When did The Beatles cross the road?

Was it really the 8th of August 1969?

A few days ago, I was contacted by one Richard Heath, a man who was Iain Macmillan’s printer from the mid eighties and until the photographer passed away in 2006.

Heath was eager to correct some of the information I provided on my Abbey Road Photoshoot page. The first issue is the actual date when The Beatles were photographed crossing the Abbey Road. It has been generally accepted that this happened on the 8th of August, 1969. That makes it a Friday. However, people seem to remember the shoot having taken place on a Sunday! Iain seems to have always remembered it to have been a Sunday. Here’s what Heath wrote: “Now on one of the many conversations I had with Iain, and once you got him started he was off, I’m sure he said it was on a Sunday. So to be honest it may not even have been the 8th., I really don’t know.”.

Also, Kevin Harrington wrote about it as a Sunday in his 2015 book. He remembers having been picked out to do a “dry run” for the photo the previous Sunday, and The Beatles were photographed the next Sunday. So if the Sunday reporting is true, the photo may have been taken on Sunday the 10th or perhaps even Sunday the 17th.

A policeman held up the traffic during the photo shoot. Or, so they say anyway!

Another issue Heath was keen to pursue was the shutter speed and exposure time. Macmillan used a Hasselblad camera with a 50mm wide-angle lens, aperture f22, at 1/500 seconds. Or at least, that’s what was reported earlier – but again in comes Richard Heath with some corrections: “Regarding the camera exposure: Back in those days film speed was not all that fast, maybe 64-100 ASA which I would be amazed if that gave you a setting of f22 and 1/500th of a second. I would think it would be 2 or 3 stops down from there, maybe f11/f16 at 1/250th, even 1/125th of a second. … Strangely the rear shot of the wall/girl was shot on a different film (but) both front and rear films were Kodak, as most transparency film was in those days. “

The setting of f22 at 1/500 seconds have also been disputed by a commentator over at The Beatles Bible in 2016: “As a professional photographer for the past 45 years I can tell you with certainty that this photo was not taken at 1/500 at f22.on transparency film. Even the most sensitive transparency film of the era, Kodak high speed Ektachrome, would have been three stops under-exposed at that setting.”

The photo of the back cover was shot using a different type of film.

The original photo that made the cover of “Abbey Road” may have been lost, and it’s likely that the only original negatives remaining, are the outtake photos. Richard Heath: “Believe it or not but back in those days it was quite common to send an original to the blockmakers, ie for an album cover – even a Beatles one, and never see it again. Exactly that happened in this case. I started making prints for Iain in the mid 80’s and I have never seen the original transparency, when I asked him about it he just said he never saw it again.”

Heath also told me about the different prints, those that were printed on Kodak photo paper, and those that were printed on Fuji photo paper. Remember, this is information starting in the mid eighties:

“When I started printing them you could only buy Kodak “R” type paper, and it was always a problem to get an accurate print. Basically because the Kodak paper was not very good. It was almost impossible to John’s white suit to look natural, the contrast just wouldn’t allow you to get detail in it. In fact, I can remember having a heated conversation with Iain in which I ended up suggesting, very politely, maybe he might be better if he used another laboratory, but he absolutely wouldn’t hear of it”.

“Then we started to get Fuji paper. OMG! This stuff was amazing, the colour, and contrast was from a different galaxy. Needless to say Iain loved it. So if you look on the back of the very early prints and it says Kodak, and other ones say Fuji, that’s why they can be so different in colour with the Fuji versions being much richer and accurate in colour”.

“The watermark (is) a very faint printed name of the paper producer. To complicate things a little, Fuji didn’t always print their name on the back, it depended on what size of paper you were using. Just for the record, they were never printed on “C” type paper from the originals. The only ones made on that paper would have been made from digital files. Negatives were never made from the originals, not by me anyway”.

I hope this is valuable information for all you photo collectors out there. Save for the photo paper information, the other subjects of the discussion have been incorporated into the main  Abbey Road Photoshoot page.