have you ever seen a Foton walking … ?

Posted on June 9, 2022 by Robert

Joan flogs the doomed B&H Foton in this May 1951 advertisement

Toronto. Back in September of last year, I did a post on the ill-fated B&H Foton camera. Since then, my good friend George Dunbar found another advertisement on the Futon, this time using the famous movie star Joan Crawford as spokesperson to push the camera. The ad shown here appeared in the May, 1951 edition of the magazine American Cinematographer.

Sadly, by the time the ad hit the magazine stands, the rare, very expensive and well built Foton had sunk beneath the waves, seen only in the odd camera collection. First built in 1948, it was considered on of the best of American 35mm cameras but was far too expensive to compete in the market place.

NB: the post title is a riff on the song “Did You Ever Seen a Dream Walking” sung here by Fats Domino.

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Newfoundland life in the olden days

Posted on June 8, 2022 by Robert

Photo by A. Leonberg St. Bernard-Newfoundland Dog
Courtesy Memorial University

Toronto. My good friend, George Dunbar, enjoys browsing the internet these days for interesting facts about photography and its rich history. Today, George brings us his finds about people on the great island of Newfoundland – the most easterly part of Canada – a province since 1949.

George reports that, “Some interesting notes on early Newfoundland photography will be found here; and an excellent video here”.

The video covers the times of Elsie Holloway – a female photographer born in Newfoundland. Elsie, “received much of her training from her father but also studied photography in England prior to World War I”. Text, photos, and the video are on the Heritage Newfoundland and Labrador website. The text on the site was extracted from the “Women’s History Walking Tour Booklet”. The video is also attributed to the “Women’s Walking Tour”

The earlier reference to Newfoundland is also found on the Heritage website under the title, “Photo Album Provides Valuable Historical Record” which was copied “from the files of The Gazette February 22, 1996″.

The photo for this post is a young boy with a St. Bernard-Newfoundland dog, taken before 1886 and labelled “A. Leonberg:  St. Bernard-Newfoundland Dog”. It is courtesy of the Archives and Special Collections department (Coll-199, 1.136), Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s,NL.

I remember as a little boy seeing a friendly giant of a dog – a coal black Newfoundland dog – romping around on the railroad right of way a block or two from my home.

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PHSC June 15, 2022 Presentation

Posted on June 7, 2022 by Robert

Ms Strobino speaks on Henry Fox Talbot

Toronto. Hi folks, we have another exciting international talk this month. This time, we will be hosting our speaker  from Florence, Italy.

Ms Francesca Strobino will be speaking to us via ZOOM on Wednesday, June 15, 2022. Her topic is “Natural objects and the making of Talbot’s photographic engraving process (1852)”.

You may know that Fox Talbot was one of the two defining characters of our art form (photography) when he belatedly announced his process after hearing about Louis Daguerre and his metal plate process announced in January, 1839.

Register and see more about the event, just click the photo at top left of this post or go on EventBrite here. Problems or questions, email our programme coordinator at program@phsc.ca.

 

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do you remember DuPont photo products?

Posted on June 6, 2022 by Robert

ad for DuPont films when the brand was better known in photography

Toronto. Do you remember DuPont when they made photographic materials? To day the company is still very active, but no long makes movie films and other more traditional photo products.

In May of 1932, the company took out a large ad in American Cinematographer magazine to show that the film Grand Hotel with an outstanding cast of stars was shot on DuPont special panchromatic B&W film.

By the time I was deeply into photography, Kodak dominated the market and DuPont products were just one of a handful of ‘also-rans’

Once again, we owe a thanks of gratitude to my good friend George Dunbar, for sourcing and sharing this ad. Oh, and the line of German along the bottom edge of the ad (Bei Anfragen und Bestellungen beziehen Sie sich bitte auf den American Cinematographer – asking for the American Cinematographer magazine to be quoted in any product enquiries)? Perhaps because the Grand Hotel was based on a German novel and the hotel itself was based in Berlin.

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showtime TONIGHT

Posted on June 5, 2022 by Robert

Ihagee and Exakta SLR talk

Toronto. This evening (June 5, 2022) at 7:30 pm EDT, our friends at the PHSNE are hosting a ZOOM presentation on Exaktas.

The post says, “Photographic Historical Society of New England, Inc.[is hosting] “Ihagee and the Exakta: The First 35mm SLR” with PHSNE member and photo historian Vladimir Khazan [on] Sunday, June 5, 2022 at 7:30PM EDT”.

If you know and collect these remarkable SLR cameras, be sure to log on to ZOOM. Details are on the above link. Note: This is the first post on a Mac Studio still undergoing (personal) tests.

 

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at it again

Posted on June 4, 2022 by Robert

the London show this fall

Toronto. If you get over London (Ontario) way this fall, Maureen and Ron are holding their “London Vintage Camera Show” on Sunday, September 25, 2022 at their new venue.

You can click on their web site for more information.

My thanks to that whirling dervish of activity, our PHSC president Clint Hryhorijiw. Maureen and Ron have a great show just a couple of hours west of us. Plan to drop by this fall and get some collectibles, or if you are a niche film fanatic, some really usable gear.

Note: The post title is a riff on one of my favourite Noel Coward songs, “Alice Is At It Again“.

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our spring fair is this month – June 11, 2022

Posted on June 3, 2022 by Robert

Toronto. Our PHSC Spring Fair is a go! NEW DAY – NEW LOCATION.

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doing a Don McLean …

Posted on June 2, 2022 by Robert

Marlene Cook courtesy of the Toronto Star article

Toronto. Les Jones sent me a note that Marlene Cook will be closing  her antique market. On Sunday, May 29th,  Victoria Gibson, the Affordable Housing Reporter for the Toronto Star wrote an article in the Star titled, “Sunday Antique Market at St. Lawrence says goodbye after three decades“.

In it, she interviews Ms Cook (I bought some glass plates from Marlene many years ago at one of our fairs). Marlene says in part, ‘“I’m closing this Sunday, because I want to go out with a positive market for all my dealers,”  She says she, “fears lack of traffic to help the show get back on track …”.

PHSC member Hans Kotiesen is also in the article, ‘”When Hans Kotiesen started selling from his old film camera collection, he listed the items on the likes of eBay and Craigslist. But as time wore on, Kotiesen said he wanted to do something more active and personal.

“I’m retired and I thought, you know, I don’t want to be out of touch with people, and sock myself away somewhere and just think about the past,” Kotiesen said, sitting at his table on Sunday. “So, I checked into the market. That was about ten years ago.”

“There’s a rush from talking to people, and explaining things, and cracking a few jokes. There’s a lot of human communication going on,” he said. Picking up a camera, he noted the various mechanisms and the way they let light in. He sees the old machines as a “reflection of history.””

Oh, and you may remember McLean’s song, “American Pie“. I bought the CD of the same name many years ago.

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Photo-Era: photography over a century ago

Posted on June 1, 2022 by Robert

Cover shot of the 1901 magazine “Photo-Era”

Toronto. Photography was an exciting avocation just over a century ago. One of the magazines of the time was called Photo-Era (The American Journal of Photography). This illustrated monthly covered the photographic scene in America. This example was first published some two decades after technology shifted to America and its vast resources like the George Eastman company with its roll films, Kodaks, and Brownies. You can read excerpts from volumes 7-8 here.

We don’t always realize how wonderful things are today with high sensitivity, full colour, auto everything, world wide transmission in seconds, etc. on almost every smart phone.  Magazine articles like those in Photo-Era take one back to the days when photography was a hard learned skill and art form for those clever enough to adopt a new technology. With Kodaks,  Brownies, and roll film, we began to see the rapid growth of amateur photographers and ‘snap-shooters’.

We owe this find to our good friend, George Dunbar, and his unceasing research into the history of our favourite topic.

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a flash in the (colour) pan

Posted on May 31, 2022 by Robert

part of the brief history of the Multicolour process

Toronto. Did ya ever hear about Multicolor? It was just a flash in the pan – on market in 1929 and dead in 1932. In those days, colour sequences were EXPENSIVE so movies were mainly shot in B&W with short bits in colour to ‘enhance’ the story.

“A 15-second, behind-the-scenes clip in Multicolor of the Marx Brothers filmed on the set of Animal Crackers (1930) exists as part of a Cinecolor short subject entitled Wonderland of California.”

This ‘two colour’ process could be used in regular movie cameras, hence the ad text extolling its virtue. The ad shown here is from the January, 1930 issue of American Cinematographer magazine and is courtesy of my good friend and diligent researcher, George Dunbar. Who knew we had so many flexible ‘wanna be’ color processes before Kodachrome and Ansco arrived on the market just before WW2 broke out?

And of course, today’s smartphone user just can’t see what all the fuss was about – just to create colour!

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