There are a bunch of crisp photographs from the late 30s. The hard part was getting the subject to stay still long enough and not blur the background, since the

There are a bunch of crisp photographs from the late 30s. The hard part was getting the subject to stay still long enough and not blur the background, since the higher resolution / finer grain required a longer exposure time / wider aperture. You can check out various archives for examples, https://www.shorpy.com/ https://www.shorpy.com/ is one.