Notching film gates

[Fred Ward <fward@erols.com>]

This thread has reminded me of some experiences from the 60s and 70s.

Back in the heady days of serious competitive photojournalism, the three
big USA magazines (LIFE, TIME, and NEWSWEEK) would mount teams of
photographers to cover big events. I covered many of these. One of the
necessary costs of meeting deadlines was to ship film to New York in
batches, either to the magazines directly, or to my agent, Black Star.
Most often everyone working for the same publication would ship film
together. Obviously, keeping the film straight was a problem. 

I had a local Washington, DC repairman notch the film gates all my
cameras, Leica Ms and Nikon Fs, with two small V-shaped wedges that
touched, giving the impression that it was a W, which I thought would
never be duplicated by another photographer. So I could identify which
camera might be causing trouble in case of a failure, I also had the
repairman move the position of the two filed wedges up and down the film
gate to a different position in each camera, and to put some of the
wedges on the left and some on the right. We had enough different
positions for these filed wedges so I could identify up to 20 separate
cameras notched this way. 

(In the case of my National Geographic assignments, where I sent in 100
rolls at a time from overseas, if NGS in DC found a camera
malfunctioning or scratching, all I needed was a description as to where
the notch was between frames and I could take that camera out of service
until I returned from overseas.)

This notching served me very well when the first Russian prime minister
to visit the USA came to speak at the U.N. and to visit President
Johnson at Glassboro, NJ. I was on assignment for NEWSWEEK, as were 10
or more other photographers. At that time NEWSWEEK, Black Star, and
numerous photographers were using a single professional lab in
Manhattan. I had shot all one morning in NY, was driven to NJ for the
meeting, and back to NY. We had motorcycle runners picking up film from
all of us and delivering it to the NYC lab.

Back in NY I stopped by the lab to see my film, which was hanging with
maybe 50 rolls by other photographers, in the drying area of the lab. I
looked for some specific shots of the P.M. that I thought had a good
chance of being the cover or lead in the next NEWSWEEK. My film was not
there. I called the lab manager over and pointed out that my hanging
film was one roll short. He said that was all the film he had. I asked
him had anyone else been in the lab, and he said that the PARIS MATCH
photographer had come in, was in a hurry, and asked if he could cut his
own film and rush along. I asked where he was headed and was told that
even though he was a staffer for MATCH, he said he was going to
NEWSWEEK. I called the NEWSWEEK picture editor on the spot and asked if
the MATCH photographer was there. He was..... so I told the editor to
keep him there, to not let him leave, and to hold onto all film in his
possession.

I raced uptown in a taxi, went in, asked to see the film, and there on
the roll they were cutting were my double wedge notches between every
frame, a clear W that positively identified the roll as my film. 

The notches saved the day for me and I understand the photographer, who
was freelancing for NEWSWEEK on the side, never worked for them again.

Fred Ward