggen
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Re: A correct attribution for the "Flash Effect" photo?

Post by hans zurbriggen »

Hello,
thanks to Mr. Nilsson for the photo. I agree it could have been used without tripod at sea (if photo is not once again a 'propaganda' for Propaganda Kompanie), even at risk to be shaken by guns and to loose the camera. Possibly is my lack of 'sea foot' that makes me thinking it would be better to have a stable pedestal.
I am not sure we see triaxial movements in film, to me it looks more the effect of pitching of cruiser in Atlantic wave together with gun shaking affecting tripod residual flexibility, enhanced by probabale telelens usage.
Here below the camera is surely on tripod, actually operated, and film is anyway not perfectly stable despite being at dock.
About lenses, are you aware which focal length were available in the 3 objectives of Arriflex 35 ? It would help determining possible distances we see in film.

hans
Prinz_Eugen_Lutjens.jpg
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Re: A correct attribution for the "Flash Effect" photo?

Post by Herr Nilsson »

35, 50, und 75mm
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Marc

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Re: A correct attribution for the "Flash Effect" photo?

Post by hans zurbriggen »

Hello,
many thanks, Mr. Nilsson.
Assuming the image in the film is not cropped, etc., I wonder whether Mr. Jurens can help to determine how distant is Bismarck from Prinz Eugen in the film using the 3 different objectives on a 35 mm film. To me 75 mm (not anyway a great telelens) was used, for difference with what we see in photos (probable standard 50 mm).

hans

edit: my initial poor calculation based from Bismarck main mast height (c 45 meters without small antenna): distance to Bismarck between 700 and 1800 meters depending from lens used.
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Re: A correct attribution for the "Flash Effect" photo?

Post by Bill Jurens »

The calculations regarding Bismarck's distance are fairly straightforward, but require accurate information on the size of the image as projected on the film plane and the focal length of the camera. Technically -- i.e. without quibbling about the third decimal place, the standard motion picture 35mm frame was essentially 24.9 mm by 18.7 mm in size. That can yield the size of Bismarck vertically, if the height of the ship is taken as some proportion of these 'known' dimensions, i.e. if the ship appeared to take up, say, 0.15 of the full frame height, the image on the negative would have been .15 x 18.7 = 2.8 mm high on the negative. As the tangent of the projected angle is (in consistent units) 1 over the focal length ( for a 50 mm lens, the tangent of the angle = 1/50 = 0.02, equivalent to an angle of approximately 1.146 degrees, then the distance to the target, when target size is known, is easy to calculate.

The problem is that we don't know the focal length of the lens, and we don't know how much the image has been 'cropped' in projection, although one can be sure it has, as when making copies nobody really wants to see the raw edge of the projected frame. I once ran a telecine projector in a television studio, and this quite dramatically cropped the projected image both to prevent edge details from appearing, to leave space at the edges for additional information added in the television studio, such as timing codes, and to correct for the sometimes bad match between the television image aspect ratio and the aspect ratio of the film in question. So it's very 'iffy' to assume that the image has not been cropped, although exactly how much is hard to say, particularly because in most cases we don't really know where the image we are viewing came from in the first place. If you are viewing it on the internet on your monitor at home, then I can assure you all bets are off. Assuming, with high confidence, that the image has been 'cropped', this would result in some effective increase in the focal length used in calculations. So, even if we knew what lens was used for exposure, we really have only a rough idea, at best, of the effective focal length of the image we are looking at. There are just too many unknowns...

As I've mentioned before, the main problem here, which I believe to be essentially intractable, is that we are working with images too far 'down the line' to have preserved any of the data really needed for analysis. In other words, instead of viewing images on the internet, which are routinely distorted anyway, we need to be looking at the original image from which all of the more recent images are derived. It would be great if we could locate the original camera negatives, though I doubt these even exist any more. But, in this sort of study it is fair to say that every step back is, in actuality, a major step forward.

Bill Jurens.
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