Ilford Test Strip Holder
Toronto. As I learned more about photography I gravitated to Ilford products. The icon at left shows the Ilford Test Strip Holder.
To save on the cost of paper and chemistry, it was common practice to do a series of test exposures before using full size sheets of paper and their associated chemistry. This little gadget let you expose the same portion of a negative at four different times for comparison.
One of the cotton tail kits my daughter kept
My c1895 POCO 4×5 camera with a UNICUM shutter and a RR Lens
Toronto. I have a POCO 4×5 made by Rochester Camera Co. in the 1890s. This camera uses the dry plates that led to the early success of George Eastman. When Richard Maddox of England invented a successful dry plate formula in 1871, it led to the so-called instantaneous or sub-second photograph. Until the dry plate and later film became popular it was customary to use a lens cap or even a hat as a “shutter” since most photographs took a few seconds or more in broad daylight for a decent exposure.
With the advent of rapid dry plates, a formal shutter became necessary. My camera uses a Bausch and Lomb UNICUM shutter surrounding a rapid rectilinear lens. The dainty device allows a photographer to set his shutter speed to 1, 1/2, 1/5, 1/25, 1/60, or 1/100 of a second plus T and B (Time and Bulb). Focussing is by bellows and a ground (frosted) glass plate viewed without a dry plate inserted, shutter set to B and held or set to T, and the camera’s back opened. The camera has a waist level viewfinder with a tiny ball to level the camera on a tripod.
A War Effort Stamp
Toronto. George Dunbar has searched out some more vintage camera ads including one on how we once printed sheets of postage stamps.
Do you remember when stamps were made from famous art or photos? This has been going on for many years.
In fact, Popular Photography dated September 1944 in NYC, had an advertisement for the way Canada Post (the Royal Mail in those days) created a stamp to help our war effort. Have look here or click the stamp icon.
Brownell’s version of the Bull’s Eye Camera for Kodak
Toronto. The Photographic Historical Society (TPHS) across the lake in Rochester often have interesting speakers as befits the home of Kodak. Click here or on the upper left icon to read this excellent issue and learn the history of the Blair camera company – and more.
There is a tie to us as well. Students doing a Masters at Ryerson do their second year at George Eastman House in Rochester.
And about once every three years Photographic Historians world-wide are invited to present and attend their Symposiums. Wonderful events.
Maxwell’s Ribbon Photo – 1861
Toronto. Once monochrome images were successfully captured by Daguerre and Fox Talbot and announced in January 1839, the holy grail of photography became capturing life in full colour. Beyond experimental processes, and hand colouring, this goal wasn’t reached as a marketable process until the next century.
Two basic colour schemes were identified. Firstly, the additive process where layers of red, green and blue light combined to create colour. We are most familiar with this process today in our TV screens, smartphone, tablets, computer monitors, etc.
Secondly there was the subtractive process usually a Cyan, Magenta and Yellow with some times black and grey tossed in the mix. This is most common today in computer, newspaper and magazine printing. The old style film days most recently showed additive processes in colour slides and subtractive processes in colour negatives (often an orange filter was tossed in the mix as well to shift the colour balance.) Continue reading
Leitz FULDY focoslide c1950
Toronto. One of my favourite pastimes is close-up photography. Close-up is generally thought of as 1:4 down to a magnification of 1:1 or life size. Greater magnification is usually the domain of microscopes. Most cameras can handle 1m to infinity. Some can handle 20 inches or even 12 inches to infinity.
Close-ups need the lens adjusted for moving closer to the object. This is basically handled in two ways – firstly by extension rings (or a bellows) between the lens and camera body or secondly by adding close up elements (+1 to +3 diopters) to the front of the lens. The big issue then becomes how one frames a close-up shot. If you use an SLR or view camera, framing is trivial since what you see is what you get. Continue reading
Home Made Pinhole Camera
Toronto. Some of the earliest cameras were pinhole cameras. The mechanics magazines of the 1950s periodically gave plans for making your own pinhole camera. The challenge was the creation of a pinhole the right diameter and perfectly round.
Often the magazine articles suggested a suitable darning needle and a sturdy foil. The hole was carefully centred on one side of the light tight container and the sensitive medium – film or photographic paper – was placed across from it in the container.
The choice of container size and, shape, plus the sensitive material size determined whether the camera image was a panorama, normal, wide angle, telephoto, etc. At one time I even had a small book on pinhole cameras called The Hole Thing. Today, as my friend George Dunbar recently mentioned, we have an annual pinhole camera day each April. The results of the pinhole event are posted on line to celebrate the world pinhole day. This year, the day was April 26th and the results are now posted. Toronto had two images, one by Larry Reid and a second by Freddy Lum.
Graflex Ad April 1938
Toronto. My friend George Dunbar sent me another whack of ads the end of last month (April 2017). One ad stuck out for me since Popular Photography magazine, founded in 1937, had recently closed its magazine doors.
The ad featured a Grafex camera, the preferred instrument of North American news hounds. If you didn’t use a massive camera in the 1930s (or earlier), you weren’t a real photographer! In fact, the recently released Leica of the day spent its time convincing photographers you could get a decent picture using a small camera with its “small negative, big picture” campaign.
In the April 1938 Popular Photography magazine, this Graflex ad touted a prize winning photograph taken by Howard Robbins for the Oakland CA Post-Enquirer newspaper. Robbins snapped the ship Ohioan as it was fatally awash with ocean seas off San Francisco late in 1936 using his Series B Graflex and a telephoto lens.
The theme of the ad was that you had to have an American-made Graflex to win awards, and make money (talent isn’t mentioned, of course). The ad suggests a ‘penny postcard’ will be enough to get you a catalogue of the Graflex cameras and accessories!
Late 1800s selfie… by Tom Chitty
Toronto. In 2013 The Oxford dictionary named “selfie” as the new word of the year.
Tongue in cheek, we added a selfie to our logo last year when we were kicking around a new logo.
Now PHSC member Boris Spremo sent editor Bob Lansdale this clever look at a view camera version of a selfie… The sketch is a New Yorker comic by Toronto based cartoonist Tom Chitty
Polaroid SX-70 – Click to see or print our latest PHSC News
Toronto. Another delightful edition of our PHSC News came out yesterday morning. Drop me a line at info@phsc.ca if you would like to be on our mailing list. The featured camera this month is the famous Polaroid SX-70.
I have one I bought from the late Bill Belier. I wanted to use it to create photos to scan for my store flyers but unfortunately the prints were both costly and of low resolution compared to using traditional film. Some artists differ on the photos from this beautiful little SLR camera.
But I digress – just click here or on the SX-70 image to see and print this luxurious issue 17-1. Lots of colourful news in its eleven pages lovingly created by our editor Sonja Pushchak.
N.B. I did a number of posts about Polaroid and its still-available film (thanks to the “Impossible” project). Just type “Polaroid” in the search bar at the upper right of this web page and click on the little box titled SEARCH.
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Stan White – Poems & Photos
Mise Au Point – sur la photographie Quebecois
