Monthly Archives: November 2021

gifts, Kodak, f/2 again

Toronto. Big Yellow Father was hitting on all cylinders when advertising for Christmas in the  January, 1934 issue of Popular Mechanics (page 114A and 115A in the Advertising section of the magazine) released before Christmas, 1933 of course. The ad … Continue reading

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Curious Curtis Captures Indians

Toronto. The late John Craig was a vendor at our early fairs. One one occasion, John commented about Edward  S. Curtis. One night, after doing our fair, John visited Barberian’s on Elm Street for a steak. To his delight, there … Continue reading

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Curtis Photography Auction December 1, 2021

Toronto. On the 26th of November, I received an email from our friends at the Daguerreian Society. The Andrew Smith gallery is holding an online auction of materials from the famous photographer Edward S Curtis. The message states, “Andrew Smith … Continue reading

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mounting a standard

Toronto. A camera’s lens mount does many things: keeps the film to lens distance unchanged in spite of 1,000s of lens changes so one can reliably focus to infinity at any aperture opening; keeps the lens firmly attached to the … Continue reading

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photographs at a museum

Toronto. The Victoria and Albert Museum in the UK has a long and storied history.  The V&A has collected photographs for many decades (since 1852!). The image at left is a photograph of the notorious Christine Keeler taken in 1963 by … Continue reading

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when f/2 was super fast

Toronto. In the 1930s, the films and plates were very slow by today’s standards. Normal lenses were usually around f/3.5. To help this lack of sensitivity, Leitz designed a new lens around 1933. The 6 element lens was a modified … Continue reading

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Bob’s Zeiss Miroflex

Toronto. Our late editor, Bob Lansdale favoured Canadian photographic history and photographs, especially Chromotypes, over cameras and hardware. He was always concerned that there would be too few hardware/camera articles in each issue of Photographic Canadiana. To this end, Bob … Continue reading

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an early marketing phrase …

Toronto. In the 1930s, the minicam rage was taking off, so how could you differentiate one camera from another? Leitz chose to call its camera an AUTOFOCAL camera in advertisements in various early 1930s magazines. An example is this small … Continue reading

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Kodak – not just photo supplies and cheap cameras

Toronto. We often think of Kodak in the film days as a maker of films and other photographic supplies along with a multitude of inexpensive cameras, both still and movie, and other accessories, projectors, etc. However, Kodak also made a … Continue reading

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somewhere, over the rainbow …

Toronto. This post is for image collectors. If you collect Americana photos, modern works, or otherwise, do take a look at the Paris Galerie of GADCOLLECTION. The image here is the Biden/Harris Inauguration taken by Stephen Wilkes. It is one … Continue reading

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