Originally Posted by Allegheny:
From what I see in the photo, the camera is mounted with a Compur shutter and most likely a Busch Rapid Lens.
This is something I've researched pretty heavily. Link really liked the Goerz DAGOR lenses (Doppel Anastigmat Georz.) They were the first successful wide angle lenses, from about 1900. They had six elements using the new Zeiss glass. The shutter is a Compound shutter by Deckel, not the Compur. Compur shutters are spring/clockwork mechanisms and the lens in your photo is very clearly a pneumatic/spring Compound. I own a 1906 copy of the 90mm DAGOR and use it a lot, and also a 1914 150mm Tessar in Compound shutter. Link was first and foremost a commercial NYC photographer, and 8x10 was the standard. Link also used at least one Kodak Ektar lens, and probably more than one. I was told by his former assistant, Plowden, that he shot ISO 100 Kodak film at rated speed. As for cameras, he typically shot two or three at once, triggering and flash similtaneously them with a device he designed and made (he was an electrical engineer.) It was Link that got me heavily into night photography six years ago.
Link actually wasn't into the trains so much, at first. What he wanted to do was photo small town life, which he saw as rapidly disappearing in Post War America. This is why most of his shots are of everyday scenes in a town with the train in the background. This is what got me into photography as well--photo'ing life on the Northern Plains, of which railroads are a part.
I've been shooting night trains with a 4x5 camera and usually ISO 400 film for the past several months. It takes a lot of flash power! Link was shooting ISO 100 and f8 or f11 (an 8x10 camera has very shallow DoF.) He had roughly FOUR more stops of light than I have! For me to match the output of his lighting system I'd have to spend at least $18,000. I do like the lens movements of large format, but mostly you only use rise/fall and swing when shooting trains and not tilt/shift as Rich was talking about.
The main thing I credit Link for is his ambition. No one had used massive flash on this scale before. He was also a master at staging scenes and pulling them off. This is where his pro vision came in.
Now, off to my meeting in Chicago!
Kent in SD