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Weston 650 exposure meter c1938

Toronto. In setting a dry plate or roll film camera for a particular scene, the toughest part of all was to determine the light value so the aperture and speed could be estimated. In 1935, Weston Electric Instrument Corporation in Newark NJ (founded in 1888) developed the famous model 650 Universal Exposure Meter.

This wonderful device used a selenium cell to determine the light value then used the traditional nomograph dials to select the film speed, aperture, and shutter speed. An innovation was to use settings either side of the main pointer (a, b) and (u, o) to aid in determining the dynamic range of the scene or compensate for the meter position.

I first learned of Weston meters as a young kid when a friend of mine gave me an old Weston iron-vane “true RMS” meter (0-150v and 0-300v) once used in the General Electric factory quality assurance department at Barrie.  A few years later, I acquired this DC voltmeter (0-30v) made c1900 that once graced the Collingwood, Ontario Bell Telephone Company of Canada test panel. It is the size of a dinner plate and about 4 inches deep.

5th Ave and 42nd St in NYC in 1910. Original image named “amerikanskie-goroda-retro-12-940×747.jpg”

Toronto. Mo Patz dropped me a note from BC yesterday. Maureen was president of our Toronto chapter which folded into the national chapter many year sago.

Mo writes, “A friend of mine in the States just sent me this e-mail that brought both of you to mind [me and John Linsky] and I thought that you might enjoy looking at them too and perhaps send them on to others to enjoy (like Mark Singers, whose e-mail I don’t have to hand)….or even you might want to print this e-mail out for the next club meeting.

“Aren’t these pix lovely? I think they are great and I couldn’t resist forwarding them to you.”

You can see the prints too at this site which is a page on Memolition – Explore. Dream. Discover. While they are all American locales, the images capture the scenes of cities in the era. The original photographs were likely taken on glass plates with field cameras on tripods (not pinhole cameras as one site mentions). Roll film was available at the time, but was most commonly used by amateurs.

The image files are all named in Russian as “America Cities, Retro” followed by a sequential number and the image size in pixels. There are many sites on the web with all or some of the same photographs down to the same file names.

Eadweard Muybridge plates on Animal Locomotion sell for $62,500 US

Toronto. I received an email the other day from Ms Daile Kaplan of Swann Galleries talking about their latest sale of photographs and books by auction.

She says, “On Valentine’s Day we offered Icons & Images: Photographs & Photobooks, precisely 65 years after Swann held the first U.S. auction dedicated to photographs. Known as The Marshall Sale, the top lot in the February 14, 1952 auction was a collection of more than 1,000 plates from Eadweard Muybridge’s Animal Locomotion, which sold for just $250.

“Tuesday’s auction cleared $1.5M, with a selection of 50 plates from Muybridge’s 1887 magnum opus topping the auction at $62,500.

“Also available were multiple works by Ansel Adams, Edward S. Curtis and Roy DeCarava, and a set of 22 large prints from NASA missions that reached $43,750.”

I remember the NASA prints. I was in Montreal at the time and a woman bought some for a young family member of the celebration of the first moon walk. She kindly ordered a set for me as well. My first daughter was born that summer when America first put a man on the moon – 1969.