a great coffee for us all
Toronto. Those of us who used 2-1/4 or 35mm cameras and film are familiar with the aperture setting f/8. It is a great mid range setting offering a nice balance of speed and depth of field for outdoors.
The delightful head of PhotoEd magazine, Rita Godlevskis, has collaborated with a local coffee supplier, Sparkplug, to make a special blend for photographers. After all, there is nothing better than a hot coffee and a great magazine!
some of the many hoods for 35mm camera lenses
Toronto. Don’t you wish your photos were crisp and contrasty like those of an accomplished professional?
One issue last century was soft contrast caused by reflections from individual lens elements. Post war, element coating became common and with it a much crisper contrast. An alternative was avoiding light that did not come over the photographer’s shoulder (often Kodak’s advice to amateurs using inexpensive cameras).
Another option was a lens hood to block any light rays not contributing directly to recording the scene on film. Many professionals avoided the hoods and lighting guaranteed to cause a problem with contrast. Manufacturers sold hoods as accessories, or built them into a lens, or sold them with a lens.
Modern smart phones have no built in hood but your hand can be carefully placed to block extraneous light and materially improve contrast. If that maneuver fails, software editing can correct the contrast to a remarkable degree that was simply impossible using film and chemicals.
a kludge of caps
Toronto. Dust and dirt everywhere! How can you keep it out of camera bodies and lenses? Easy, cap the openings! Since the early days of photography, caps have been used to keep out dust and dirt when the camera or lens is not in use.
Caps have been made of many materials – leather, paper, metal, plastic, etc. Most are signed by the lens maker but others are generic and unsigned (or signed inside and hidden from casual view). Most caps just push on, but some screw on and others actually lock in place.
These caps are often lost. Or are left behind. Or fall off. Most makers offer replacements as accessories for a few dollars. But caps change over time, They may have the same diameter and depth to fit a lens, but a different shape (shoulders, cupped, etc.) or material may be used. After the M series of cameras were released by Leitz, the company offered a conversion ring to allow old lenses to be used on the new M mount cameras. The rear lens cap for M mount lenses had three tabs added to the outer edge allowing the cap to be a wrench to remove the 1mm adapter ring from the Leica M body. These tabs were dropped years later after the old lenses were rarely used on M mount cameras and the adapters were no longer sold new.
Case for screw-mount Leica with 5cm lens and an accessory viewer attached c1935
Toronto. In the late 1950s, I bought my Exakta VX IIa complete with an “ever-ready” case. Like many youths of the day, we called these “never-ready”cases since the camera couldn’t be used until the case was opened. When the box of cameras and lenses arrived in Labrador, I was disappointed that the camera case half covering the lens was a light brown plastic cup affair, not brown leather like the Leica used. On the other hand, the snap at the back of the camera allowed the two case halves to be separated. The knob attaching the case to the camera was threaded so the case (with the camera) could be mounted on a tripod – essential in those days for interior shots.
Years later, research showed these cases were offered around the time of the minicam revolution and may even have originated with the Leica. While the front part of the case dropped down to expose the camera, it didn’t detach. Hence, it was common practice to use the camera without the case. Shortly after the Leica appeared on the scene, Leitz sold a wealth of accessories and later lenses. Leitz sold many different cases of leather, aluminum, Bakelite, and other materials.
Cases are rarely collected making identification more difficult. The screw mount Leica case above could be used with an accessory such as the Imarect (multi-lens viewer) attached to the camera. I must have acquired it 30 or 40 years ago, but the records have been lost. My case was made by Leitz New York and sold to someone in Derry, NH.
Kliegl Spot Light c 1930
Toronto. One big difference between amateur photographs, and those made by professionals and advanced amateurs, was illumination. Indoors, the professional went to great lengths to illuminate his subject bringing out the nuances of its very existence whether a human, an animal, or an inert object.
Lighting such as on camera flash or spot lights gave a harsh, contrasty scene. Bounce flash, light boxes etc gave a softer illumination. Only casual amateurs used on-camera flash as a main light source with its harsh and sharply delineated shadows. Outdoors, on-camera flash was used as fill light to soften the camera-facing daylight and brighten the otherwise darkened front of the subject(s) facing the camera. On-camera flash lighting was the choice of professional news photographers where the picture was more important than any creative lighting.
In the studio, north facing daylight or light boxes served as the main light source, while illumination on the back ground could bring it out and separate it from the subject. Spot lights could be used to highlight the characteristics of the subject. Careful lighting could give the model plasticity or a three dimensional look or even lighting like Rembrandt once used in his painted portraits to highlight one side of his subject’s features.
Shown is a tiny Kliegl Brothers spot light I bought from another PHSC member at one of our fairs. Kliegl lights were initially created as arc lights to illuminate commercial movies (much larger and brighter versions of the lights). The arc lights died out as electric lights took over.
call for articles
Toronto. Do you remember the old Joe McDoakes shorts that used to run before the main feature in the movie palaces? That was the source for our post title! In this case, you can get into a pdf, but only if you are a PHSC member…
Not a member? This is the Easy-Peasy part: choose domesic or international; 1 year or 3 in the upper right part of this web page, breakout the plastic, and hit the Pay Now button to sign up via PayPal – we absorb the small fee.
Then write a few words and add some images. Email to editor Bob Lansdale by July 24th and he will consider your idea for publishing. All current members WITH an email address have received the notice on the left with added details. You say you are a current member with an email address but were missed? Drop me a note at info@phsc.ca and I will followup promptly!
Girl in front of green screen courtesy of PictureYouth, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wiki media.org/w/index.php ?curid=25763598.
Toronto. Have you ever watched a girl like this showing off fashion articles in exotic places? Or a weather girl on TV and saw the various detailed weather maps and videos behind her? Or joined a ZOOM meeting where participants have backgrounds of familiar photos?
The concept used to merge two images is actually over a century old! It is sometimes known as Chroma Key since the secret is to make a selected colour in the foreground transparent so the background image can show through.
As the person in the foreground moves around, the background looks like a solid picture. Sometimes the person uses a colour too close to the one selected for transparency and that area suddenly becomes transparent too and the back ground shines through.
Today, the internet offers videos, articles, apps, etc. showing how you at home can create things once seen only in the movies or on television.
Notman Studio Montreal
Toronto. Photography was a success when latent images were discovered (plus a fixer solution). Silver salts, or silver-halides as they were later called were molecules of silver and a “salt” bonded together. These molecules were light sensitive. The stronger the light, the weaker the bonding and easier the molecule broke into metallic silver (black) and the salt.
The 1839 daguerreotype process worked slightly differently. Mercury fumes could “bring out” the latent image (previously invisible to the eye) by bonding to the metallic silver to create white. The silver mirror of unexposed or under exposed silver salt molecules could reflect dark backgrounds (eg dark velvet) to create a positive image. The alternative 1839 process by Fox-Talbot used salt paper (like the called printing out paper of a later era). The light was intense enough to bring out a negative image without further development. To speed up the process, the latent image was later used plus a developer chemical.
Using latent images made the exposures needed in the camera far shorter, but meant darkroom processing before any image could be seen. Looking at the Negative-Positive processes which became dominant until digital took over, various chemicals would convert silver-halides to metallic silver and salts in proportion to the light hitting and weakening the bond. Development rendered the invisible image (latent) visible. Too long in the developer, or too intense a light and most silver-halide molecules became metallic silver and salts, ruining the image. The various developer chemicals would only work in an alkyd solution so immersion in an acid solution (stop bath) stopped the development process in its tracks.
And a fixer would eliminate any remaining light sensitive molecules so the once sensitive material no longer reacted to light and could be viewed and stored. Of course poor fixing or a lack of thorough washing after fixing (or exhausted or contaminated baths) could cause fading over time.
Louis Ducos du Hauron c1915 courtesy of Colour Phtography by Brian Coe
Toronto. It’s nearly three years since I first posted a note about Louis Ducos du Hauron and his contribution to colour photography. After Ducos du Hauron learnt about the three colour theory of vision, he predicted almost all the ways to create additive and subtractive colour transparencies and prints.
His earlier papers were wrong in their tri-colour choice but that was due to an error in the general perception of colour theory, not an error on his part. Photographic materials of the day were too slow and limited in spectral range to prove his theories. Worse, the papers he submitted were never read to become a formal record.
I had a slide show of about 30-45 minutes based on the monochrome techniques of the 19th century. A requested presentation to a local Colour group resulted in me revisiting my talk. To my dismay, colour was not as linear as monochrome, but throughout it all was the Young-Helmholtz theory and the theories and concepts of Ducos du Hauron!
Brian Coe’s book “Colour Photography” was a wonderful guide to the highlights of colour photography since the 1839 invention of the art.
Ms Lena Ashwell 1907 by A C Banfield from Colour Photography by Brian Coe
Toronto. By mid last century we had Kodachrome and its competition to give us good colour transparencies. They or the original subject could also be photographed on three monochrome negatives through colour filters to give one negative per narrow colour band. All three with filtering carefully stacked and aligned would give the full visible colour spectrum.
To create an accurate colour print, a very complex dye sublimate process (similar to the example of Technicolor shown in this video) was used. Each negative was projected or copied on a matrix sheet of thick gelatine to make a mould. After washing, the gelatine in the matrix varied inversely in depth with the intensity of the negative. Dye was rolled onto each matrix (subtractive dyes) and after careful registry on a special paper, the matrix back was carefully rolled and the dye was absorbed inversely proportional to the negative density. The process was repeated on the same sheet with careful registration for each of the three matrices using a different colour of dye (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow).
The Kodak Dye Transfer Process was one of many techniques that gave the most accurate colours available at the time. By mid last century, the colours were very high resolution and accurate. Check out the various books or articles on colour for more details.
EVENTS
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Stan White – Poems & Photos
Mise Au Point – sur la photographie Quebecois
