Studio arrangement showing Slingsby’s Flash-Light Stand with four lamps ready to be used. Note the India rubber ball with the tubing on the floor, and the reflecting screen.
Toronto. … in fact many decades before. NB. For those born after say 1990, here is the article on Mr Gordon. Meantime back in the late 1800s, some enterprising folk came up with ways to compensate for the abysmally slow media of the time allowing studio portraits to be made with a more natural subject positioning. All photos used here were sharpened with TopazPhoto AI 3 using the program’s latest sharpening tool.
In the spring of 1992, Bob Wilson wrote an illustrated article on an 1890 book by Robert Slingsby titled, ” A Treatise on Magnesium Flash – Light Photography For Various Subjects”, published by Marion & Co., London.
The portrait shown here used four of Slingsby’s lamps plus reflecting screens. Part of Bob’s article uses his own words along with quotes on how the portrait at left was taken. “Slingsby’s first attempts at using the very bright [and dangerous] magnesium powder resulted in photographs with very strong [high]lights and black shadows. To overcome this, he began to use more than one lamp, and mounted the lamps on a tall Flash-Light Stand which he developed.
“This stand is illustrated in one of the photographs in the book. It shows a studio arrangement for the portrait of a young girl. High on the stand Slingsby has mounted four Flash Lamps, two against the wall, and two extending into the room. Attached t0 each of the lamps is a long tube and these are attached to a three inch India rubber ball.
“This ball is shown in the [enlarged] photograph. To use the lamps to take a photograph, the magnesium powder is placed in the lamp by the end of the tube and the spirit in the lamp is lit. Slingsby used two to five grains of magnesium powder in each lamp, an amount that gives more perfect combustion and less smoke and fumes in the room than when more powder is used.
“When the lens of the camera has been uncovered to take the photograph, the magnesium is forced into the flame of the lamp by squeezing the rubber ball.”
Of course members could read the full article in hard copy, or more recently in the issue 17-5 pdf file on our members-only DVD. Not a member? Join today and get a personal copy of the DVD featuring the first 40 volumes of the journal. See the menu item above or the article at right. Questions? Drop Lilianne an email at member@phsc.ca.
