Category Archives: history

I shot an arrow up in the sky …

Posted on August 29, 2021 by Robert

Toronto. WW2 had ended three years earlier and the world was getting back to normal. Just a year before this December 1948 ad appeared, Ansel Adams took a photograph of mountain climbers on  the top of Yosemite Park’s famous ‘Lost … Continue reading →

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one born every minute …

Posted on August 28, 2021 by Robert

Toronto. … or so Barnum is supposed to have said.  The Bolex was the Leica or Contax of the amateur movie crowd. It was a high end camera made in Switzerland by Paillard. Interestingly, Bolex was originally not a Paillard … Continue reading →

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it’s a bird, it’s a plane … it’s a camera?

Posted on August 26, 2021 by Robert

Toronto. Some collectors specialize in novelty cameras such as this old Pentax RS1500 with the Superman skin (image posted by Andy Khouri April 14, 2011 and once seen on the ‘Comics Alliance‘ website. Since digital photography has been around well … Continue reading →

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easel come, easel go

Posted on August 24, 2021 by Robert

Toronto. When film photography was a popular hobby last century, amateurs used a darkroom and enlarger to crop and adjust the final print size. To focus the enlarger, and hold the photographic paper flat, the photographer would often use an … Continue reading →

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cheap is how I feel

Posted on August 23, 2021 by Robert

Toronto. Post war, the camera industry exploded with pent-up demand. Federal in Brooklyn was mainly known in photographic circles for their enlargers (I had one). Their enlargers were cheaply made and cheaply sold. Around 1948, the company decided to do … Continue reading →

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darker dags

Posted on August 22, 2021 by Robert

Toronto. The NYT article is headlined, “Smithsonian Acquires Rare Photographs From the First African American Studios“. The example Ambrotype image shown here was augmented by a few dashes of colour painted in by hand before the glass plate was carefully … Continue reading →

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get outta Dodge …

Posted on August 21, 2021 by Robert

Toronto. … or burn! Photographers of a certain age will recognize these two words as darkroom techniques to compensate for faulty camera exposure, wrong paper grade, or to add some pizzazz to a print. There is a video here that … Continue reading →

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keeping an eye out for colour

Posted on August 19, 2021 by Robert

Toronto. The earliest photographic processes captured only a monochrome image – usually black and white – of the luminance values of the subject. Over the ensuing decades, many efforts were expended to create natural colour from the effects of light … Continue reading →

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dear old golden rule days

Posted on August 18, 2021 by Robert

Toronto. As photography expanded, an increasing number of photographers specialized in various areas. Some went into school photography with group shots of the pupils and staff sometimes complemented with individual student portraits. Occasionally a panorama view took the entire student … Continue reading →

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for the record

Posted on August 17, 2021 by Robert

Toronto. In the beginning, photography recorded mostly portraits and landscapes. Workplace and workers came along later – perhaps the best known are the dead combatants in the American civil war photos taken by Matthew Brady. Newspapers and books benefitted from … Continue reading →

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