first 8mm magazine loading movie camera

Posted on May 6, 2019 by Robert

Briskin 8 Movie Camera
with an 8mm magazine load

Toronto. Remember the Revere movie camera? Sure we do! Remember the Briskin 8? The what? Never heard of it. The Briskin 8 was created by the son of the owner of Revere, Ted Briskin, when he decided to branch out on his own.

For this fascinating story, take a look at the site of the Made in Chicago Museum. This fascinating fact was unearthed by George Dunbar.

George writes.”I found this story of the Revere Movie Camera company and its founders to be quite interesting.

“Maybe my interest is because of the romantic trivia involving the founder’s son Ted Briskin, who married the Hollywood movie star, Betty Hutton.

“At one time he manufactured the Briskin 8 camera in competition with his father. His wife was featured in the advertising.”

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CNE Gooderham Fountain

Posted on May 5, 2019 by Robert

Graphic Art & Photography
CNE Toronto

Toronto. Every year the arrival of the “EX” mid August signifies the end of summer. And the end of the “EX” after labour day with the air show tells us in the city that fall is upon us. This photograph is variously identified as 1920s, 1934, or 1940. Interesting to the PHSC is the building in the background named as the “Graphic Art & Photography” building. In the late 1970s and early 1980s when we had a camera booth at the CNE, it was in the “Arts &  Crafts” building a bit to the north and west of the fountain in what appeared to be a post-war building facing the Dufferin Street entrance.

We had the booth for a few years until new management decided every booth was to be manned while the CNE was open and that a fee should be paid to be there. It was hard to find volunteers willing to man our booth throughout the CNE hours and worse, the fee was simply too high since the fledgling organization had nothing to sell that would earn enough profits to cover the rental fee.

Member George Dunbar tagged this photo as as 1934 while the CNE site places it in the 1920s, but identifies it as 1940. So what is the correct date? The lower left corner of the photo is in-scripted as x.66014 which may help identify the correct date.

 

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mirror be gone

Posted on May 4, 2019 by Robert

Nikon Mirrorless Z7

Toronto. I mentioned some weeks back on  October 12th, 2018 that mirrorless DSLRS would replace the bulkier DSLRs with their mirror boxes and through the taking lens framing via the pentaprism above the mirror.

Nikon has recently announced their Z7 camera was awarded the “high-end camera of the year” ranking by DPReview. Both the Z7 and the less costly Z6 are on sale at Nikon along with some accessories.

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burning down the house

Posted on May 3, 2019 by Robert

Final Fire – Michael Mitchell
ECW PRESS

Toronto. Michael Mitchel spoke to the PHSC twice, each time on his experience with the cabinet cards of Charles Eisenmann and his current descendants. He is an author and a photographer. His latest book, Final Fire, is published by a small Toronto house, ECW Press, publishers of his second book on the Eisenmann Monsters.

This promotional blurb is on the ECW Website, “See the world through a photographer’s eyes.

“Final Fire is a companion piece to Mitchell’s much-praised 2004 memoir, The Molly Fire, a finalist for both the Writers’ Trust Drainie-Taylor Biography Prize and the Governor General’s Award for Non-fiction, and a Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year.”Nearly a half century ago, Mitchell abandoned a safe and secure academic career to become a “cowboy” with a camera and a keyboard.

“While he has always kept one foot planted firmly in the arts, as a working photographer his search for adventure took him through the Americas, into the High Arctic, across Europe, on to the Middle East, India, and the Far East. He photographed famous athletes, musicians, actors, politicians, revolutionaries, and more than a few criminals. The sum of these scary, strange, heartrending, and funny episodes is one man’s prescription for how to live in a bizarre and, best of all, never boring world.

“It is also a book about loss. Mitchell reflects on the invention of photography and its transformative effect on world culture and pays tribute to fellow photographers who led remarkable and frequently obsessive lives.

“Available May 14, 2019. PRE-ORDER NOW!”

The title of this post is from a song by David Byrne and the Talking Heads.

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paper it over

Posted on May 2, 2019 by Robert

Ilford Multigrade Paper

Toronto. Once you have film negatives, they must be printed on photographic paper to be reversed. In the hey-day of film you had a wide number of choices to make: paper size, surface treatment, colour, manufacturer, grade, thickness, contact or enlargement, etc. And that was for black and white negatives. Colour had a far more limited choice since you had a correctly colour balanced and exposed negative or you didn’t – not much room to choose.

Most amateurs – and professionals used enlargers and 120 or 35mm film. When printing, like film in the camera, the first step was to get the correct exposure. Dodging and burning with tools  or by hand would allow some localized shifts in shadow and highlight. Developer could be chosen although amateurs usually stuck to Kodak or Ilford products rather than use third party pre-mixed chemicals or, hand mix from a formula in books or magazines. If glossy paper  was chosen, an extra step was needed – drying face down on a heated ferrotype plate to get a hard shiny surface.

Before 35mm and 120 film, professionals used larger size glass plates or cut film. The careful use of a soft pencil or scraping with a sharp blade substituted for dodging and burning under an enlarger.

Today, our computer printers shoot out colour prints on demand using special printer photo  paper usually bought at Staples or another stationery supply store. High quality prints from photographers use expensive inks, papers, and printers designed to create reliable colours and long life in many different environments.

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roll your own

Posted on May 1, 2019 by Robert

Bulk Loaders for 35mm film

Toronto. When film and 35mm cameras were all the rage, a significant savings could be realized by buying bulk 25, 50, or 100 foot rolls of 35mm film, In the darkroom, the film roll was placed in a light tight bulk loader. You could save even more by getting slightly out of date bulk film rolls at a war surplus store like the old Hercules store on Young Street around Wellesley (or was it nearer to Bloor?).

You could buy new empty 35mm cassettes, or use specially made ones like the all brass Leica version (at the end of life, new Leica brass cassettes cost $100)! Or if you were down right frugal, save or scrounge good empty cassettes and reload them.

Some companies, like Ansco, even sold kits of film and cassettes so you could save a few dollars and roll your own. The Ansco colour kits had the film trimmed to fit the cassette every 36 exposures plus leader. Leica sold film leader templates and third party templates could be bought at many camera stores. But most people (like me) just trimmed leaders by hand.

Did you know the long leader used on commercial film cassettes was a nod to the screw-mount Leicas? The Leica camera bottom was removed for loading and the leader had to be slipped between the pressure plate and the shutter and dropped into the take-up roller. In some cameras such as the Exakta, a blank cassette could be used in place of the take-up roller so you could wind the exposed film directly into a cassette. Exaktas even had a built-in knife. Leica sold a knife as a separate accessory (ABCOO).

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Photographic Museum of Ontario (PMO)

Posted on April 30, 2019 by Robert

Karsh Presentation at PMO Fundraiser in Ajax

Toronto. The PMO is hosting a fundraiser on May 18th, 2019 out in Ajax. Some members are or were members of the PHSC or have spoken at one of our meetings. Shelton Chen is a local expert on Karsh.

Peter Gatt, CPC, executive director of the museum, writes, “On Sat. May 18, 2019, the PMO is proud to present a day with Karsh. Come learn about the photographer who has taken some of the most iconic photos of our time.

“Yousuf Karsh was an Armenian-Canadian photographer known for his portraits of notable individuals. He has been described as one of the greatest portrait photographers of the 20th century. Karsh’s photos were known for their use of dramatic lighting, which became the hallmark of his portrait style. Martin Luther King, Winston Churchill, Audrey Hepburn, Albert Einstein, to name but a few have been photographed by this legend.

“We will start with a short documentary followed by a slide show of his work. We will also have a few pieces of his originals on display. Door prizes, 50/50 draw and photography items for sale.

“Cost $ 30.00
“Time: 6:30 – 9:30

“All proceeds of this event will go directly to the Photographic Museum of Ontario to help us build our first location to preserve the history and art of photography.”

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when core memory was king

Posted on April 29, 2019 by Robert

IBM Core Memory = George Dunbar

Toronto. When I first joined the Business Information Systems (BIS) section of Bell in 1966, 64,000 bytes of memory was huge. Today, of course that amount is so tiny you could not begin to load a modern day operating system plus a single file in memory, let alone an application to display/modify the file. Memory in those days was called core for a reason. Each bit of data in memory depended on the hysteresis effect of tiny rings of ferrite material. The hysteresis switched direction to register a ‘1’ or a ‘0’ in binary. American computer companies were known collectively as ‘Snow White and the seven dwarfs’ reflecting the relative size of the eight companies with IBM (Snow White) the largest.

Today, York University  archives has benefitted from IBM Canada’s collection of photographs, largely taken by our own George Dunbar during his tenure as a part of the IBM Canada team. The wonderful collection “Portraits of Digital Canada” was hosted on April 24th at the Scott Library. The occasion was celebrated by the attendance of George Dunbar and Bob Lansdale, our journal editor. Bob recorded the event with this shot of George.

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where were you 33 years ago?

Posted on April 28, 2019 by Robert

Kindergarten classroom in Chernobyl – Gleb Garanich

Toronto. I was living here in Toronto on April 26, 1986 when I heard the ghastly news that a cataclysmic explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant threatened to end life on earth as we knew it. The plant was in Pripyat, a city in the Ukraine area of the Soviet Union, about 90km north of Kiev. News of the disaster was kept silent until two days later when Swedish monitors detected a sudden burst of air borne radiation. Within days the radioactive air spread around the world.

Even today, Pripyat is abandoned, too radioactive to support human life. Guided tours are allowed in the evacuated area now that short term radioactive isotopes have decreased in half-life enough to permit such short visits – just don’t dig in the soil.

The Globe announced the 33rd year anniversary of the disaster this month on its page A2 feature “Moment in Time” with a brief article by Massimo Comanducci featuring a photograph by Gleb Garanich of child-size reminders found in an abandoned kindergarten classroom.

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pictures on the spot

Posted on April 27, 2019 by Robert

Polaroid Ad Nov 1955

Toronto. In the last half of the last century, photography had a number of goals for improvement for amateurs. Three come to mind: Faster media, so pictures could be taken indoors or at night; colour at lower cost; and faster delivery.

Most of the industry chose the first or second approach. Everybody touted flash and flash bulbs for indoor and night shots; many promoted colour (especially slides and the requisite projector and screen); but Polaroid was different: they chose faster delivery. So fast in fact that they called their new system “picture in a minute”.

The Polaroid ad on page 67 in the November 21st 1955 issue of LIFE magazine showed how a typical American family could jazz up Thanksgiving (the holiday is a month later than here in a nod to a warmer climate) with photographs – and not just photographs but Polaroid “picture in a minute” photographs. Kids turned away? Take another photo! Grandpa snoozing? Take another photo! The much higher cost (vs. traditional film and prints) was never mentioned. Or the fact that you could only use Polaroid cameras (well made for sure) and Polaroid film packs with built in chemistry and photo paper. You may like to check out this site for how Polaroid film works.

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