{"id":21779,"date":"2021-10-18T01:06:04","date_gmt":"2021-10-18T05:06:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/?p=21779"},"modified":"2021-10-15T22:39:59","modified_gmt":"2021-10-16T02:39:59","slug":"a-photographers-magnifier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/a-photographers-magnifier\/","title":{"rendered":"a photographer’s magnifier"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

c1951 Elmar enlarger lens by Leitz. Click it to see an ad for the 1c enlarger of the same period.<\/p><\/div>\n

Toronto<\/strong>. Anyone wanting to see a magnified view of a small object would likely use a simple magnifying glass – just like Sherlock Holmes in the many Conan Doyle stories. Predating photography, a projector (magic lantern) projected an enlarged view of a glass plate’s drawing on a screen or wall for all to see.<\/p>\n

Initially (and for much of the 1800s) a photographer chose his camera and lens to create the desired size of print. In an effort to enlarge images taken with a smaller camera, some people invented devices that used the sun as a light source and projected the negative on the rather slow photographic paper using what today would be a slow lens.<\/p>\n

When Eastman began touting roll film in the later 1880s, a means to make decent enlargements became useful. And mid 1930s when the minicam<\/a> craze blossomed, enlargers became mandatory<\/a>. Negatives were often as tiny as 1 by 1.5 inches! Enlargers could increase the size of the final print by 10x magnification, and sometimes even more.<\/p>\n

My good friend, George Dunbar, shared this advertisement for a Leitz 1c enlarger from page 20 of the October 1950 Popular Photography<\/a> magazine. I did another post about the 1c back in January 2018 when the same ad appeared about a year later ( before the world was rocked by COVID-19).<\/p>\n

The 1c’s basic design was often copied. Other enlargers like many Durst models automatically retained focus as the print magnification was changed. Durst used a pillar and fixed arm to also keep the print centred on the base board.<\/p>\n

Of course, in the old days of view cameras and ground glass to focus, a nifty brass stand<\/a> held a magnifying lens the correct distance from the \u00a0ground glass to allow the photographer to move his lens and put the scene in sharp focus.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Toronto. Anyone wanting to see a magnified view of a small object would likely use a simple magnifying glass – just like Sherlock Holmes in the many Conan Doyle stories. Predating photography, a projector (magic lantern) projected an enlarged view … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1944],"tags":[398,447,1166,3886,63,401,3885,3887],"class_list":["post-21779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","tag-camera","tag-enlarger","tag-focussing-aid","tag-ground-glass","tag-leitz","tag-lens","tag-magnify","tag-sun"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21779"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21779\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21785,"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21779\/revisions\/21785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}