Various

“ Varied indeed are the experiences and vicissitudes of the amateur photographer, whether the camera bearer carries the latest Universal, with aluminium mounting, or rejoices in a Premium Pinhole outfit, he experiences the same annoyances and disappointments. Ignorant and unreasonable people are sure to be met with on an outing, and, worse than all, he has frequently to suffer for the sins of some rude member of the guild who has been there before him. ”

“ With a bound the trustee kicked over the tripod and camera; then, turning to the preacher in an unmistakable attitude, told him in his rich German English, that he was on private property, tramping down a growing grass crop, and if he and his crowd didn’t pack themselves off at once he would arrest and fine the party for trespassing. “But, my good fellow,” ventured the now crestfallen preacher. “Don’t speak to me!” was the retort. “You claim to be a gentleman; maybe you try to be at home. ”

“ The one object I have kept in view all through has been to simplify the art as much as possible, and to make each photographic section complete in itself, and able to take, develop, and print a picture without any outside help in the shortest time possible. ”

“ On account of the extreme plainness and simplicity of the old silhouettes, we are too apt to pass them by as productions of but little or no artistic merit or value, overlooking the fact that the plain outline contour, in centuries past, was the germ from which emanated the arts of bas-relief and portraiture, the latter passing through all the various stages from the plain outline of the finished miniature, and these in their turn to be supplanted by photography of the present day. ”

“ The observers at the Eclipse Station only have one astronomical adjustment to make, i.e., that of the position of the heliostat, and only one driving clock to regulate. This clock, since it has only to move the weight of the plane mirror and its mounting, can be more accurately made and regulated than is possible with a clock when it has to carry the weight of the tube and heavy axis of an ordinary telescope. The positions of the observers are more easy and natural during the precious seconds of totality ”

“ The custodian or trustee of the property is a plain country Dutchman, and keeps an especially sharp lookout for amateur photographers, as the religious sect to which he belongs frowns down portraiture of any kind. ”

“ Owing to the curious architecture and proximity to a summer resort, the property is often overrun by visitors and sightseers, who run over the grounds, enter the houses, intrude on the privacy of the inmates, as if they had no rights of their own whatever, and in fact act as if the whole premises were public property. ”

“ THE SILHOUETTE. Our illustration, “Folwell’s Washington,” is a profile of the one person characterized in our nation’s history as the “First in war, the first in peace, and the first in the hearts of his countrymen.” Our object in presenting this frontispiece to our readers for the current month is a two-fold one;--first, in view of the Eleventh Annual Convention of the Photographic Association of America, which is to be held in Washington, August 12–15. The subject is a particularly appropriate one. ”

“ Opportunities of observing an eclipse occur therefore at such comparatively long intervals, the phenomena to be observed are so varied and extensive, and the time during which the observations must be made is so very limited, that any permanent records of the phenomena, such as photography enables us to obtain, cannot fail to be of the greatest value. ”

“ The subject was placed in front of the screen, the room darkened, the camera being placed in front of the sitter and screen. A Blitz-lamp exposure of five to six seconds was then made. Result--not a single specimen that equals our old silhouette. So much for our Viennese photographic cousins. In these great United States we simply tack a piece of muslin in front of a window, place the subject directly in front, shut off all other light in the room, focus, fire, and develop. Result--a good sharp profile almost all the time. ”

“ There is nothing beyond the difficulty of making a plane mirror sufficiently large for the work to prevent the adoption of this method in the future; and this difficulty now has ceased, as it is only a matter of time and labor to make plane mirrors of sufficient size. With a large plane mirror, twenty inches or upwards in size, mounted on a heliostat mounting, and so arranged as to reflect sunlight into a series of instruments rigidly supported in a horizontal position, the difficulties of eclipse observers will be very considerably lessened. ”

“ Daguerre was led to experiments on chemical changes by solar radiations, with the hope of being able to apply the phenomena to the production of effects in his dioramic paintings. As the question of the part taken by him in the process to which he has given his name has been discussed sometimes to his advantage, it appears important that his position should be correctly determined. In 1802, Wedgwood, of Eturia, the celebrated potter, made the first recorded experiments in photography ”

“ Towards the end of the last century the art of profile painting reached its highest development, of which our example is a good specimen. In our own country, the demand for these pictures was so great that a special machine was invented for the purpose of producing correct outlines in miniature. This apparatus was one of the features of Peale’s Museum, then in Independence Hall. The process was first to outline the shadow, then the machine was brought into play ”

“ The whole of the photographic apparatus can be fixed up in a dark hut or under a dark tent with far less trouble and risk of stray light than is possible with the old manner of mounting.
The cost of a good heliostat mounting is about the same as that of a good telescope, and with one heliostat we can do the work of at least half a dozen of the usual instruments. ”

“ While I require almost a whole day to make one design, you ask only four minutes! What an enormous advantage! It is so great, indeed, that no person knowing both methods would employ the old one.” From this time it is established that although both Niepce and Daguerre used iodine, the latter alone employed it with any degree of success, and the discovery of the use of mercurial vapor to produce the positive image clearly belongs to Daguerre. In January, 1839, Daguerreotype pictures were first shown to the scientific and artistic public of Paris. ”

“ The trouble, however, does not always lay in the strangers we meet in our travels; the fault too often is with the camera bearer. There is a class of persons, largely represented among the guild of amateur photographers, who presume entirely too much on their wealth or social standing, and who at home pride themselves on their good breeding and polite manners, claiming to be within the so-called exclusive social circles or sets ”

“ Unfortunately for the authors of this beautiful discovery, it is impossible for them to bring their labor into the market, and thus indemnify themselves for the sacrifices incurred by so many attempts so long fruitless. ”

“ We now have a complete tent in which a man 198can move about freely, and use his hands without constraint, and, above all, he is not half stifled, as one generally is in the usual run of developing tents. It can be taken down at a moment’s notice, and packed in a very small compass, the whole being exceedingly light and compact. A few stays may be necessary in windy weather to keep it steady. The person about to develop a plate slings over his shoulders, knapsack fashion, a small metal tank, containing sufficient water to wash several plates; attached to it is a gutta-percha tube and tap. ”

“ The Supreme Court holds that it is a case in which there is ground for the recovery of damages; that the photographer has no right to dispose of pictures which are the sole property of the sitter. The decision is an important one. ”

“ Now that the preparation has undergone a radical change, passing into a branch of industry, that first difficulty has vanished, and there has succeeded to its place the duration of the pose, the exact determination of which has over the resulting picture an influence as great, and possibly greater than formerly, seeing that in the very short poses of the present time even a little error has a value of relatively greater importance. ”

“ The prints show a singular and very pleasing grain and need no transferring.--Dr. Eder’s Jahrbuch.
Every photographer is, no doubt, to his own sorrow, familiar with a yellow stain in the negative, caused by taking the plate from the fixing bath before it is thoroughly fixed. Mr. Belitski, the well-known photo-chemist, made some experiments recently to remove this stain, and succeeded very well. A slight stain can often be removed by placing the negative in the following solution: 50 parts alum, 1000 parts water, 10 parts bichromate of potassium, 20 parts muriatic acid. ”

“ The exposing apparatus for the ordinary sun photographs is an instantaneous shutter; this, of course, had to be abandoned for the eclipse photographs. Two plates were exposed during totality, the exposure being 60 seconds in each case, but only slight traces of the corona were obtained. At the same eclipse Father Secchi and Professor Monserat, working at Desierto de las Palmas, obtained good photographs of the corona, using an object-glass of .15 metre diameter, and 2.5 metres focus, the primary image being 23 millimetres in diameter. ”

“ It is not improbable that (in spite of the great strength and weight of the axis and the solidity of the supporting piers) with this plan of fixing a large number of cameras and spectroscope on one polar axis, the constant opening and shutting of shutters, and the changing of the plates, may produce so much shake that none of the long exposure photographs will be satisfactory. This, of course, can only be ascertained by the use of the instrument on the corona, and several years must elapse before the trial can be made. ”

“ You will never suffer us to leave to foreign nations the glory of endowing the world of science and of art with 202one of the most wonderful discoveries that honor our native land.” Daguerre never did much towards the improvement of his process. The high degree of sensibility which has been attained has been due to the experiments of others.
Daguerre is said to have been always averse to sitting for his own picture, and there are but few photographs of him in existence. ”

“ It sometimes happens that there is trouble in securing pure whites in prints on albumen paper, an universal yellow stain covering everything. The best remedy for this is the use of alum in the printing bath, as originally suggested by the late Mr. Anthony, of New York. Care also must be taken that the paper is quite dry before being fumed. Operators are too apt to forget that as the thermometer rises, so does the amount of watery vapor in the air increase, and that sheets of paper will often dry more quickly on a bright day in winter than on many hot days in summer. ”

“ There is no question of the fact that the sensitiveness of the prepared paper increases when floated on a strong bath, and that the compound which is then formed between the albumen and the silver is more prone to decomposition. It will occasionally happen, if the prints come out yellow, metallic-looking, and covered with minute black specks, that weakening the silver bath down to the strength of forty-five or even forty grains will cure the trouble. ”

“ Sometimes they remain silent until the picture is started, when they begin to stroll around and make eight or nine dogs on the plate; or they sit still and only wag their ears, until the negative shows something like a halo of ears. ”

“ No details are given of the apertures of the lenses employed, or of their focal lengths. At the outset, therefore, astronomers were met with failure, but the failure at Milan did not deter Dr. A. H. Busch and Herr Berkowski from a similar attempt at Konigsberg on July 28, 1851. The telescope used on this occasion had an aperture of 2.4 inches, and a focal length of 30 inches. Commencing immediately after the beginning of totality, a plate was exposed for 84 seconds in the focus of the telescope, and on development an image of the corona was obtained. ”

“ The cameras themselves were enclosed in a dark-room, the lenses only being exposed to the sun, so that dark slides were not required, the plates being held on open rotating frames, these frames being rotated at the proper time by pneumatic arrangements. When the cameras were once pointed, and the clock driving properly, all the operations of exposure and changing of plates were performed without personal superintendence by means of the pneumatic apparatus, and a chronograph attached to the valve system of this apparatus recorded the exact time at which each exposure was begun and ended. ”

“ One contains a very light fold-up camera, capable of taking pictures 10 in. by 12 in., round which is wrapped the focussing cloth. It has not appeared to me desirable to place before a general a view of a country smaller than this. The extra weight would be more than compensated for by the comprehensive picture obtained; moreover, in a small plate, I take it, distance would not be fairly and distinctly portrayed. The other knapsack carries three dark slides, very light but strong, each containing two plates. This knapsack also contains the lens, instantaneous shutter, etc. ”