CAMERAMA Show
Toronto, Well then, go and see CAMERAMA! Gary’s first show of the year will feature lots of collectible and usable cameras and lenses, etc. Shake off the winter blahs and see what you can do to augment your collection or make your shots more effective.
Click the icon at left for details and directions! Or click here to send Gary an email.
Hasselblad C/M c1970-94
click to read/print this issue
Toronto. Editor Pushchak has released another incredible pdf newsletter. What a bargain! 10 pages. Full colour. With her snappy style, lots of photos, and a single page per article, Sonja is aiming at a younger crowd with less interest or time to spare on matters photographic.
For those wishing more in depth articles, we offer our now well established paper journal, Photographic Canadiana with fewer but more intense articles on history, images, equipment, and collecting. For the very modest fee of $32/four issues it is truly a bargain, plus you get a membership and ten monthly presentations by people well experienced in the art of photography.
In this issue of PHSC News, we begin with a look back at Watergate in America (thinking of the current umm president) followed by our first road show to open the Kodak Canada exhibit at Ryerson’s RIC. Photo book 101 looks at The Apollo Project from the year 2000 book of the same name. After the March Auction Poster, David regales us with a means to process and “scan” 4×5 cut film for those of us who are sans scanner.
This article is followed by a Holocaust Memorial, Web Links, and all the other features and columns we have come to know and enjoy. Did I mention the price? FREE! you can down load or read the latest issue here, see all issues (18 years) under the sub menu items below menu item NEWSLETTER, or even leave your email address here for a personal copy mailed directly to your inbox every month of the year (except summer, when the livin’ is easy …).
Frank Prazak – Globe & Mail
Toronto. In Wednesday’s Globe column Lives Lived the loss of photographer Frank Prazak age 92 was celebrated in this story by his wife Penny. Mr Prazak last lived in Mississauga, Ontario and was famous for his innovative sports photos. He died last summer on August 23. In 1992, his Red Wine won an award presented by the Amateur Winemakers of Ontario.
Many of his sports photos reside today in the Hockey Hall of Fame. The HHofF is one of our exchange member groups. We had the privilege of visiting their archive in the Long Branch Mastercard Centre in the south west area of Toronto for the March 2013 program meeting.
Toronto. in the last century, a book was published for nearly any discipline. This book by Linssen was published by the Fountain Press in London in 1953, over a half century ago now. Many books at the time were heavy on text with mainly black and white photographs grouped on inserted plates.
Anything included in the text had to be a sketch or very poor resolution half tone. This book addressed close-ups as they pertained to insects at various stages of their life.
c1920 Optical Treatise
Toronto. Like most optical houses in the 1800s, The British house of R and J Beck at Cornhill (London, England) expanded their optical product repertoire to photographic lenses (and cameras). In this seventh edition of Conrad Beck’s small book, like all microscope makers do, Beck endeavours to educate the rank and file user. In this case, it is the advanced amateur or professional photographer, on the technicalities and scientific principles of photographic lenses (Authorship is given to Conrad Beck and Herbert Andrews). Many universities have digitized various editions in recent years.
While my copy is strangely undated, this 1920 edition covers the Beck Isostigmar which was first announced in 1906. The book also covers exposure calculators and “instantaneous” shutters of a couple of seconds to as fast as 1/80th second. Such calculators and shutters were never required before the dry plate era of the late 1800s.
We often think of auxiliary lenses used to change prime focal length as a system only used on inexpensive cameras with none interchangeable lenses. However, Beck and others promoted such concepts in the late 1800s and early 1900s with their lenses that had elements which could be removed to make useable lenses of differing focal lengths.
Bell & Howell ad in
a 1954 LIFE magazine
Toronto. Continuing on with the LIFE and movies theme, Bell and Howell of Chicago was a respected professional movie equipment maker. They added a consumer line pre-war (Filmo). Post-war they dumbed down the consumer cameras and ads – the cameras were little more than the movie version of the ubiquitous box camera for stills.
As the frame frequency set the shutter speed, and films came in set ASA ratings, B&H touted the simplified dial on the front of their consumer cameras that adjusted the lens aperture to outdoor conditions – just like the little diagrams in the instruction sheets inserted in the film boxes of the day. No need to understand f/stops, just look at the sky and set the dial!
The original ad can be seen in the June 28th, 1954 issue of LIFE on page 2. Thanks to my friend Goldie for the idea and the ad.
By the way, most LIFE issues are readable on Google. LIFE magazine while AMERICAN centric in editorial content and advertisements, offers an intriguing look at how we were over a half century or more ago. Each issue I look at brings back memories. My barber Nels MaGee (when I was a kid) always seemed to have LIFE and Saturday Evening Post magazines scattered around for reading material while we waited for a Saturday hair cut.
Sadly the original B&H has faded to black. The vestiges of the company still exist today under a different name. B&H was sold many times and at one point its name was sold separately and often appears today on very cheap goods that do not reflect the quality or integrity that was once Bell & Howell.
post-war DeJur 8mm
movie camera ad from LIFE
Toronto. Post war everyone had catching up to do. Wages, telephones, cars, home appliances, televisions and cameras. In the 1950s the next big thing was home movies. Kodak and its competitors sold 8mm film in both black and white and in colour to those souls lucky enough to buy or own a movie camera.
My father-in-law religiously took movies each summer holiday and carefully joined the developed spools to make a fuller reel.
Many companies manufactured and sold other things besides movie gear to make a buck, DeJUR was one such outfit. Founded in the 1920s to capture the nascent radio market’s enthusiasm for components (a variable capacitor anyone?), DeJur transitioned into photographic gear for movies, later trying its hand in making or rebranding various still image cameras and light meters. Near the end it tried marketing radios and sound recorders. DeJur quietly faded from view and was gone by the mid 1970s – but its cameras are still alive today on Ebay …
Thanks to George Dunbar for sourcing the May 24, 1954 LIFE magazine ad on page 95 of that issue.
Myseum Logo
Toronto. Most of us who live here know the ROM – Royal Ontario Museum on the corner of Avenue Road and Bloor, in easy reach of U of T students (and the rest of us by subway). But I wonder how many of us know about the Myseum?
This innovative institution has an office on Richmond Street but is spread across the city. Check out their website and consider making a contribution or writing a story for them (like the story of Boris Spremo in yesterday’s post).
Click the logo at left to see an example photograph from the Discounted Histories exhibition being held at Myseum.
The late PM Diefenbaker
by Boris Spremo
Toronto. The late Boris Spremo, PHSC member, speaker, Toronto Star photographer, and an illustrious photographer as well has another story about his work here on a local Museum website.
This iconic silhouette of PM Diefenbaker will strike a chord with those of you who followed politics 1950s and 1960s. “Dief the Chief” was a strong willed lawyer from small town Canada who was a driving force in the final design of our flag and a constant thorn in the side of LBJ when John Diefenbaker was in the opposition.
Who can forget his stirring speeches as PM peppered with his signature phrase my fellow Canadians? Or his disastrous decision to cancel the Avro Arrow, an advanced fighter jet created here in Toronto, in favour of American jets.
Kalart Press camera 1948-53
Toronto. As a kid I often saw ads for a Kalart after market rangefinder. This little gadget was bolted on the side of a Speed Graphic. I never thought of Kalart as a camera maker.
At our Show and Tell 2018 this past December, one of our new members, a news photographer, showed his unusual alternative to a Speed Graphic.
The Kalart press camera is a beautiful looking camera with a 127mm Wollensak lens (like the one used in a Leica mount and marked Leitz NY). The camera was designed to correct all the known issues with the Speed Graphic. There were two viewers so either eye could be used, and two flash gun sockets. You can use a ground glass or a rangefinder (and a tiny spotlight in poor light). The lens can be removed but no alternatives were ever made by Kalart. They would however, customize a camera for a given lens if you sent camera and lens to them in NYC. The lens focal length appears in the bright frame as a reminder. Numerous clever circuits and mechanical gadgets stop you from making common errors with the camera. These protective devices make the camera more delicate to the uneducated user.
But it had some other problems of its own. The hand hold was too small for a large male hand; no optional lenses were offered; and the cut film size of 3-1/4 by 4-1/4 inches didn’t meet with standards of the newspapers of the day which expected 4×5 inches cut film or plates from older Speed Graphics. While gorgeous and well made, the Kalart was double the price of a Speed Graphic – about a third the cost of a new car at the time! The camera first came on the market in 1948 and lasted until 1953 when it disappeared into the mists of time.
Thanks to PHSC member Davis Strong for this item. Oh, and the biblical title I used? Each viewfinder is totally dark with a bright line frame and rangefinder triangle. You have to use BOTH eyes to see the field of view and the frame – another problem with the Kalart.
EVENTS
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Stan White – Poems & Photos
Mise Au Point – sur la photographie Quebecois
