OT: fowarded to me (comments not mine), hope some might enjoy ...

[Paul Anderson]

WWII Kodachrome Pictures‏Back in the mid '70s when I was working at Heller’s Camera in Bethesda Md. I had a reference book with a color photo of the battleship Pennsylvania in an advanced base sectional dock, somewhere in the Pacific in about 1944.



The quality of the photo made it clear that it was shot with a large format camera, which puzzled me since I did not think Kodachrome (the only modern color film of the time in the US) was available in sheet films. A guy I worked with was an old Kodak hand (and WWII vet, a radioman in Europe) and told me that they did have sheet Kodachrome, and that there was only one machine to process the film, located in Rochester. The exposed film

was sent there for processing.



And note the almost complete lack of basic safety equipment. I saw only one pair of safety glasses, and only a

few of the workers were wearing gloves. Working without gloves around sheet metal is an injury waiting to happen.


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Notice most of the woman had lip stick and nail polish on. WWII could not have been won without the woman of America stepping into men's shoes to build the equipment needed to defeat the axis powers.



Fascinating! Some of these images are 70 years old and look as fresh as ever. If someone had told any of the subjects in these photos that we'd have such a clear look at them in the year 2012... boggles my mind. Thought you'd find this interesting !

http://pavel-kosenko.livejournal.com/303194.html?thread=22669914 (http://pavel-kosenko.livejournal.com/303194.html?thread=22669914)



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[joe bob]

I would be awesome if more was shot with chrome back then but it had a lot of limitations outside static posed shots such as these. The guys who did shoot chrome for newspapers were masters at working with flash to correct out different color temperatures on scene . The down side was they usually had bad backs from dragging all those strobes and boards around.
There are lots more from this series on the National Archives website.

[pbearsailor]

Thanks, Paul! Those are pretty fantastic shots.

I miss Kodachrome in our digital world.

cheers,steve

[roger-wilco-66]

Excellent images, thanks for sharing!

Cheers,
Mark

[Roger]

Thanks Paul,
A great series of photos:ernae:

[Sundog]

I can't get over the clarity of those images. Amazing.

[MHAircraft]

And note the almost complete lack of basic safety equipment. I saw only one pair of safety glasses, and only a
few of the workers were wearing gloves. Working without gloves around sheet metal is an injury waiting to happen.

I'm sure safety regulations and equipment were not as comprehensive in the 1940s as it is today. However, note that these women were all dressed too nicely for factory work. I think they were simply posing for the camera

[cheezyflier]

very cool pics!
however, i actually am a sheetmetal worker, and most of the time cannot wear gloves because they can create as many hazards as the avoid. that said, there are a few things i noticed in those pics that make me think they are all actors and not really workers.
they all have nice clothes and make up, every single woman is holding her tool wrong. all of them are clean and tidy, and wearing jewelry. they one wearing the lathe spinnings around her neck was lucky if the didn't get severely cut up. i can tell you that had she fallen backwards into that bin, she would have bled to death before they even got her out of there. a pro would never ever have done that. safety then was lax by today's standards, but they weren't that lax.