Before the 80s, photography was very luxurious, in addition to work permits, graduation albums, marriage certificates to post photos, you must spend a few cents to go to the photo studio to take pictures, the other is a large family, when they get together, they will also go to the photo studio to take a group photo. Anyone who has a camera is envied.
The earliest photo studio in Tianjin is in tianhou Temple, and the font size is unknown. This is followed by the "Dingzhang Photo Studio" in the southeast corner of the old city. The photo studio was very large and trained many professionals, and later Li Yaoting, the owner of the "China Photo Studio", came out of the "Dingzhang" apprenticeship. Li Yaoting made his fortune by photography and bought an old bungalow in the French Concession on Garden Road, with a living room of 60 to 70 square meters, and a refrigerator, ceiling fan, leather sofa, and carpet.
The long-established photo studio also has "Tongsheng", which has two stores, one in the southeast corner and one on Riverside Road. The "Violet" of North Road, the "Zhonghua" of East Road, and the "Qifeng" of Huangjia Garden are also not small. In the 1950s, the most famous state-run photo studio was "Dongfeng", and in the 1960s, Tianjin had "China", "Songru", "Red Star", "Qifeng", "Beautiful", "Beautiful", "Xinlian", "Xinxin", "Brothers", "Zhonghua", "Meiguang", "South Avenue", "Jiangnan", "Violet", "Tongsheng", "Star", "Pule" and other photo studios, and the photos that were developed would always be printed with the name of the photo studio and the photo year.
Old photos of the late Qing Dynasty
At that time, there were several rows of headlights on the roof of the photo studio, which were used to take large group photos, and the photos with fewer people generally had the main light, the auxiliary light, and the back had contour lights and hair lights, so that it could be taken multi-level and three-dimensional. The photo studio uses a wooden landline, there is a piece of movable frosted glass behind the landline, used to focus, adjust the glass to move away, put the plate box on it, the plate box is filled with film instead of film, the size is 12 inches, 8 inches, 6 inches, after installation, close the shutter, open the plate partition, pick up the balloon, by pneumatically press the shutter, it is good.
Going to a photo studio to take pictures has a sense of ceremony. Many adults are taking photos for the first time, there is a rural couple, newly married, into the city to take a 2-inch group photo, into the house to sit well, the lights turned on, suddenly sweaty, arms and legs do not know where to put, it is difficult to look up at the camera according to the master said, but the facial features are shifted, full of embarrassing smiles. After half a day of talking, the expressions of the two people were finally more normal. The master squeezed the shutter balloon and turned off the light: "Finished, tomorrow to see the sample, three days later to take the film." The woman stood up half a day later, and it turned out that her two legs had stopped listening to the call.
Now people take photos to beautify, in fact, at that time after taking photos, after the negatives are developed, they also want to beautify, there is a term called "trimming", with a brush to paint the white dots on the photo with the same color as the surrounding shades, beards, wrinkles are also painted with pencils, so that the photos are more beautiful, people look young.
In the 1950s and 1960s, photo studios could only take black and white photos, but there was a coloring business, first dyeing it brownish yellow, and then applying watercolor or oil paint, it became a color photo. But in fact, the color is also distorted. In the 1970s, color film entered China, but only the China Picture Agency in Beijing in the north could develop color photos, only for the unit, and expanded a 5-inch photo for a dollar, which is almost equivalent to 100 yuan now. The first color photo processing shop in Tianjin was established in 1982 as a tourist photo agency, which was later renamed "Beautiful" with the introduction of Hong Kong printing machines, and soon after the wonderful photo agency run by the Foreign Trade Bureau was also born.
There is a China Photography Studio photography service in the water park, which has several Hong Kong-made "Hollywood" low-end cameras for rent to tourists. At that time, a film sold for a piece of zero and eight points, not cheap, so generally even if you rent a camera, you will mostly take pictures, and you can't use the comparison that you don't know anything about, and if you really rent a camera to take pictures, you may have to make jokes.
There is a cross-talk called "Photo Anecdotes", which tells one thing, a customer rented a camera, bought film, and the waiter helped him pack it up and take it away. After a while, the customer came back sweating with a half-cut film and asked, "Why is there no shadow?" deceitful? refund! The waiter said, "Of course there is no shadow, you have to rush..." The man was acute, and immediately turned away. After a while, he came back with the wet film: "I rushed, how come there is still no shadow!" The waiter asked, "How did you rush?" "With tap water!"
Photo studio
Private cameras, for a long time, were a luxury. At that time, the brands were Zeiss Ikon, Ekfa, Pan Taikang, Pantex, Eksantai, Laika, Zenit, Kifu, Minota (Minolta), Kanon (Canon), Nikon, Yamaha, Kodak, Hasselblad, Shanghai 201, Seagull df, Chenguang, Dongfang, Hongmei, etc. These cameras have head-up viewfinders, as well as SLR, double-reflection, and frosted glass framing, using different films. There is a Kind of Robert 135 camera, the general camera to take a picture of a screw to roll before shooting, and this camera is winded, can shoot continuously.
At that time, there were consignment stores everywhere, and people took the things they wanted to sell to the store for consignment, agreed with the store on the price, and the store charged 8% after the sale, or it was purchased by the store and then sold. Whether it is a consignment sale or an acquisition, you must show your household registration book. At that time, there were two most valuable things in the store, one was a gemstone ring, and the other was a camera. Good color, new models of cameras, most of them are sold by returned overseas Chinese, 80% of the new Rulai Flex dual-lens reflective cameras sell for 1800 yuan, Laika m3 is about 2300 yuan, German Zeiss super6 is more than 600 yuan, and The SLR is 1200 yuan... It was all sky-high at the time. In fact, for camera collectors, these cameras are still high-priced collections. (Text: He Yuxin)
Photo of Li Yuanhong of the Republic of China