mid 1800s Oreo Case
Toronto. Over a century ago, you could get a cookie size round case for your images. These tiny marvels were offered in the mid 1800s to house tintypes etc.
The tiny union cases came in various colours. This one from Paul Berg is in a lot being auctioned by Cowan’s Auctions on behalf of the Daguerreian Society Online bids are being accepted too.
Since some are rare, you might like to bid and grab a case for your collection.
Gold Commissioner’s Office in Dawson City by J B Tyrrell c1898
Toronto. My friend Goldie was wandering around the Fisher Rare Book Library on the U of T campus when he discovered photos of the Dawson Creek area around 1898-1901 (during the gold rush). The photos were taken by Joseph Burr Tyrrell. He was a famous Canadian as noted by this text in the Canadian Encyclopedia.
There is even a museum named after him just outside Drumheller. My youngest daughter and I visited the Royal Tyrrell Museum a bit over 15 years ago. It is a small museum with some amazing dinosaur bones and other artifacts.
I had a Leica M4 with me at the time while my daughter had a Canon AE-1. I used ASA800 Fuji Colour Film and had alkaline cells in my Gossen-Pro since mercury cells were banned by then. The built in meter of the AE-1 was used to calibrate the Gossen-Pro. Alkaline cells proved to be relatively stable when fresh. If Gossen had spent a few pennies more, a bridge circuit could have been used making voltage variations irrelevant. Their crude meter, battery, resistor circuit relied on the stability of the mercury cells which had a constant voltage until almost dead.
Rhamstine Electrophot c1931
Toronto. In February and September of 2017 I wrote a number of posts about photographic meters. One of our long time members was rummaging through his collection when he came across his M-OS Rhamstine Electrophot. This meter led him to a site called a virtual Lightmeter museum. So far it only presents meters from 1931-1935.
Of all the meters shown, only the Weston 650 was the subject of one of my posts. I found it interesting that the 1931 meters needed batteries to function. A year later an improved selenium cell was light sensitive enough to be used without a battery. Selenium cells stayed in use into the 1960s when cadmium sulfide (CdS) cells became common – requiring a tiny battery once again. Far more sensitive, the cells for the first time allowed low light measurements, including enlarging meters used in the darkroom as well as cameras.
Another great site for meters is James Ollinger’s site. Have a look at the two sites and take a walk back in history.
Erin Levitsky
Toronto. PHSC, Wed, Feb 20 2019 at 7:30 pm
In the BURGUNDY ROOM of Memorial Hall
Nina Leen: Snake Charmer with a Camera – Erin Levitsky
Our speaker for February is Erin Levitsky. She holds an MA in Photographic Preservation and Collections Management from Ryerson and a BA in Media, Information, and Technoculture from Western. Erin is our Thesis Winner for 2018 and her work will appear in a future issue of Photographic Canadiana.
Ms Leen practiced photography mid last century in the Big Apple. She contributed her work to 374 issues of LIFE magazine. She was also a dedicated author credited for some 15 books. Erin’s talk covers analysis of Ms Leen’s prints and negatives in the LIFE Photo Collection.
The public is always welcome. Go to our Programs page for directions.
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Anscochrome slide home developed 1958 – Exakta – IOC iron ore mine
Schefferville Quebec
Toronto. As we casually view the colour images on front of our smartphones, we may forget the long torturous route taken from crude monochrome glass slides projected on a sheet or screen in a darkened room to 35mm or 2×2 inch colour slides projected in a dim room on a collapsible lenticular screen.
From the early 1840s, slides have existed. The earliest ones had emulsion affixed to glass and projected in church halls. The sensitized emulsion was far too insensitive to use in a camera but could be contact printed by sunlight. By the 1870s, fancy triple-lens projectors and filters could show a version of muted colour using a monochrome slide taken through a filter, developed and bleached to make a positive representing the light intensity of one of three colours visible to the eye. Combining the three monochrome slides through the correct filters created a colour image. Only still life exposures were possible at first.
By the early 1900s, delicate Autochromes of live subjects became possible using this additive colour process with all three monochrome images combined as a single panchromatic emulsion coated over a filter of dyed potato starch particles. The image was exposed through the potato starch and later projected through the starch to show the soft colours. It was still very slow demanding the subject to remain unmoving during the exposure.
In 1935, the revolutionary Kodachrome colour film went on market followed a few years later by Agfa’s simpler colour process allowing local processing. Postwar, both Ansco (Ansco Color, later Anscochrome) and Kodak (Ektachrome) used the Agfa concept of large molecule colour couplers for local processing. The big benefit of colour transparencies was good colour balance and a much finer resolution than then available with colour print films.
Specialized slide projectors and hand held viewers became commonplace with companies promoting their products through advertising such as the ad shown on page 136 of the September 13, 1954 issue of LIFE magazine. The Kodak Carousel with its circular tray standardized the 35mm tray format. Earlier projectors, like Argus, used various linear 40 slide trays. to project and store slides.
I took the above slide in 1958 at the Iron Ore Company open pit mine in Schefferville, Quebec. The slide was developed by me in Ansco chemistry. The slide became faded and darkened over time. I used Lightroom to adjust the brightness and colour as much as possible in this digital copy made in the summer of 2012 .
Memar – a $40 bargain from Ansco
Toronto. After the war, every camera maker seemed to jump on the minicam (35mm) bandwagon. Many quickly adopted the standard of a leaf shutter, none interchangeable but focusing 45mm lens, and perhaps flash synchronization.
Usually rangefinders and faster lenses were reserved for slightly higher end models. Some cameras sported flash plugs; others had interchangeable front elements to modify the lens to make it a modest wide angle or telephoto lens. One could buy and add close-up lenses, filters, lens hoods, flash guns, leather eveready cases etc. to most cameras. The main target was the middle class buyer who could afford the under $100 price tag.
Ansco offered its versions as advertised for Christmas 1954 in LIFE magazine (p 104 of the Nov 15, 1954 issue). Germany was struggling with losing the war making it difficult to market its cameras in North America unless badged as American products (this camera was marketed as Ansco but made by Agfa in Germany). Of course, all this disappeared when the Japanese market took over after the Korean war and eliminated the fledgling American industry and most German cameras (except for the high end German and other European cameras both 35mm and 120 sizes).
Toronto. Our January 2019 meeting was a week later – 4th Wednesday – a couple of hours earlier – 6:00 pm – with no tables or chairs. Wayne was tied up so Clint generously drove Bob Lansdale and me to the meeting. It took 75 minutes to get there using the back streets for most of the way, arriving at the nearby parking garage on Victoria street off Dundas just a few short blocks from the RIC.
The PHSC sponsored one of the three exhibits opening January 23rd. It was a Ryerson Students exhibit of Kodak Canada artifacts selected from the vast collection held by the University’s archives. PHSC member, author, and photographer Vincenzo Pietropaolo sent me this notice of the exhibition “True to the Eyes” in the main exhibition area. Continue reading
Daphne Yuen
Toronto. On this chilly November evening the traffic from both east and west to downtown was bumper to bumper! Daphne arrived early complete with an entourage of Ryerson grads. A slim petite young lady, who gave her talk in a clear and confident manner, she is currently living and working in Hong Kong.
Daphne limited her talk to albums digitized in four British institutions, focussing mainly on the Victoria and Albert museum. She used illustrations shown in her thesis and in our journal, Photographic Canadiana, issue 44-2. Readers can refer to that article for more information. You can also download the complete thesis here in pdf format (available online from the Ryerson Library). Continue reading
rose hips by garage wall
September 2006
Toronto. I am truly blessed having so many post ideas sent to me. This one came in Thursday from Goldie. In November 1954, two manufacturers took out ads in LIFE magazine but neither company used cameras in their ad.
On page 53 of the November 8th issue, Kodak elected to tout their Christmas card prints. As you may recall in the days when you used a post office and stamps as a slower and cheaper option to long distance telephone calls, it was fashionable to select a print and have many copies made with a cheery text message.
The copies were sent to friends and family as Christmas cards. The Kodak ad for B&W prints was a welcome respite from their many ads featuring, cameras and colour photos.
On page 113 of the same issue, Capehart-Farnsworth announced their special television set (with a screen up to an amazingly wide 21 inches diagonal including the part under the opaque bezel). Their fresh egg was to use a polaroid filter on the CRT to eliminate glare and reflections. Room lights could be left brightly shining, No need to pull the drapes, you could even watch television in daylight!
Naturally the idea failed to gain traction. Their set had to have an extra bright CRT to compensate for the loss of illumination through the filter, shortening the life of the most expensive component in a television set. Besides, day-time television was crummy in 1954.
Horseshoe Curve
Altoona, Pennsylvania
Toronto. Americans like to go BIG! In 1954, a famous Pennsylvanian railway loop called the Horseshoe Curve celebrated its centenary with an amazing night time photograph using 6,000 flash bulbs donated by Sylvania.
The bulbs were connected by some 31 miles of wire. It took six weeks to set up the lighting for this single shot of three trains running through the loop near Altoona PA.
A good friend and PHSC member found this exciting photograph on pp 36, 37 in the November 1st, 1954 edition of LIFE magazine. Have a look!
EVENTS
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Stan White – Poems & Photos
Mise Au Point – sur la photographie Quebecois
