PHSC News newsletter for January 2022

Posted on January 15, 2022 by Robert

Voigtlander Bergheil c1930

Toronto. The Voigtlander Bergheil shown here is from the right top of page 1 in this month’s PHSC News newsletter. A Bergheil model was a favourite camera of Brassai when he haunted French street life.

Well, most of us made it to January, 2022. The local TV news reports the so called fifth wave of COVID has nearly crested here in Canada. World-wide, the Omicron variant is even more transmissible than the Delta. While Canada is just seeing the sharp rise of COVID cases, the changes have been somewhat eased by our vaccination levels (the third – a booster shot – is well underway with some elderly folk getting a fourth jab!). And helping the high levels of vaccinations is a close adherence to common sense guidelines.

In spite of COVID, our editor, Sonja, and her team were able to produce another tasty issue of PHSC News for you.  PHSC News (21-07) has the usual bunch of thought provoking articles  – short, crisp, and ripe for argument. Take a few moments and read them to ease your  symptoms of virus lethargy 🙂

On page 1 under “A Decisive Time for Montreal” our editor compares that city’s issues and photos to those of M. Cartier-Bresson. Page 2 in “PHSC PRESENTS (virtually)” captures what might be the oldest known computer (analogue, not digital). Page 3, under NEO PHOTOGRAPHY ruminates on a post-modernist, pre-Raphaelite synthesis (say that fast …). This month, Streamables on page 4, has an article on, “Hollywood Cliches” which you may relate to, especially if you watch a bunch of TMC presentations; while page 5 looks at how we are coping with the healthcare competition here in Ontario.

Page 6 discusses, “Otoscopography: You Won’t Need a Gondola for This Canal“ in David’s EQUIPMENT REVIEW (always written in a provocative and interesting way).   John Morden’s  thoughtful selection of WEB LINKS. on page 7 will take you to some nifty web sites (the links are live, saving you the toil of a ‘cut and paste’ operation).

Page 8 as usual features the poster for our January speaker event via ZOOM where  Brandon Leung will be speaking about Asian Canadian Activism in the 1970s – as shown by Jim Wong-Chu’s poetic photographic album, “Pender East“. And we see those friends Ivy & Izzy, on page 9, chatting on the topic “Nancy Evans and the Good Side of the McMoon“. This issue’s wrapper, page 10, is John’s compilation of shows, events, and exhibitions of interest to collectors/photographers everywhere.

P.S. As usual, every link shown in the newsletter is a hot link just waiting for your click!

P.P.S. You can visit this issue by clicking here, or by g0ing to the menu item NEWSLETTER at the top of the page. There is a drop down menu that takes you to older issues dating back a couple of decades to the very beginning.

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a rose by any other name

Posted on January 14, 2022 by Robert

1935 ad for an orthochromatic film called Plenachrome by the maker

Toronto. One of the earliest ambitions of film makers was to expand their film’s sensitivity spectrum down to the reds. By the mid 1930s when Agfa-Ansco made this film, yellows, greens through near violet blues could be captured. Such a film was known as orthochromatic by the industry. Agfa chose to use the term “Plenachrome” and to tout the film as ‘ideal’ for outdoor subjects. It was actually just too slow for use indoors or at night. It faithfully reproduced most of the colours of nature.

Five years later, Agfa-Ansco advertised a panchromatic film finally capable of recording oranges and reds too. While the Plenachrome film was sold in 100 foot and 50 foot rolls of 16mm size, 35mm film was similar in sensitivity. Agfa sold this movie version with processing included in either straight negative or reversible (positive, ready to project after processing) options. The films of the era were mostly monochromatic black and white films.

My thanks to our retired corporate photographer, George Dunbar, whose talents range from stills to videos. George shared this tasty bit of history with me which he found in the March, 1935 issue of American Cinematographer magazine.

The more expensive panchromatic films were slow to take off, especially in still format since the processing had to be done in a fully darkened room by the time-temperature method after very accurate exposure. Orthochromatic film was cheaper and could be developed and viewed  by a dim red light allowing the development time and/or temperature to be adjusted to help compensate for any exposure error.  Savvy photographers used yellow or green filters of various density on the camera lens to modify the film’s H-D curve (eg. show both clouds and sky).

NB. The name of this post is a line from Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliette.

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modern times

Posted on January 13, 2022 by Robert

original daguerreotype of a little girl taken over 1 1/2 centuries ago

Toronto. These days of digital cameras and smartphones make photography a piece of cake. You see it; you shoot it; you send it. Easy Peasey.  But it wasn’t always the case. Many of those who haunt our fairs and shows enjoy the retro photography of the days of film.

Some even dabble in wet plate photography and salt paper or albumen prints. The really daring take a shot at making Daguerreotypes from scratch.

I bought this original daguerreotype portrait c1845 of a little girl around 1976 from Bill Marshall of Deux Montagnes, Quebec. The case cover was missing. NB. The daguerreotype has 90 degree corners, not the slight distortion shown here. The flesh tone in the middle right is my hand holding my iPod Touch as I took this image. The sharpness was affected by my hand held shot and slightly corrected with the focus plug-in (Focus Magic) that I use with Affinity Photo.

Modern day Daguerreian photographers are truly rare. In fact, there are only around a half dozen serious Daguerreian photographers in the world according to a friend of mine,

Dr Mike Robinson here in Toronto is one of the very few practitioners of the art that dates back to the very earliest days of photography when Louis Daguerre was collaborating with Nicéphore Niépce to create images by the action of natural light. The Daguerreotype is one of the earliest (January 1839) processes for photographs. The image is created in-camera on a silver-plated copper plate coated with a light sensitive emulsion. The resulting positive latent image is ‘developed’ outside the camera via mercury vapour.

And the post title? It was used by Charlie Chaplin as the name of his 1936 movie. Never seen it? What are you waiting for? It is a classic! Here is a sample.

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fleet of foot, with fully adjustable slow speeds too

Posted on January 12, 2022 by Robert

Leica III (or model F) advertisement in fall 1935

Toronto. In 1935, advertisements pointed out how a particular camera or maker was different. Was superior to the rest. Was a far better buy than the competition.

This was especially noticeable in highly competitive America. For example, Leitz NY would not just show the technical specifications and how well built their products were, but how much better they did their job – faster speeds, easier and faster to use, and far superior in construction.

In a typical ad (September, 1935 issue of American Cinematographer), a new model F (Leica III) is shown (top shutter speed 1/500th) but the copy states Leica had a top speed of 1/000 second (actually this was for the Leica IIIa or an earlier model factory modified). With a fast shutter speed and a fast SUMMAR f/2 lens, the camera could easily take a sequence of bicycle shots in a couple of seconds (a model with 1/500th shutter speed and a slower lens would be just fine, too).

Because the higher end models had a slow speed mechanism that was continuously adjustable from 1/20th second to a full second, a feature not available for other cameras, this was also emphasized in the ad.

The mechanism used was a clockwork device that held the second shutter curtain back briefly to extend the shutter speeds down to a second. If a lower cost Leica model without the slow speeds was returned to the factory, this device could be easily retrofitted.

My thanks to my good friend and retired corporate photographer, George Dunbar, for both the ad and the idea.

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to the victor …

Posted on January 11, 2022 by Robert

1935 ad for Victor cameras

Toronto. … go the spoils (well, most times). Do you remember the Victor 16mm movie gear? The majority of their products suffered from very small sales. A government contract during WW2 was far more promising as was their knockoff of the B&H Filmo camera.

The Iowa company stuck with 16mm movie gear as far as I can tell. The cameras and projectors are of modest interest to collectors. Like many products, Victor added Disney characters to some advertisements. For example, the above left advertisement from the July, 1935 issue of American Cinematographer magazine features the Mickey Mouse character and a letter from Walt Disney.

My thanks to good friend and retired cinematographer, George Dunbar, for sharing this historic find with us. When we once more are able to have fairs, you may just possibly discover someone offering a Victor camera or projector. While the Victor company always stated they were the first to offer 16mm cameras, Eastman Kodak actually beat them to market by a few weeks according to this Wikipedia article.

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a lens for all reasons

Posted on January 10, 2022 by Robert

for Leica II (or model D) with a removable Elmar 5cm lens

Toronto. When Leitz first marketed the Leica in the mid 1920s, it was an innovative success. By 1933 other makers had competing cameras out. The mighty Carl Zeiss organization not only marketed cameras, but their Tessar lens was a excellent product well known to the photographic industry. And their Contax – an answer to the Leica – came out in 1933 too.

To compete, Leitz promoted their Elmar lens as a universal lens at home on camera, projector or enlarger. And as a great lens for closeup shots via extension tubes (to allow subject distances under one metre). The lens could even be used for stereo shots with a beam splitting prism attachment.

This February, 1933 issue of American Cinematographer shows a typical Leitz NY advertisement of the period. Featured is a Leica II (Leica model D in the USA) with the interchangeable Elmar lens.  Thanks are due to my good friend and fellow photographic historian for sharing this find with us!

Note, the title of this post is a riff on the title of Robert Bolt’s 1954 BBC radio play, “A Man For All Seasons” about Sir Thomas More.

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catching the fire light just right

Posted on January 9, 2022 by Robert

A properly exposed time delay shot …

Toronto. I remember taking photos of fireworks one summer many years ago using 35mm colour slide  film and bracketing my shots. I was surprised when the film was processed and the fireworks were captured – with some burnt out highlights and detail in the shadows rather than the intended silhouettes.

On December 27, 2019 Harry Guinness wrote an article called, “How to Take Photos of Fireworks” for the blog, “How-to Geek“. The difference in this article, is that the author expects you to use a digital camera and be able to adjust the aperture based on instant feedback (images too light or too dark).

Whe I used film, I also used a tripod and time exposure but without the luxury of immediate feedback on over or under exposure. Film processing instead took literally many days before I could view the results.

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blue water line

Posted on January 8, 2022 by Robert

Toronto. Well this is executive meeting two two via zoom and as they say in the Corner Gas song “… nothin’ much going’ on …”. The most significant event recently is the January, 2022 presentation by Brandon Leung, winner of a recent thesis prize. Brandon will talk on the images of Jim Wong-Chu’s Pender East in the Vancouver area. Don’t miss it! The Ontario Election this coming June and may affect our fair date or locale if COVID doesn’t. Stay tuned. Note that coordination of this executive ZOOM session was by our president as the programs secretary is in midst of moving. Celio did show up via his cell phone (and excellent technical skills).

Just a note. The title is a line from the song of the same name as sung by the Brothers Four.

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a neater meter

Posted on January 7, 2022 by Robert

ad for a c1934 Weston light meter

Toronto. One area of photography that absolutely demanded consistency in exposure was movies. Any unexpected exposure shift between scenes or reels was obvious and annoying to theatre goers, especially those who paid hard earned money for the movie experience.

Weston was delighted to be praised in print and used letters from satisfied users like cinematographer Chas Clarke in advertisements such as this one on page 237 of the October 1934 issue of American Cinematographer. Two and a half decades later, I used a Weston III to read light. It was a pleasure to use outdoors during the day but like all meters of the period, was nearly useless in dim light or indoor light.

A thank you to good friend, George Dunbar, for sharing his find with us. I have to admit, for much of my youth Weston and quality meters were synonymous. I own Weston electric meters that are over a century old now and still working like new. Wonderful old instruments from the days when things were built to last!

 

 

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anchors aweigh!

Posted on January 6, 2022 by Robert

1933 ad for a 500 watt home movie projector

Toronto. Those were the heady days of home movies when people lugged out the heavy projector and its awkward screen. Today, we call such marvels ‘boat anchors’ – not much value to a camera collector, and only good if you suddenly need a projector.

I wonder how many viewers remember Stewart-Warner and the days of home movies? A 500w bulb gave great brightness to each movie but was very hot! Special projector bulbs were used with a relatively short life rating at full brightness.

This ad in the January 1933 issue of American Cinematographer (page 38) extols “The New 500 Watt Stewart-Warner 16mm. Projector” as giving “theatre like brilliance” to home movies. My dad had a Eumig 8mm projector which while compact was still a heavy clunker as was my Braun 300 watt slide projector. When my newly minted wife upgraded me to a Kodak Carousel, I bought an extra bulb just in case – I still have both bulbs in working order today. But of course the days of 35mm slides – and          home movies – are long over.

My thanks to that diligent pursuer of photographic history, George Dunbar, for sharing this bit of nostalgia with me. Apologies to the 1945 movie of the same name as my post.

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