tong wars

Posted on March 1, 2023 by Robert

Zuma bamboo tongs – courtesy of Amazon and Limo Studios

Toronto. Sorry, I don’t refer to any Chinese gangs in this post. Instead, I discuss photography tongs – A minor accessory for B&W darkrooms – usually bought in sets of three.

In the 1960s, I used tongs made of three different materials – sturdy stainless steel tongs, bamboo and rubber tongs (my personal favourites), and plastic ones (they were old, used, and came with small plastic trays).

Under the soft glow of the darkroom safelight, each tray of chemistry had its own pair of tongs. The tongs were often colour coded so they could be tied to the same tray of chemicals. While a print was immersed in a chemistry, the tray was gently rocked to ensure even coverage. The tongs could be used to rearrange prints as need be.

After a print developed, it was lifted by one corner with the tongs and drained from the diagonal corner then dropped in the stop bath. A second set of tongs repeated the process and dropped the print in the fixer where after a time the process was repeated with the third pair of tongs and this time the print was dropped into the wash water.

At the end of each session trays and tongs were washed, stop bath tossed, and developer and fixer returned to their respective containers ready to be used once again. Those were the days (or nights) with quiet contemplation as a miracle unfolded on each photo paper!

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developing an interest

Posted on February 28, 2023 by Robert

Developing an Interest courtesy of a Kodak ad in January 1951

Toronto. The ad at left is from an old Popular Mechanics magazine, courtesy of my good friend George Dunbar. George writes, “A Testimonial from GD: Many became photographers because of the magic of the darkroom.”. The ad, of course, is Kodak’s encouragement to buy its darkroom kit to extend the pleasure of photography to developing prints and even films.

These kits all make  contact prints only. Their retail price is far too low even for Kodak to accommodate an enlarger – so necessary with 35mm and 828 films to get a decent size print. To help the amateur, the kits came with ‘Velite’ paper, usable without need for any safelights or darkrooms.

Okay dear reader, what was your incentive to adopt photography as hobby or as a profession? In my case, it was the gift of a little plastic camera – a  baby Brownie. It was given to me by my dad when I was eleven. The following year, was my first ever school trip. Our grade six class went off to see the sights. And I brought along my trusty Brownie and  some Super XX film rolls which I believed was “high speed” (according to Kodak). Sadly, it was certainly not up to the task of indoor snaps with my little camera with a fixed focus f/16 lens and 1/25 second shutter.

I did have tons of curiosity though, and wrestled with photography and radio as serious interests over the next decades. Again I ask, what’s your story, dear reader?

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family history

Posted on February 27, 2023 by Robert

a c1900 photograph of a mother and her home and first five sons

Toronto. Every family seems to have a ‘keeper’ of records and a photographer who diligently records and photographs the minutiae of life as it is lived.

A few decades back, my parents answered a knock on their front door. A young woman introduced herself. She turned out to be married to a distant cousin of my father and was deeply into family history.

Invited in for ‘a cuppa’, she took out the photograph shown here and asked my parents if they knew who the people were – and when and where the photo was taken. My dad exclaimed that he knew. It was his mother and his first five brothers taken at their home around 1900. The photo was taken about a decade before he was even born!

We often think of Ancestry and its many databases and indicies allowing detailed research of family history in an organized fashion. That data is augmented to an astonishing degree by ‘word of mouth’ notes – and photographs. In fact, without photographs, we would be hard pressed to even know how our ancestors looked, how they lived, where they lived, etc.

We owe a deep debt of gratitude to amateur – and professional – photographers for taking family photographs. And to the many ‘pack rats’ who have kept the photos safe over the decades. Pictures go a long way to making information from data bases and notes come alive.

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all that noise

Posted on February 26, 2023 by Robert

Effect of Topaz Photo AI on a digital image

Toronto. One of the short comings of digital images is that they are a bit noisy (especially in poor light or with a high ISO setting). To that end, I had a program at one point that removed noise and made the images appear much better (Noise Ninja).

Recently, PHSC assessed the app called ‘Sharpen AI‘ for image sharpening. Since I already have, use, and like the ‘Focus Magic‘ plug-in, I saw no need to cough up another $79US.

Now Brian Matiash extols the virtues of Topaz Photo AI for both sharpening and noise reduction on images – at $199US. There is a free sample – check it out.

Note: The title of this post is a riff on an old CBC program that I enjoyed called, “All That Jazz”. Here are some current CBC programs you can enjoy on your computer.

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foto finnish

Posted on February 25, 2023 by Robert

Repair shop at Camera Rescue Centre in Finland

Toronto. We have one thing in common – we collect cameras: going to garage sales, camera fairs, camera shops, etc. we constantly strive to find an addition for our collection or a better example of a model we already have.

The guys at Camera Rescue in Finland take a different approach – instead of searching for a better example, they restore old film cameras to working order once again.

To learn more about this approach, visit their web site, Camera Rescue. And for those unfamiliar with the repair concept (in this day of ‘toss and buy new’) watch the brief ‘history of the shop’ video.

Learn of their goal to “save 100,000 cameras” while they strive to increase the pool of cameras for the niche enthusiast of film technology. Who knows, some models may well suit your collection!

 

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remember when?

Posted on February 24, 2023 by Robert

Lockhart’s 1931 ad on page 122 in the Magnet

Toronto. There was once a camera exchange across from Simpson’s department store in the Temple Building (Toronto’s first skyscraper) on the north-west corner of Bay and Richmond in downtown Toronto. According to the ad in the 1931 Magnet magazine, they had a new store at 29 Adelaide St West.

From the 1960s on, I favoured Toronto Camera Exchange, Henry’s, Downtown Camera, or Queen Street Camera Exchange. These shops were around Church and Queen area, and over on Yonge. I also visited Drake Delta on Yonge around Bloor.  Remember when?

My thanks to George Dunbar for the photo of the Temple Building in the TPL archives and Lockhart’s Camera Exchange sign. The 1931 ad in the Magnet is from YUMPU. Hard copies of this issue of ‘the Magnet’ and all other issues are at the Jarvis Archives, Jarvis Collegiate in Toronto.

 

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wintery wonders

Posted on February 23, 2023 by Robert

Snowflake by Dr Jason Persoff, courtesy of PetaPixel

Toronto. The other night my wife was on the Weather Chanel when she spotted a story about a photographer who captured images of snowflakes. We couldn’t find the short video again and the name of the photographer was forgotten, but not the basic idea of his camera and lens.

We searched at length on the Weather Channel and the internet but had no luck. A few days later, I spotted the video on my iPod Touch (in the Weather Channel app). Once I saw the video and knew the photographer’s name, it was easy to find him and the video on the internet.

The images were taken by a Jason Persoff, On smugmug.com  shown here, the tag line says “SEVERE WEATHER PHOTOGRAPHY under his storm doctor web site (actually the link goes to his SmugMug page). Dr Persoff was born in Denver and continues to live in Colorado. Visit his page on SmugMug and read  his story on PetaPixel (Photographer Seeks Perfectly Formed Snowflakes for Magical Photo Series) or Pinterest (Snowflakes and Winter – Jason Persoff).

Photographs of snowflakes have been taken for decades now using film cameras. Dr Persoff uses a Digital camera with extension tubes and a macro lens. And the black background? It’s from the sock he uses to catch snowflakes and decide which is worthy of a photograph! PS. Dr Persoff finds Photoshop a big help to merge the many images of a single snowflake rendering the tiny crystals in sharp focus.

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flyin’ high

Posted on February 22, 2023 by Robert

Captain Elsdale, Balloon Photographer in Maritimes

Toronto. Jeff Ward was here in the city in August of 2017 (Canada’s 150th) and spoke at our monthly meeting. Since then Jeff has been in periodic communication with the PHSC.

Under Facebook in a series of articles called, “The Early Light Project“, Jeff is “Sharing information about photographers in (or from) Atlantic Canada in the first 100 years of photography (1839-1939)”.  This included an article about balloon flight and the experiences of Captain Elsdale.

Jeff writes, “As you may know, I have been posting about photo history here in Atlantic Canada for the past year or so.

“In a post around Christmastime, I spoke about an experimenter named Elsdale and his work on balloon aerial photography.

“Here is a link to the post.“

Jeff wrote to me after seeing my post on Nadar and the balloon drawing of the French Photographer in full flight with endless numbers of photo studios beneath his saloon. Have a look at Jeff’s articles (if you don’t have a Facebook account, just join – no cost).

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room for a better one

Posted on February 21, 2023 by Robert

Fox Talbot and camera in 1864 portrait (on the PetaPixel website).

Toronto. The title is a riff on the old saying, “… build a better mousetrap …“. One of the earliest cameras was called a mousetrap by the spouse of its creator. It was basically a very small camera obscura. A light tight wooden box held a piece of salted paper at one end and a short focal length lens at the other.

Next to the lens was a small corked hole. The cork was removed briefly to check the progress of the exposure (a latent image was not used – the salted paper was like the printing out paper of a later age).

The resulting exposure was inverted – light areas were dark and vice versa.We would later recognize this as a negative. By placing a second sheet of salted paper under the ‘negative’ and exposing the sandwich to sunshine, a ‘positive’ print was created.

All this was part of William Henry Fox Talbot‘s experiments shortly before Daguerre’s iconic announcement. Talbot had succeeded in ‘fixing’ the ‘negative’ and ‘positive’ salted  papers by using a diluted solution of salt.

We have come a long way since the late 1830s in film based photography: more sensitivity, better resolution, latent images, greater flexibility – and better cameras!

PS. Checkout our website (use the search box in the upper right side) to see more about Talbot.

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ya can’t win ’em all …

Posted on February 20, 2023 by Robert

Summer 1950 ad for the Range O Matic photo meter by Utilitron

Toronto. There’s an old saying, “one born every minute” attributed to P T Barnum but actually older. The resulting population subset forms the potential audience for the type of gadget advertised in a 1950 issue of Popular Mechanics.

Utilitron, the maker of the “Range O Matic” is careful to state only the attributes of the gadget and let the reader’s imagination fill in the blanks. At $4.95 including tax, the company aimed at the bargain hunters in the would-be photographers’ fraternity. It cost much less than any one of the three instruments it was said to replace.

Sadly, it was nothing more than a clever extinction meter with a few attached nomograms. True light meters like a Weston Master or a GE were more expensive and far more accurate in use. The maker seems to have disappeared into the long night as has the Range O Matic (except the occasional one that is offered to collectors).

My thanks to good friend George Dunbar for spotting this ad from last century and sharing it with us.

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