Article with some nice old photos. Why does it always look like they were playing in the dark in those old B&W photos?
https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/ot...1&cvid=74603a6a8b8e457eb9549ed9b9eb52e2&ei=35
I do some amateur/professional photography every once in a while. It's all about the lighting. Photography is literally the physical representation (graph) of light (photo).
The light source coming from the camera only has enough oomph to properly illuminate the subject (s), which was the player(s). The rest of the gym or auditorium or wherever the photo is taken only has natural, ambient light. Maybe there was artificial light overhead, but at the settings required for high-speed photography like what we see in sports, the background has no chance of showing up.
The shutter speed needs to be very fast for fast scenes, so the amount of time the film is exposed is incredibly brief (hundredths of a second). That short amount of time lets in very little light.
The light sensitivity of old film tended to be much less than modern film. Film's sensitivity to light is represented by its ISO (formerly ASA) number. Modern digital sensors have ISOs in the hundreds of thousands to where you could photograph a flea's *** in the dark. In the 50s? No.
You can actually recreate —more or less— the exact photos if you go to professional mode on your phone's camera. Turn the flash on; set the ISO to like, 50 or 100 or 125; and then set your shutter speed to 1/250 or 1/500. Point it around a decently-lit room. The preview should be extremely dark. Take a picture of some non-light source, and the subject will be illuminated while everything else in the background looks like a void. Fun fact is that settings like these along with heavy dark filters are what allow recreational photographers to shoot eclipses without burning the camera sensor to bits.
So, you've got technological, subject, and lighting limitations back in the day that just make it look like everyone is shooting hoops in a black hole. It's pretty awesome!
As for the subject of the post. May Mr. Mills rest in peace. It doesn't seem real that we're losing so many folks from the greatest and silent generations. May his family know that BBN is still wishing them well all these years later.
