starting early …

Posted on June 14, 2023 by Robert

Bailey grabs a few ZZZzzzs

Toronto. Well the paucity of motions at the June executive meeting suggests the ‘dog days of summer‘ are starting a bit early this year. ZOOM meeting #37 was held Wednesday, June 5, 2023. Our next exec meeting is July 5, 2023 via ZOOM.

Please note that our June Toronto meeting has been shifted to next month as the speaker is currently in Europe. A TENTATIVE date is MONDAY, July 26th via ZOOM.  Details will follow in a few weeks.

Our Newsletter potentially has an editor this fall. Meantime, journal co-editor, David Bridge is posting any announcements. If you would like a personal copy of our newsletter but haven’t joined up yet, drop me a note at news@phsc.ca. Of course ALL current newsletters have been released to date and copies are under the menu bar item “NEWSLETTER”.

Our membership secretary remained unavailable due to some health issues. Assistance is underway. First item will be the investigation of more modern ways to attract and record members than the means in use today which are getting a bit long in the tooth.

Most of the spring auction cheques to sellers have been mailed and a full auction report will be available to the executive soon.

Following the spring auction, we held our spring photographica-fair (a great start to 2023). PS.The trunk sale will be held July 16th, followed by the fall auction (September 17th) and fall fair (October 15th).

Our  journal #48-4 was issued to all members as a pdf file via MailChimp. Didn’t get a copy and you are a current member? Email me at info@phsc.ca . Co-editor David Bridge gave the exec an overview of the status and work in progress for issue 49-1.

Is spring really here? Well, the trees are in blossom. The grass needs cutting again. But it is doggone wet and chilly out. Fortunately, the seventh wave of COVID-19 and its restrictions are just a bad memory and fading fast.

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honey, I shrunk the lens

Posted on June 13, 2023 by Robert

experimental design to make smaller lenses and cameras with a full size camera’s resolution

Toronto. Photographic lenses as you likely know once used various elements to eliminate distortion and flatten the field. Early cameras were large and bulky with terribly slow sensitive media. As general rule, the long focal length, slow lens designs required very few elements for correction.

As focal lengths shortened, lenses were designed to be faster, and the coverage at the focal plane larger, lenses became more complex. added elements were limited by inter-element reflections. Around post WW2 ‘lens’ coatings allowed more elements to be used. The coatings eliminated or reduced the internal reflections significantly.

This led to zoom lenses with their many, many, elements.  Photographers debated lens designs and makers, as they struggled to seek the ‘best’ lenses for their cameras. By the time digital sensors arrived and film began to fade from sight, photographers disregarded  lens design. Today, with every smart phone equipped with a camera, we no longer bother with debates as to the lens (or camera) maker as well.

Computational photography meant computers could not only focus our lens but add corrections too (especially correcting geometric distortion).

In the engineering journal called IEEE Spectrum for June 2023, Charles Choi gives an update called, “Tiny Metamaterial Lens Snaps Outsize Images. Hybrid meta-optics takes high-grade photos without bulky, conventional optics“. The strategy used promises even thinner lens designs when coupled with computers. Have a read!

My thanks to good friend, George Dunbar, for sharing this interesting article about how future lenses may be shrunk even more than today’s tiny marvels with even better resolution (and perhaps faster speed)!

NB. Apologies to Rick Moranis and the 1989 movie, “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids“.

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Remember this date, Mate … JULY 16th 2023!

Posted on June 12, 2023 by Robert

Toronto. Our next event is the 2023 memorial Trunk Sale outdoors (Rain or Shine) at the Trident Hall on Sunday, July 16th 2023 from 8 to noon. Check out the poster below or contact Clint fair@phsc.ca if you have any questions. Free parking, etc.

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foul-play

Posted on June 11, 2023 by Robert

Young Henri and Friend

Toronto. This c1920 portrait of a child, Henri Groulx, sitting next to a hen and smoking is from the image collection of the ‘Library and Archives Canada‘. Discovered by George Dunbar, it is another reminder of the many historic photos readily available at libraries and other archives.

We were pleased to have Andrew Roger of the National Archives of Canada as our guest speaker for the November 21st, 2001 meeting. Coincidently, Andrew was on page one of our inaugural PHSC E-MAIL pdf newsletter. The newsletter  was initiated by our editor, the late Bob Lansdale to convey colour images and late breaking news in between journals. At the time, printed colour was possible but very expensive.

I don’t know if M Groulx smoked as a child, or as a grown-up, or ever. As a kid in grade school I knew at least one student who smoked. In 1962 I read a shocking study by E Cuyler Hammond called, “The Effects of Smoking” in the July, 1962 issue of Scientific American. Post war, laws have prevented the sale of tobacco products to children. A lengthy American court battle was undertaken over the effects of tobacco on health which  the tobacco industry ultimately lost.

Today, a dwindling number of people on this continent smoke as more and more rigid laws slowly squeeze out the smokers amongst us prolonging the life of a large swath of the population. Sadly my uncle, a friend and a close cousin each died of lung cancer resulting from cigarette addiction.

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I, Robot

Posted on June 10, 2023 by Robert

a 1950s ‘automated’ colour darkroom

Toronto. In a March, 1950 article in Popular Science magazine, a “Robot” was shown in a military darkroom. The gadget processed 8×10 colour negatives. A time was MANUALLY set for each bath, then the Robot took over, dunking the films in each bath for the specified time, then moving the batch on to the next tank.

Not quite our idea of a “Robot” today – too much physical set up was needed. And not a computer in sight …

Thank you to George Dunbar for this innovative bit of photographic history in the days of 8×10 colour film.

The post title is the name of a short story collection by Isaac Asimov, who wrote many, many Science Fiction stories, some of which I may have read as a youth.

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leaping’ lizards, Sandy!

Posted on June 9, 2023 by Robert

Article on the popular View-Master projector in Popular Science magazine

Toronto. … as Little Orphan Annie often said to her mutt … This article from the start of 1950 reports a colour projector for less than a sawbuck!

While the inexpensive bakelite device projected Kodachrome slides, there was a small hitch. It accepted only View-Master reels – those seven scene, 14 slide, marvels that were viewed as stereo in  a viewer or projected as ‘flat’ slides with this little guy.

We were blessed on our September, 2006 Stereo night to have the Sells (Mary Ann and Wolfgang) as featured speakers on View-Master of which the two were preeminent collectors.

NB. Since we borrowed Annie’s favourite saying as the post title, I felt it was appropriate to feature the best song from the stage and movie production of Annie, “Tomorrow“.

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moonshot

Posted on June 8, 2023 by Robert

Astronauts on the moon – summer 1969

Toronto. Nearly 54 years today, on July 21, 1969, our world changed forever. Exciting news – man first walked on the moon. This photo, of Buzz Aldrin was taken by Neil Armstrong with a 70mm ‘Lunar Surface Camera’.

Science students for decades were told the first step to the ‘stars’ was to have an engine strong enough to break free of earth’s gravitational pull. Post WW2,  rockets had the potential but it took over another decade to refine the rockets and engines and fuel to succeed.

In the late 1950s, we were electrified to hear the sounds from Sputnik – Russia’s and the world’s first man made satellite to circle the earth. A bit over a decade later an inspired USA managed to land on the moon. And here we are again on the eve of the second effort to land on earth’s natural satellite. Meantime, we have landed on Mars, shot giant telescopes to circle beyond our atmosphere, sent rockets and robots to the farthest reaches of our galaxy – and relied upon photography to remotely record images and findings and carefully send them back to earth line, by painfully slow line, all electronically.

From the beginnings of photography man has taken photos of the sky and its celestial bodies. And as noted above, in modern times, cameras have been placed on board rockets,  capturing images and sending them back to earth for viewing and scientific analysis.

Photography has come a long way from artistic portraits and landscapes for the wealthy and middle income folk to being indispensable for the scientific in all walks of life. I wonder if anyone thought of photography’s potential? Certainly a far cry from the idea of automatically creating printable images in books, magazines, etc.

 

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treasure in the trunk

Posted on June 7, 2023 by Robert

a sunny summer day in 2015 at the Trunk Sale

Toronto. Our spring auction and spring fair can be seen in the rear view mirror, if you look carefully. The next PHSC event is in July: the Trunk Sale – held in memory of one of our founders, the late Larry Boccioletti who began these sales in his own back yard.

As you see by the right hand side bar, this July the fair is on JULY 16th (Sunday) 2023 outdoors at the Trident Hall located at 145 Evans Ave (Islington and Evans), Toronto. As usual we will have free parking. Keep an eye on this web site for details.

Meantime call Clint fair@phsc.ca for more info. Space is limited but on a first come basis as usual.

Note: I first thought of the expression, “junk in the trunk”, but decided to use treasure instead as after all, one man’s junk is another’s treasure …  And like my collection, your’s likely has more than a few gems that others simply saw as ‘junk’ resulting in a good price.

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a tale of two ads

Posted on June 6, 2023 by Robert

the Kodak Girl and camera – Jan 1920 ad

Toronto. That persistent seeker of photo history, George Dunbar, spotted these ads by Kodak while browsing issues of Popular Science.

George thought it interesting that Kodak chose to feature a young lady carrying an autographic Kodak camera in its January 1920 ad while three decades later, the far larger company chose to feature the darkroom equipment it manufactured and sold, all in the interest of selling films, chemicals and paper devoted to amateur photography.

By January, 1950 the use of women in ads was very common, so perhaps Kodak, then well established, chose intentionally to feature products it and instead to attract the burgeoning amateur market. In any case a short time later it became unwise to feature the fair sex in advertising.

NB, The title of this post is a riff one one of Charles Dickens’s book titles, “A Tale of Two Cities“.

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casting away

Posted on June 5, 2023 by Robert

A bronze casting of a sailing ship as a night-light c1945

Toronto. When I was a kid around the end of WW2, my dad took me to visit a relative who had a metal casting business, Bill made sailing ship lights, ‘doggie’ banks, souvenir lights, etc. like the sailing ship light shown here. He used something called a lost-wax process to cast his wares, mostly in bronze.

Seeing the items Bill made in the 1940s, reminded me of the thick catalogues of the day which contained photographs of hundreds and hundreds of items, each with specifications and price (of course). Such photography is another example of how photographers and studios carefully work with other industries. In this case to produce product photos for catalogues, brochures, advertisements, and more.

In fact, one of our editors, the late Ev Roseborough, did considerable catalogue work for major department stores who had large mail-order clientele beyond the city. The capturing of retail items for these catalogues etc. was a busy industry in the days of film. Today, many products are on the internet but photographers (mainly digital) remain very active providing the necessary images. Different times. Different processes.

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