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Making Photos as Big as Billboards

WHEN Uncle Sam does anything he generally does it on a grand scale. And at the photographic bureau of the Department of Agriculture he carries out these well established principles by turning out photos that are as big as billboards.

These photos when completed are distributed throughout the country to the various agriculture schools and to special agriculture classes carried on for the benefit of farmers who wish to acquaint themselves with the latest developments in the science of farming. With one of the immense photos before them it is much easier for a lecturer to instruct his class in the qualities and nature of the diseases of farm animals, and the points to look for in selecting breeded stock.

At the photographic bureau in Washington, where the work of producing the gigantic photos is carried on, there is a staff of experts at work developing and printing the billboard photos for distribution to the schools. The chief feature of the photo laboratory is the mammoth enlarging machine shown at the top of the page. An ordinary negative is inserted in the enlarger and projected on the sensitive enlarging plate. Such a process is the equivalent of making a gigantic snapshot.

After the shot is made, the photo experts take the paper into the laboratory for developing. This process is much the same as the making of an ordinary print, save that the work is carried out on a larger scale. In the laboratory the prints are placed in large tanks filled with the developing fluid, which brings out the picture. This work requires expert handling, as the least slip or error in the mixing of the developer will result in a poor picture.

The completed photos are often of such size that they are built up in sections, much as the sections are pasted up to make a complete billboard sign. When this is necessary only part of the photo is made and printed at one time. Later a mosaic of the entire photo is laid out.

The photos are then ready for distribution. Among them are included photos of cattle of all kinds, cattle inflicted with all kinds of diseases, and in all conditions of health. Not only are cattle photos made but also hogs, chickens, sheep and all kinds of farm animals.

The visual demonstrations made possible by these photos serve to enlighten students more adequately on the nature of cattle diseases and defects. Better cattle breeding is naturally the ambition of all progressive and scientific farmers. With one of these photos a scientific lecturer with a pointer can accomplish wonders in the way of instructing farmers.

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Animate Your Photographs

A pull on a string and this photo comes to life. To make this toy choose or make a photograph of your child (or even yourself) in a pose which shows the arms and legs suitably extended. Make two identical enlargements and glue these on thin Masonite or plywood.

Now you have two mounted prints; on one you will want to use only the torso, so mark off the legs and arms. On the other print you will want to use the limbs with some additional material left on the upper ends to allow for pivoting. Next cut out these areas with a coping saw. Drill holes into the tops of the arms and legs to accommodate loose fitting nails, insert small washers and attach screw eyes into the ends of the limbs (see photo). Now hammer the arms and legs into the body into their proper positions. The limbs must be free to pivot. Finally, tie the strings as shown in photo. A screw eye can be attached at the head to facilitate hanging. To operate merely pull down on the string. You’ll have loads of fun. Don’t overlook the possibilities of commercializing on this toy in your spare time. I’ve sold many to eager parents.—Ro Capotosto •

Pigeons Now Take Aerial Photos
AN automatic miniature camera strapped to the breast of a carrier pigeon is the latest method being employed for the making of aerial photographs in Germany. The camera is timed so that shutter is snapped at regular intervals in bird’s flight.

Futuristic Tower Of Light
TO MAKE this trick shot, an enlarged photo was made of a common 1-1/2-in. wood screw. The image of the screw was cut from the print and pasted to another made from a cloud negative. The base line of trees was painted on the combined print with water color and the combination was copied with the camera on process film. The beams of light were worked in by hand on the copy negative and the final print was then made.

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Kinescope Photos

TV pictures ore easy to take, but look what happens if you use a focal plane shutter.

IF you own a television set and camera, you can start a photographic collection of your favorite TV stars right in your own living room. No lights are necessary, in fact the best results are obtained by having all the lights in the room out when you take your shots. The only extra piece of equipment that you will need is a tripod. Working close, you must be careful when sighting the TV screen through your viewer. It may throw you off center, so use the ground glass back on your camera. If you use a roll film camera open the back before you load the film into the camera and check the image by using a piece of waxed paper held flush over the opening. Move the camera back or forth until the TV screen fills the film area and rack the bellows until the image on the screen is as sharp as possible. Focus on the horizontal lines. The set in the background, a 17 in. RCA receiver, was tuned so that the horizontal scan- ning lines were distinctly visible. The contrast control was stepped up slightly but not to its maximum. Because TV pictures tend to be rather flat, it is a good idea to increase developing time slightly.

A between the lens shutter will give you the best results. If you have an f-4.7 lens an exposure of l/25th works well. If you have a faster lens, say an f-3.5, you might shoot at l/50th of a second to be sure to stop any action. A higher shutter speed is not recommended. The photo at upper left shows Cesare Sieppi of the Metropolitan Opera Company. It was taken with a Compur shutter at l/25th and f-4.7 on Panatomic X film. The other pictures were also taken at f-4.7 on Panatomic X film but their rather interesting flaws are due to the fact that they were taken with a curtain or focal plane shutter.

All TV receivers in the United States are standardized so that the image on the screen is formed by 525 lines—regardless of the size of the screen. Every other line on the screen is scanned by an electron beam in l/60th of a second. You can readily see, therefore, that if you use a camera with a focal plane shutter which exposes the film by means of a moving slit, the camera will pick up the odd effects shown in the other three photos. Variations of this phenomenon are produced when the position of the camera is changed so that the curtain travels up instead of down, from right to left or from left to right. •

Photo Wallpaper
THROW out that wallpaper! Away with plaster! Your home may now have magnificent new walls—walls covered seemingly with rare and beautiful materials such as hare-wood, woven rattan, marble, even snakeskin—all practically indistinguishable from the real thing.

The Di-Noc Company of Cleveland makes it possible. Using a record-sized camera they take color shots of the material to be reproduced, etch the exposures so obtained on copper plates, and use the plates for printing by the gravure process on an extremely thin paperbacked film. Film with backing is transferred in large areas to any flat surface and the backing stripped away.

Party Fun With This FREAK Camera

IF YOU are looking for something different in party entertainment, perhaps a freak camera similar to that shown here will help.

This camera started life as a store box. A little paint and a trimming of lantern-slide tape transformed it into something resembling a camera. From that point the construction consisted of attaching accessories that have no connection with photography.

One of these devices is a pair of bells arranged so that coins dropped into slots will ring them one at a time. It was desired to photograph a “hot” subject, so the camera was equipped with an electric cigar-lighter unit mounted inside a small tin can, and covered with a piece of wire screen. Slightly moistened sawdust placed on the screen produced an abundance of smoke.

To extinguish the fire, water, retained in a length of garden hose, and drawn from a faucet on the side of the camera, was used.

To produce a crash when the “shutter” was operated, a swinging hammer, operated by a strong coil spring, demolished an old photoflash bulb held in a socket.

CAMERA COP In Tokyo can take flashbulb picture of traffic violations (for use as evidence) by touching button on handlebar. Any 35mm camera can be used with the mechanism; no photo skill required.

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America’s Five Favorite Hobbies

By EDWIN TEALE

AMERICA is the hobby center of the world. More money is spent annually on hobbies in the United States than in any other country on earth. From old-fashioned whittling to polarized-light microscopy, a thousand and one spare-time interests provide Americans with relaxation and amusement. Seeking relief from the strain of an uncertain future, millions of persons, in recent months, have joined the ranks of the hobby-riders.

Supplying the needs of America’s vast army of hobbyists has become big business. Factories with incomes of millions of dollars annually cater to the wants of men and women who are following specialized hobbies. Each week sees an increasing number of hobby columns in newspapers and hobby volumes on the shelves of libraries and bookstores.

Among all these infinitely varied avocations, which are the favorite ones? Which attract the most followers? Which represent the greatest annual money investment ? What are America’s five leading hobbies?

To find answers to these questions, Popular Science Monthly, during recent weeks, has been conducting an extensive survey covering individual hobby groups, manufacturers in the hobby field, national organizations devoted in various ways to the furthering of hobbies. On the basis of the number of persons engaged in the particular avocation and the amount of money spent by them during a year, the following five active hobbies emerged at the top of the list: Photography, Stamps, Music, Model Making, Home Workshop.

Have you ever wondered how many Americans collect stamps or own cameras; how many people have home workshops or spend their leisure time operating model railways? On the pages that follow, you will find such information. For up-to-the-minute facts about the nation’s No. 1 avocation—photography—turn to the next page.

PHOTOGRAPHY – 19,500,000 CAMERAS.

LAST YEAR, 19,000,000 amateur camera ‘fans clicked their shutters 600,000,000 times to record still pictures in the United States. They spent, during that year, more than $100,000,000 for film, supplies, and new equipment. The simple box camera, stand-by of amateurs for decades, is still top seller in American photographic stores. In 1939, the latest year for which such statistics are available, box cameras outsold all other types two to one. Of the 1,500,000 new cameras purchased that year, approximately 1,000,000 were box outfits. Miniature 35-millimeter cameras represent only about one percent of those used by American amateurs. The film most widely in demand is No. 120. Most photographed object in America is reported to be Oscar, polar bear at the Rochester, N. Y., Zoo. Eastman technicians try out new films by photographing Oscar’s white coat against a dark background.

Besides America’s 19,000,000 still-camera fans, there are some 500,000 home-movie enthusiasts. Eight-millimeter movie film outsells 16-millimeter in this field and, in the production of America’s leading maker of home-movie film, the Eastman company, Kodachrome leads black-and-white. More than 200 amateur movie clubs are active in the country. The number of still-camera organizations, counting both junior and adult groups, exceeds 9,000. There are about 5,000 adult clubs and approximately 4,000 school and junior photographic organizations in the country. New clubs are being formed at the rate of more than one a week. Nearly 100 such groups are active in the New York City area alone. There are camera clubs composed of doctors, of chemists, of Wall Street brokers, of telephone-company employes, of bankers, of a hundred and one other specialized groups. The largest photographic organization of the kind is one devoted to snapping railroad pictures. With headquarters in New York City, it has more than 15,000 members scattered in virtually every state in the union as well as in foreign countries. Smallest club is said to be a pictorial group with only eight members, four of which live in New York and four in Cuba. They get together for meetings at intervals of two or three years.

STAMPS – 12,000,000 COLLECTORS.

FIFTY MILLION DOLLARS a year, approximately, are being spent by the 12,000,000 Americans whose hobby is stamp collecting. The number of these enthusiasts, according to philatelic authorities, has zoomed from 2,000,000 in 1931 to six times that number in 1941.

During the Government’s last fiscal year, the Post Office Department sold $4,000,000 worth of new stamps to American collectors. This sum represented an almost clear profit for the Government. In New York City, more than 175,000 school children have stamp collections. Issues from countries overrun by Germany are now in greatest demand. All told, there are more than 150,-000 different kinds of stamps listed.

Many present-day enthusiasts are buying stamps as an investment as well as a hobby. A New York newspaper, a few weeks ago, carried an advertisement reading: “An entire lovely island, south shore, Massachusetts. Will consider exchange for North American stamp collection.” At least 10,000 persons in the United States are following a budget plan of stamp buying to build up college funds for their children. There are, experts say, more than fifteen collections in the United States worth $1,000,000 apiece.

MUSIC – 10,000,000 AMATEURS.

ACCORDING to conservative estimates, 10,000,000 Americans turn to music for a hobby. Musical avocations, during the past decade, have gained rapidly in popularity. In 1932, there were approximately 20,000 school bands in the United States. Now, there are 50,000. In 1932, the number of pianos shipped from American factories was 27,274; last year, it was 136,500.

When the first national high-school band competition was held in Chicago, Ill, in 1923, only 25 bands competed. Today, as many as 5,000 take part in the sectional and national competitions. School orchestras, with an average of about 25 players, number in excess of 40,000. Each year, between 3,000,000 and 5,000,000 school children study some kind of instrumental music. In 1924, when National Music Week was first observed, only 800 communities took part. By 1930, the number had reached 2,000, and by 1940, 3,000.

Shifts in popularity of instruments have occurred in recent years. The once-popular banjo has almost disappeared, while the accordion is riding a new high tide of favor. The finest accordions, costing about $1,000, contain more than 3,500 parts and require six weeks to make.

MODELS – 2,250,000 MODELERS.

THE whine of midget gas engines, the whir of miniature plane propellers, the metallic chatter of model railroad trains provide music to the ears of more than 2,250,000 Americans. Last year, approximately 2,000,000 model airplanes were turned out by amateurs in the United States. Nearly a quarter of them were powered by gasoline engines. The other 1,500,000 depended on conventional rubber-band motors. In recent months, the trend in model-plane building, naturally, has been toward military ships. One eastern amateur has a fleet of 15 gas jobs, each equipped with its own power plant. Similar air-cooled engines are being used in streamlined miniature racing cars. Competitions between these mile-a-minute midgets have increased in popularity during the past year and a half.

In all parts of the country, model railroading is as active as ever. Lumping together the “tinplaters,” who buy their equipment ready-made, and the “model railroaders,” who make theirs to scale, there are approximately 250,000 miniature-train enthusiasts in the United States. Last year, they spent $11,000,000 for new electric trains alone. The average model railroader spends about $3 a week on his hobby. More than 100,000 of these hobbyists are said to have equipment that is worth $400 or more.

HOME WORKSHOP 2,000,000 SHOPS IN 2,000,000 home workshops, American hobbyists are finding fun working with tools and making things of wood and metal. Stemming from one of the most time-honored hobbies of all, whittling, home craftwork has branched out in many directions. Approximately one in four shops, 500,000 out of the 2,000,000 total, are equipped with power tools. According to the estimate of one machinery manufacturer, home-workshop hobbyists in the United States install annually about $5,500,000 worth of new electric-driven machines. Approximately 400,000 of the home-workshop fans are fortunate enough to possess power lathes. The average amount spent in twelve months by the confirmed home workshopper on tools and materials runs between $50 and $100.

Both farm and city dwellers enjoy home workshops. A few years ago, when a leading farm journal made a survey of its readers, it discovered that 27 percent of all the farmers who replied to the questionnaire had home workshops and spent their leisure on craft projects.

Besides woodworking, carving, furniture-making, and metal work, there are numerous specialized branches of home-workshop activity. One of the leading variations of the kind is amateur radio. The 56,000 licensed amateurs in the country construct, operate, and repair their own wireless sets. They range from schoolboys to octogenarians. The youngest is 11 and the oldest 88. One amateur has a layout that cost $25,000 while scores of “ham” operators get along on a total investment of $25. Banded together in The American Radio Relay League, 26,000 of these amateurs help maintain communication when floods or storms interrupt telegraph and telephone service.

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Fun With Funnygraph Photos

By WALTER E. BURTON

Distorted photographs giving the bizarre effect one obtains on looking into a curved mirror provide a novel form of fun-making. The methods of producing such photos described below can be used by any amateur photographer.

DID you ever see a funnygraph? Or perhaps you would prefer to call it a “phoneygraph.” Anyway, a funnygraph is an ideal means of proving, photographically, how your friends do not look. It is simply a photographic enlargement that has been purposely distorted by any of a dozen or more methods so that the normal features are no longer normal.

The making of a funnygraph is simple for anyone who has access to a photographic enlarger. You place the negative in the carrier in the usual way. But instead of holding the sensitized paper in a flat plane parallel to the negative, you bend the paper so that the image that falls upon it is distorted. Or, instead of bending the paper, you can simply place it so that the enlarger light falls upon it at a sharp angle. You might wrap the paper, emulsion side out, around a coffee can and hold it in place with rubber bands. Still another method is to bend the sheet into any of a hundred different forms, holding it in place on the enlarging easel with pins or thumb tacks..

In focusing the image of the negative, you will have to employ slightly different tactics than with a flat paper surface. Because of the tilting or curving of the paper, some parts of the image will be slightly out of focus when other parts are sharp. With the enlarger lens at its largest stop, focus so that the image is sharply defined midway between the nearest and farthest portions of the paper. With portraits, the eyes should be sharpest. Then stop the lens down as far as possible. This, of course, will require a longer exposure than when a larger stop is used. The enlargement is developed and fixed in the usual way.

“What’s the use of a funnygraph?” you may ask.

Well, that depends largely upon your taste or requirements. Perhaps you are looking for an unusual way to brighten your album. A few distorted pictures will do it, especially if some of those to whom you show your collection are honored by “likenesses” of themselves. Or you may have a store and wish to attract the attention of window shoppers who are bored with familiar things. Wouldn’t a few lopsided enlargements of the town’s principal buildings, streets and perhaps officials attract at- tention if displayed under the title “Suppose an Earthquake Visited Us?”

Or maybe you want to liven up a party with some funnygraphs of those attending. A certain camera club, at its recent annual banquet, had an “exhibition” of prints distorted by the method described. It was the feature of the party. Funnygraphs make good place cards, if you have photos of all the guests at your disposal. And it’s hard to beat them as comic Valentines!

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GOTHAM’S CANYONS Up-To-Date

Remarkable Aerial Photos of Manhattan’s Ever – Changing Skyline.
Photos by Ewing Galloway

Mountains of Brick and Glass! That is what O. Henry might have called these man-made skyscrapers. Here is an air shot looking directly down Fifth Avenue. New buildings are pointed out.

Here’s how the famous Battery looks to an airman. The new financial district, the winding 6th Avenue Elevated line and the Staten Island ferry piers can be seen. A symphony in architecture!

This is the new Wall Street. The sub-treasury building, now tucked obscurely away, once was the landmark of the street and stood rather openly and exposed. Manhattan has grown up around it at that astonishing rate which has made New York the world’s foremost city of skyscrapers.

The tower of the Union Life Bldg., showing the “light that never fails,” a new monster built to replace an older hotel, and a portion of the famous park called Madison Square were caught by the aerial photographer as he circled O. Henry land. Many of the buildings shown are newly built.

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Making Photographs In Color

by Keith Henney

Easy to “shoot”, color films open new opportunities for camera fans.

ALTHOUGH color photography for the amateur has been possible for many years, it is only recently that advantage has been taken of the several processes available. Advertisers have been conscious of the attention-getting value of color for some time; magazine editors have lately begun to use full-color photographs as cover illustrations and have been paying enormous sums of money ($500 to $1,000) for good “shots.” Perhaps this increasing use of color photography in the graphic arts is what has focused the attention of the amateur on the fact that he, too, may take pictures in color.

The amateur may make two kinds of colored photographs: transparencies and prints on paper. A transparency is a film or plate which is exposed in a camera and then processed to give the colors of the original subject. It is like a lantern slide in that it is a positive and it is transparent. It must be viewed by holding it up to a source of light or projected upon a screen in a lantern. It is like a motion picture positive except that it is in color and does not show motion. When one uses Kodachrome or Dufaycolor or one of the several color plates, he has, after processing, the original film or plate on which the exposure was made.

While it is perfectly easy to make good transparencies, it is still very difficult to make prints. Many amateurs are doing it, however. First it is necessary to make three ex- posures of the object on three films through three different filters. These are called separation negatives. Positives are made from each negative. These positives may be on other film or on special paper, and each must then be dyed, toned, or pigmented. The dyes or pigments used must be exactly related to the colors of the filters through which the negatives were made. The positives must be superimposed on one another in exact register. This means that the camera must not move during the negative-making process. For correct color balance in the final print, it is imperative that the three negatives be correctly exposed and developed. One cannot shoot with the abandon possible in making black and white prints.

Transparencies can be made almost as easily as shooting off black and white film, and they are marvelously beautiful to look at. They are so beautiful that many amateurs have foresworn black and white photography completely, have bought themselves a good projector and, instead of passing black and white prints among their friends to look at, entertain them with natural size images of their vacation spots, their babies, their pets or their hobbies, thrown on a screen., Still photographers are therefore following the trend of movie makers. So beautiful are the color movies, and because of color so full of apparent depth—a sort of third dimension—that those who can afford it take nothing but color. Sales of color film have gone up over two thousand per cent in the last year!

There are several forms of color film available for the amateur. Dufaycolor has been available for several years both in cut film and in roll film for practically all cameras. Agfacolor plates have been on the market for years. Recently Eastman made available to owners of 35-mm still cameras its beautiful Kodachrome, which has done more to convert movie makers to color than any other factor.

All one has to do is load his camera, or his plate holders, with these materials and shoot it off—taking care that he observes the fact that these sensitive materials must be carefully exposed. They do not have the latitude of black and white; they must be correctly exposed if time color values are desired. One cannot go barging about shooting right and left with color! The amateur must know what he is doing. Dufaycolor is an additive process in which true color values are secured by the light passing through an enormous number of minute colored filters embedded in the support on which the sensitive silver emulsion is placed. Dufaycolor can be processed at home, is good fun and not difficult. Anyone who develops his own black and white films can handle Dufaycolor, provided he is willing and capable of working in absolute darkness during the early part of the developirg process. In this, Dufaycolor does not differ from the use of any highly sensitive panchromatic film. It must be developed by time and temperature and not by inspection—unless the materials are desensitized before development. Dufaycolor, however, will process your films for you if you wish, and the charges are not high.

Kodachrome is a subtractive process in which colors are obtained by a very complicated mechanism. The amateur, however, is more interested in how to use these materials than in the theory upon which they are based. Kodachrome is available, now, only in 35 mm roll film for Leica, Contax, Retina, Bantam, Argus, and similar cameras. Larger sizes will undoubtedly be on the market before long. Kodachrome must be returned to Eastman for processing, which is included in the price of the film, resembling movie film in this respect.

Individual frames of Kodachrome and Dufaycolor films may be mounted between glass plates and thereby protected against finger prints, dust, etc. In this form it is easy to project them.

Color films are somewhat slower than fast panchromatic black and white materials, Dufaycolor can be exposed correctly using a Weston speed of 8 or a Scheiner rating of 18; Kodachrome will turn out beautifully if a basic exposure of /’6.3 and 1/60 second in bright sunlight is used. The following table has been worked out for Kodachrome: Basic stop on full cloudy day = f/1.9 Basic stop on bright day = f/3.5 Basic stop on hazy sunny day = f/5.6 Basic stop on bright sunny day = f/6.3 Using these stop openings:

1. For light subjects, close diaphragm 1/2 stop.

2. For dark subjects, open diaphragm 1/2 stop.

3. For extreme distance close diaphragm 1/2 Stop.

4. For closeups, open diphragm 1/2 stop.

Two types of Kodachrome are avilable, regular film for outdoor use and Kodachrome A for use with incandescent lights. Regular film may be used at night with photoflood lights provided the proper filter is used. On the other hand the Kodachrome A may be used outdoors if a special filter is used. If the amateur desires to use but one type of film, he should use Kodachrome A and buy the filter which enables him to use this material in daylight. In this manner he will not lose the indoor speed caused by using a filter with Regular, and the sunlight speed of the A variety is sufficient.

When taking color photographs, it is wise to remember that what makes the picture beautiful, or worth taking at all, is color. There is no use shooting up expensive film at deep black shadows. The amateur wants color—and at some periods of the year it is surprising how difficult it is to find good outdoor color. The illumination should be flat, that is, the amateur should obey the old formula that says, “stand with your back to the sun.” If the foreground is very dark with shadow, it will detract from the beauty of your picture. If a still-life set-up is not fully illumi- nated, if it has deep dark shadows in it, it will not be so beautiful. The fact is that a dark corner is, by contrast, more attention-getting than the color; and therefore the eye travels away from the color and toward the unsightly black shadow. Contrast in a picture is obtained by proper placement and usage of color. One will soon become extremely color conscious after making color photographs. He will learn what color combinations are harmonious, and which are bad.

Dufaycolor is processed as follows: The film is first developed in a metol-hydroquinone formula supplied by the manufacturer. Then this developed film is bleached; exposed to light; developed again to reduce the remaining silver, and then it is fixed.

Prints can be made from both Kodachrome and Dufaycolor. The amateur can do it, but it is a long, complex process and full of difficulty. Furthermore, it is very expensive. Current prices for prints are about $10 for a full color print 8 x 10 inches, and less, of course, for small sizes. It is a fact, however, that size lends a great deal to color. It is for this reason that the projected images are so beautiful. A small color print is not much more beautiful than a black and white—but an 8 x 10 gains depth tremendously and makes one very much dissatisfied with black and white photography.

Compact Copying Machine Is Portable

A portable photographic copying machine recently introduced is so completely contained within its own cabinet that even its developing chemicals do not have to be drained off while the unit is in transit. Simple to operate, the apparatus has an adjustable focus, a cartridge containing 200 feet of sensitized paper, a severing device for cutting paper to a desired size, built-in lights, and an automatic developer into which the exposed, sensitized paper is fed. It employs an automatic timing mechanism synchronized with its lights so that the latter are turned off the instant that the proper exposure of an original has been made. The front of the apparatus drops down to form a copy holder that can be adjusted vertically as required.

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Tricks of Advertising Photographs

Striking action photos of ships at sea or of vacationists riding the surf at Waikiki, used in illustrating advertisements in national magazines, are made in New York studios with the use of models and ingenious mechanical aids. Mr. McGinnis tells you how one big studio produces these remarkable photographs.

by Paul McGinnis

AN ADVERTISER can now get a picture of nearly anything on earth made in a few hours in the studios of Underwood & Underwood in New York City with the aid of mechanical devices. He can order his bathing suits photographed on the beach at Waikiki and have a picture in a day or two which can not be distinguished from one really taken at the famous tropical beach. Some of these pictures cost as much as $1,000. apiece, but they have been so successful that more than half the advertisements in twenty-six leading magazines are now illustrated by photographs rather than drawings.

One of the recent problems solved in this studio was the making of a yachting picture. The solution was to build half a sloop which cost more than a real boat would have cost, fully equipped and delivered a few blocks away in the Hudson River. But the half sloop was built upon one of the stages in order to secure proper lighting, the best kind of artificial breeze, dependable artificial sunlight, ideal positions for cameras and convenience for the models who posed.

The imitation sloop was complete in every detail, down to the last knot, but it was made of wall board. Its deck was sloped at an angle with the floor as though it were rolling. A real binnacle was used and a real boom for the main sail, but everything else was imitation with the exception of three coats of real marine paint. The sail was only three feet high and the boat had neither bow nor stern.

A skiing picture was made in the studio much better than it could have been made in the Alps and far more economically, by using a generous supply of salt for snow. First a scaffold was built on an incline to represent the side of a steep mountain. This was covered with canvas and moistened so that the salt would adhere to it.

A painted background is usually employed for such scenes, and in this case some snowy peaks were painted on a large canvas with paint which can be washed off. Although the photograph is black and white, these backgrounds are painted in natural colors and photographed with a panchromatic plate in order to obtain the effect of reality. Real pine shrubs were used in the middle ground, between the foreground and background, to enhance the illusion. Then two girls were dressed for winter sport, also in colors, and posed on skis as though they were sliding down the incline. All their equipment was real, even to their buckskin shoe laces. The wind which blew their clothes was not real, but imitated by tying small strings to parts of the clothing, such as the mufflers and belts.

One carbon arc was used to give a cold white light, and another type of carbon to imitate daylight, having a wide enough spectrum to bring out the real values of all the colors used.

The girls in the picture used only lipstick and powder in making up, for red rouge photographs black. They were professionals in the business of posing for advertising photographs, chosen from a waiting list of more than 2,000, representing all races, all types and all ages. They are trained in facial expression and also in standing still for from one to ten seconds.

A severe storm at sea was photographed by means of a model ship riding a wave of clay which appears to be mountain high but in reality measured less than a yard from its roaring crest to the stage floor. The clay was wet when worked into the form of a wave, and over it was placed green tissue paper, which was crinkled and roughened to resemble the smaller ripples and waves of a storm. Several shades of this paper were taken on an ocean voyage by Lejaren a Hiller, studio director, to Havana and compared with actual sea water coloring under various conditions and in different climates, in order to obtain a faithful reproduction.

The top of the mound of clay was cut away to fit the hull of a model ship three feet long. It was the most complete model obtainable in New York, a full-rigged schooner with elaborate detail, built at a cost of $550. Then over the clay was spread some soap suds to imitate sea foam. A background was painted on canvas in true sunset colors, and a light was placed behind the clay wave to imitate the setting sun and to light the spars of the little ship in an artistic manner.

Soap suds solved the problem of creating a trout stream in the studio, when the picture of a fisherman was required on short notice. The fisherman was a real one, easily obtained from the list of models on file. He was completely equipped for a good catch of trout and stood in a rushing stream of green tissue paper and suds with his hip boots. The paper, sometimes called Argentine cloth, was stretched tight in some places to give the appearance of smooth water rushing swiftly by, and crinkled to show small waves and riffles. The sparkle of the water was supplied by soap suds, some of which were splashed upon the fisherman’s boots.

In this picture also the middle ground was real, made of shrubs and gravel, and the background was a pine forest painted in its natural colors.

A picture of a sea sled was easily made in the studio, whereas it would have presented insurmountable difficulties in real action because of speed and lighting. In the studio the boat glides over a sea of painted canvas and churns up a wake of cotton.

In order faithfully to reproduce the water effects, a photographer made many pictures of a real sea sled with an outboard motor such as that used in the studio, going at a speed of about fifty miles an hour. He photographed the wake, especially, at exposures of one-thousandth of a second. The studio exposure was about a second and a half.

The stern wave was made with absolute accuracy using about a bushel of white absorbent cotton, allowing a few inches of calmer water directly under the stern of the boat, where the outboard propeller has not yet struck it. The wind effect was again produced by tying the clothing back with invisible strings.

A sea wave of translucent green is made by placing a light under a wave of green tissue paper and soap suds. In this way the wave appears more real than one a painter might make on canvas.

Frequently a scene must be made in the studio with great precision, such as a “shot”

of a ship’s cabin or a subway platform, where cameras are impractical, even for the making of sample photos for the studio director, and in such cases a “property man” is sent to the scene to sketch it. He is an artist and he duplicates the coloring as well as the size of rivets, the type of steel used in pillars and the kind of lighting.

One of the studio stages has a glass floor so that a camera may be used under it to secure a picture from a novel angle. This glass is an inch and a half thick and eight feet square. It is of a high grade and polished, almost like a camera lens. By means of this invention, a genuine “worm’s eye view” can be made of shoes and feet.

A traveling crane is used to raise a camera twelve feet in the air, so that the photograph can be made looking straight down or from any other angle, the angle sometimes being responsible for turning an ordinary picture into a spectacular one.

In some cases the photographer can improve upon nature, as in the photographing of an imitation of Waikiki beach. Here the sand was the improvement. The sand of Hawaii is coral and its grains are round and do not sparkle in a picture. For this picture a different kind of sand was used, with sharp-cornered grains and bits of mica to give it an artistic glint. With real palms in the foreground, sparkling sand in the middle ground and a good imitation of Diamond Head painted for the back, the picture was both artistic and convincing, even when compared with a photo taken at Waikiki.

“Trick” photography is still used for some pictures. Distorted faces and scenes are made by pulling the film out of shape while it is still in the developer.

Double exposures convey the idea of ghosts or visions. In order to make a double picture, a black background is usually employed. At least there must be enough black in the background to accommodate the ghost figure and make it stand out. The plate may be exposed twice, once without the ghost and the second time with it in the picture, but a more accurate way is to make two plates and print them one after another on the same paper.

A new type of photography now enables the printing engraver to make a line cut from it, so that it looks like a contrasty black and white drawing rather than a photograph. The vivid contrast of light and shade in the picture is brought out by a special developer.

The genius of the Underwood & Underwood studio is also the daddy of advertising photography, Lejaren a Hiller. He made the first advertising photos, with the exception of the early patent medicine testimonials. He was the first to pose living models. Much of the technique he uses was learned in motion picture studios, but the mechanics of making still pictures is now an art of its own. He had his own studio until five years ago and owns a collection of 30,000 negatives which he made in traveling about the world and which he consults for artistic details. He is also a painter and makes illustrations for magazine covers.

He introduced the use of small models into the business. One of his successful battle pictures was made by placing tin soldiers in a basin and covering them with large bubbles of soap suds. A soft-focus lens gave the illusion of the dimness of battle smoke, and the sparkle of the bubbles simulated a terrific barrage of bursting shells.

The studios, which began in a small way, now look much like motion picture studios, with a piece of a kitchen standing in a garden, a pretty girl posing in a parlor a few feet from a subway, and a forest of trees laid away on shelves with thousands of other “props”.

Camera Trap Catches Unusual Poses of Smaller Forms of Wild Life

AN ORDINARY mouse trap and a few feet of 1/2″ x 1-1/4″ stock are all the parts required to make this automatic shutter release for your box camera. The device, which should be painted green, is unique in catching unusual poses of small forms of wild life.

At one end of the 51-in. base, construct a mount for the camera. The rear of the mount is 5-3/4″ and the front is 5-1/2″ to allow the lens to point down into the camera field. Screw the trap to the base of the device directly below the lens. A short length of wire connects the camera lever to the trap spring. Another length runs from the trigger through wire screw-eyes in the base to the opposite end where a nut or morsel of food is fastened as bait.

British Invent Midget Camera

ANSWERING the demands of photographic fans for even more compact equipment, a London manufacturer has perfected a tiny camera which takes pictures the size of a postage stamp.

The midget device takes eight photographs on a roll of film and is to sell for about a dollar.

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DARING DEATH With NEWS CAMERAMEN

by TED DALTON
Picture Assignment Editor, the New York News.

Why wasn’t De Pinedo rescued? Why couldn’t mechanics save him if photo sleuths got close enough to take tragic shots—?

Why do news cameramen dare death, go to any length to get pictures of executions, burning munitions factories, gang wars—?

Ted Dalton, camera ace, gives the answers in this thrilling yarn about Unsung Knights of the Shutter!

THE universal clamor today is for pictures —for action photographs of thrilling drama, of death-defying adventures, and of disasters in every quarter of the globe.

The news cameraman must satisfy that demand no matter how near Death’s sombre shadow may hover over him. When a train is wrecked, when an airplane crashes, when an earthquake tumbles a city in ruins, or when a battle is fought, the world is not satisfied to read about it.

The public wants to see it—to see men facing danger, fighting for their lives, meeting death, whether it be in the wilds of Africa or on the broad expanses of the seven seas.

Cameraman Must Stalk Danger The cameraman, therefore, must stalk danger and death, too. all over the face of the earth. He must bring to the newspaper and movie audience the whole range of human and natural activity.

No event worthy of popular attention is beyond the confines of his work. No big catastrophe is too far or too terrifying to pass unchallenged by his determination to bring back to the newspaper or the movies the photographic narrative of what occurred. It is always vivid, graphic, convincing, and often full of awe.

During the fourteen years that I have been on the staff of the New York News I have planned and participated in outstanding picture scoops that were scored by meeting danger face to face.

One of the most spectacular photographs to come to public attention was taken by a New York News photographer. That was the sensational picture of General Francesco De Pinedo’s blazing plane with the flyer trapped in it, burning to death.

A gruesome picture, to be sure, but on the other hand no more shocking than the word picture of the same episode by capa- ble reporters. Perhaps I am prejudiced, but I believe this picture had more of the dramatic and tragic than any written story. The cameraman who took that picture had to remain calm while death struck before his very eyes.

Do Pinedo was attempting to fly from Floyd Bennett Field, Long Island, to Bagdad. On the morning scheduled for the hop-off, I had a chartered plane at the field..

It was stationed a little distance hack of De Pinedo’s. It was faster than the general’s plane and could keep up with him until we obtained the necessary pictures showing the take-off. In addition I had three photographers posted at intervals along the run-way. The third man was at the end of the take-off course. This arrangement assured us of a complete pictorial reproduction of the flight down the runway.

As De Pinedo started off he was also trailed by a motorcycle with a side-car, carrying lire-fighting apparatus to light any blaze which might break out. Every plane starting on a hop is followed by this motorcycle.

De Pinedo shot down the runway and on reaching close to the end of it he realized he was not going to lift himself over the fence. Rather than dive into the gully on the other side of the fence, he suddenly swerved off the course and careened over, directly in front of Bill Casselman, a News copy editor with whom photography is a hobby.

He kept cool in the face of this tragedy unraveled at his very feet, and “shot” one of the most sensational pictures that has ever been made. His reward was a handsome bonus.

There was no possible way of saving De Pinedo. The motorcycle fire fighter tried in vain to extricate the aviator from the flames and was so badly burned he had to be taken to a hospital.

The photograph that caused the greatest sensation’ among newspaper readers was the picture of Ruth Snyder dying in the electric chair. She and Judd Gray were condemned to death for the murder of Albert Snyder, a magazine art director. My orders were to get a picture of the electrocution. It was a laconic command, but it was up to me to produce the picture. I learned that a photograph of an execution had never been made at Sing Sing prison.

The first problem I was up against was in selecting the right man for the job. He had to be a stranger to New York photographers and reporters. Other newspapers were planning to get the same picture and prison authorities were determined to keep all photographers out. Naturally if other photographers who were barred noticed that one of my men “crashed,” they would certainly “squawk.”

Heart Beats Disturb Camera’s Focus

Tom Howard, crack photographer of The Chicago Tribune, was enlisted for the special service, he decided that a Baby lea camera with a Zeiss lens, described as F4.5, which is a medium speed lens, would be the necessary apparatus. We held secret meetings in a hotel room in a quiet section of the city, where no one would suspect what we were planning or recognize us and lead to a revelation of our designs. We tried attaching the little camera to various its of his body. At first we experimented a good deal with Tom Howard’s chest area, figuring that it would be in line with the subject. We found that breathing interfered with the exposure. It was surprising, too, how the heart-beat alone was sufficient to throw it off. Finally we decided to attach the camera to his ankle, hitching it to a steel clamp there. For an entire week we carried on our experiments in the hotel room under light and distance conditions we anticipated would prevail on the night of the execution in the Sing Sing death house. We perfected the pose so that Howard could keep the focus steady for 30 to 40 seconds.

Getting the Death Chamber Picture

The next problem was to get Tom Howard the front row in the death chamber. An ankle camera would be of no use behind that line, we arranged to have two reporters with Howard, each of the trio was to make an attempt to grab front row bench. As it happened, Howard got a little lost in the scramble, but one of the huskier reporters survived the crush and surrendered a front seat to Howard. The rest is history. Tom Howard got the picture which will forever remain an epic in the annals of news photography. It was a chance in ten thousand, and he made it. In the foreign field movie and newspaper cameramen often dare death to bring to the public graphic details of major world events. When the Japanese and Chinese forces were fighting in Shanghai, unarmed cameramen calmly ground away and reloaded plate after plate while bullets and shells fell all around them.

Newsreel Photographer Wounded in Riot

During the late uprisings in Cuba cameramen were on the job pictorially recording a revolution in the midst of angry mobs and whistling bullets. In a recent riot, in which six persons were killed and fourteen wounded, Joe Gibson, 46-year-old newsreel photographer, was shot in the leg.

To bring thrills to the public, cameramen have ventured to the very edge of roaring volcanoes and as molten lava rolled down toward them snapped pictures of volcanoes in eruption, Among the most thrilling of these was the moving picture of the eruption of Krakatoa, one of the most unusual and active submarine volcanoes, located in the Sunda Strait between Sumatra and Java.

Krakatoa has erupted as many as 16,000 times in twenty-four hours. In 1883 its eruption destroyed the island at its base and caused a water wave 100 feet high that overwhelmed the coasts of islands for hundreds of miles. As a result 36,000 people were drowned and the wave, continuing around the Cape of Good Hope, was felt in the English Channel, 11,000 miles distant.

Movie Cameraman’s Plane Catches Fire

Yet J. H. Bekker, cameraman in the service of the Dutch government, dared to go within 150 feet of the island to obtain a sound moving picture of one of Krakatoa’s recent spectacular outbursts.

He risked his life to make a record of the great spectacle while tons of lava, rock, molten glass, sulphuric gas, live steam and columns of water thousands of feet high almost engulfed his boat. During a flight over the volcano, a wing of Bekker’s plane caught fire from burning lava and the cameraman almost lost his life.

The finest sea disaster picture ever taken were made by an amateur with an ordinary folding camera. They were the photos of the sinking of the Vestris in 1928 and the photographer was Fred Hanson, a member of the crew of the ill-fated vessel.

While passengers and crew struggled for their lives on the sinking ship, Hanson risked his life to record the stark realism of tragedy at sea. He escaped just before the ship went down.

Thrilling Adventures Just Day’s Work

A noteworthy picture assignment which illustrates how news cameramen face perils was the coverage of the big arsenal explosion at Denmark, New Jersey. The terrors of No Man’s Land and Chateau Thierry were all crowded hundred-fold into the eight hours during which the explosions roared at the government arsenal.

Al Willard, a demon photographer if there ever was one, broke through all lines, with shells popping on all sides of him, mounted to a 100-foot tower in the midst of the blasting and there he “shot” away to the accompaniment of a booming serenade. His escape from anything but trivial injuries was miraculous.

News cameramen often have to pick precarious spots for their “act.” Often they must stand at dizzy heights on the ledge of a skyscraper to get a special parade scene or show work going on across the street. As stunt-men they figure the professionals who walk wires and dive from heights into ten-foot tubs are pikers compared to them. It’s a part of every photographer’s daily routine to expose himself to some perilous, breath-taking adventure.

Police Club News Cameramen

Although it is seldom chronicled, a news photographer runs a greater chance of breaking his neck than some daredevil who is performing a stunt for him. But you seldom see that side of it.

Riots are mighty tough assignments on photographers. When cops and rioters or strikers are battling and bullets enter the fracas, somebody is bound to get hurt, but the “photogs” stick through the thick and thin of it to get their pictures. I recall some time ago when Passaic, New Jersey, policemen went on a club- he cannot pause to inquire as to the weather. He can not wait until ideal conditions prevail. He must go or the scene he is after will no longer exist and a rival will beat him to it.

Lieut. Eddie Dowling of my staff was covering army maneuvers from the air not long ago when the plane he was riding dove into New York Bay. A parachute jump was out of the question because the plane was too close to the water. A fireboat picked him and the pilot up, and, after a brief spell of recuperation, he was back in action again—all set for new adventures.

The news cameraman of the newspapers and the movies is the friend of the high and low. That’s all in a cameraman’s life.

Weird Futurist Designs Found by Camera in Modern Industry

You may get lost in the dizzy maze of triangles shown above, but it is only one of the surprising modernistic designs now found in the world of machines. This shows what you would see if you looked down one of the 820-foot masts of the Rugby, England, radio station.

They look like whirling disks with concentric circles giddily revolving, but actually they are what the camera saw when it photographed rolls of paper in a printing plant.

Curiously suggestive of the long leaves of tulip plants are these slender steel chutes that spiral downward in a German post office.

Standing like an army of gnomes drawn up at attention, the rigid fingers of these rubber gloves gave the photographer a highly futuristic picture. The gloves, stretched on forms after dipping, are being sent to the vulcanizing room to receive final treatment before leaving the factory.

This is not a futurist drawing of a ballet dancer, but an unusual photo of a spiral staircase and lights.

Camera Sculptures FACES from Subjects

The machine has at last invaded the world of art. An amazing new mechanism recently devised combines the principles of the movie camera and the pantograph to turn out plaster busts just as an ordinary camera makes photographic portraits.

Making the bust requires a sitting of only five minutes on the part of the subject. During this time 400 still photographs are made from as many angles by a rotating camera, as illustrated above. Film containing these 400 pictures, each throwing the profile into relief, is run through a projector which throws the enlarged image on a translucent screen. Each of these pictures is traced along the profile with a stylus attached to the arm of a huge pantograph, to whose other end is attached a rapidly rotating pneumatic drill cutting out the plaster block.

Each of the 400 pictures is traced out in this manner till at last an accurate likeness of the subject has been completed. As a final touch the tiny ridges between cuts are smoothed out, leaving the bust ready to be cast in bronze.

Pinhole ‘LENS’ – Secret of New Photo Miracles

WORKING with a tiny needle and a wafer-thin piece of sheet metal, William A. Wallace, New York photographer, has taken an amazing series of pictures of New York skyscrapers. From street level to topmost floor, he has registered every detail on his film with his camera placed just across the street from these architectural giants. An ordinary camera, similarly placed, would take in only the entrance way and the first two or three floors.

Wallace has arranged a unique variation on the old pinhole camera idea to obtain such remarkable wide-angle pictures. In such a camera the ray of light, reflected from each tiny point in the object photographed, goes through the pinhole in a straight line. These pinpoints of light form an inverted image on the sensitive film.

The pinhole is only thirteen and a half thousandths of an inch in diameter and is cut in shim stock (thin sheet metal) only three thousandths of an inch thick. A number sixteen needle was used to make the hole and then both sides of the metal were rubbed on an oilstone to remove the burr.

Instead of placing the piece of metal containing the tiny hole parallel to the plate, Wallace places it at an angle of thirty-five degrees and about one inch below the upper edge of the plate. The arrangement is shown in the illustration at upper right on this page.

The object of placing the pinhole at an angle and near the top of the plate is to get a more uniform lighting. The lower portion of any tall building is poorly lighted as compared with the top. The lower portion registers on the top of the plate where the pinhole is closer to it and allows more light to get through.

The angular position of the pinhole also helps to make the lighting even. More light goes through a hole at right angles than on a slant.

The theoretical angle that could be taken by a carefully prepared pinhole is, Wallace claims, nearly 155 degrees. It is doubtful, however, if this extreme angle of view could ever be attained in practice owing to the reduced amount of light that would strike the edges of the plate.

The views of the towering building, and what appears to be a close-up of the smaller building at its base, were taken without moving the camera. The first exposure was made with the pinhole; the other picture was taken with a lens that included about the same angle of view taken in by the ordinary hand camera.

The apparent absence of people in the pinhole view is caused by the long exposure necessary. It was found that the proper exposure with the size pinhole specified, using super-speed film, was one and one half minutes.

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First Photo Took 8 Hours Now – 20,000 in a Second

By H.C. DAVIS

IN 1830, it required eight hours to take a photograph. The other day, Baron C. Shiba’s remarkable camera recorded 20,000 pictures in one second (P.S.M., Nov. ‘29, p. 31). In this dramatic advance, which has taken place within a single century, a Parisian painter of stage scenery and a magic cupboard in his home workshop laboratory played leading roles.

The painter was Louis Daguerre, who made photography practicable. Before his time, a few indifferent pictures had been made by the painfully slow process of exposing asphalt-covered plates all day and then treating them with solvents. One day Daguerre exposed an iodized silver plate. From shortness of exposure or dullness of light, it showed no trace of an image. Intending to recoat the plate and try it again next day, Daguerre placed it in an old cupboard. The next morning he was amazed to find on it a distinct image. He put another underexposed plate in the magic chest. At the end of twenty-four hours, an image had appeared on that plate also. Then the experimenter went to work to find which of the chemicals stored in the cupboard was responsible for this unexpected development of the plate. In the end, he found mercury was doing the work. This accidental discovery of the effect of mercury upon the exposed plates cut the necessary time of exposure from hours to minutes. After a dozen years of ceaseless labor, a lucky moment aided Daguerre’s success.

DAGUERRE’S life, in its ups and downs, its dramatic turns of fate, reads like a romance. He was born in 1789, the year of the Revolution, in the little village of Cormeilles, near the mouth of the Seine. As a child he was neglected by his parents and ran ragged through the public square. Now in that square there stands a monu- ment, raised by grateful artists from all parts of the world, in memory of his remarkable achievements.

For a time, Daguerre worked as an inland revenue officer. Then, without friends or money, he set out for Paris to make his fortune. By native ability, he became the leading scene painter for the French stage. His original mechanical effects were the talk of Paris. His “diorama,” a gigantic painting exhibited first in reflected and then in transmitted light, gave the weird impression of the same scene perceived first in sunlight and then in moonlight. The French Academy of Fine Arts made him a member. His days of struggle apparently were over. He had become rich and famous. At this point he began to neglect his work, to spend his days and nights laboring in a little home workshop, to fuss with ill-smelling chemicals and queer looking apparatus. He began to slip back into poverty and hardship in order to follow a dream—a fantastic dream of painting with sunlight.

FOR years, in his scene painting, he had employed a camera obscura to sketch from nature. This dark box, having a lens-covered aperture through which light from external objects entered and formed their image on the side of the box opposite the opening, had been familiar to artists since the time of Leonardo da Vinci. About the middle of the sixteenth century the Italian philosopher, Porta, had invented it. Crowds had flocked to his home in Naples to see the wonder. Wealthy Italians of the time built little dark rooms on hilltops to form private camera obscuras where, with friends, they viewed images of the countryside on the darkened walls. In its mechanism, the human eye is a small camera obscura, and ail modern cameras are adaptations of Porta’s discovery. For three centuries, artists, using this apparatus, longed to make permanent the fleeting images painted within by sunlight. This Daguerre set out to do.

Friends told him it was impossible. Reputable scientists called the plan as futile as an attempt to capture a mirage. Sir Humphry Davy, English chemist, had tried and failed. Yet, without previous scientific training, the scene painter struggled on, undaunted. When his fortune disappeared and he continued to work at the seemingly hopeless task, his wife consulted a physician, fearing her husband was losing his mind.

That was in 1825. For fourteen years more, Daguerre worked ceaselessly, until, in 1839, he was able to announce his great discovery. Other experimenters, Sir Humphry Davy, Thomas Wedgwood, Joseph Niepce, paved the way for him, perhaps. But it is to this indomitable “bulldog of Cormeilles,” most of all, that the world owes its inestimable debt for practical photography.

His study concerned the chemical effects of light on various substances. He treated innumerable plates of glass, paper, copper, and silver, coating them with various varnishes and oils. He experimented with the silver chloride paper of Wedgwood and Davy. He tried the bituminized plates of Niepce. In the end, he found silver plates exposed to vapor of iodine most sensitive to light.

DURING his early experiments, Daguerre worked with Niepce. This retired soldier, who had fought with Napoleon in the Italian Campaign, had made a crude camera, before 1825, using a cigar box and a lens taken from a telescope which had belonged to his grandfather. His plate was made by coating glass with asphalt dissolved in oil of lavender. Pointing the camera out of his window at a pigeon house, he exposed the plate for eight hours. When he applied solvent to it, the dim outlines of the latent image became visible— the first permanent photograph of history.

Niepce called his process “sun sketching.” When he died in 1833, he had improved his process very little and apparently had given up hope for the success of practical photography. But Daguerre labored on, month after month, for six years more, until with success assured, he was able to show his Daguerreotypes to the world.

Even then, people were skeptical. When he tried to form a stock company the Parisian public jeered and refused to buy a single share. In desperation, he took a chance, showed his pictures, and explained the secret process by which they were obtained to the eminent French physicist, Arage, who gave his endorsement. As a result, the French government awarded Daguerre a life pension of 6,000 francs a year on the condition that his invention should be given to the world and not patented. Once again, the affairs of this remarkable man were at the flood. Hundreds of distinguished men visited his studio and sought to learn his process.

ONE of these was Samuel F. B. Morse, later the inventor of the telegraph, who first introduced the Daguerreotype in the United States. It is easy to understand the strained, unhappy look of the early “tintype” portraits when it is realized that they had to be taken with the sitter’s face covered with white powder, and with the exposure, frequently lasting half an hour, made in bright sunlight. Professor John Draper, another early American Daguerreotyper, introduced a popular innovation. Above the sitter, he placed a tank of clear blue ammonia copper sulphate to lessen the painful glare.

For only a decade, from 1839 to 1849, the “tintype” held sway. Delicate, so that the merest touch often marred its beauty, tarnishing rapidly when exposed to the air, it soon gave way to improved methods of picture taking. Some of the early silver-coated plates cost as much as forty dollars apiece.

No one knows the number of cameras used for pleasure in the world today. Photography has become an inseparable part of present-day life. The last available statistics show that in one year $72,000,000 worth of photographic equipment was produced in the United States. In motion and talking pictures, it provides relaxation for millions. In the hands of science, it aids in virtually every branch of research. In medicine, it has combined with the X-ray to relieve human suffering.

In later years, Daguerre suffered from ill health, worn out by his long battle. He died suddenly in 1851, at the age of sixty-three.

Phonograph-Movie Machine Plays Tunes for Pictures

A COMBINATION phonograph, and motion-picture projector that plays appropriate music as the film is being shown has been invented by A. L. Edminson, of Los Angeles, Calif. After eight years of experiment he has combined the two machines into a cabinet slightly larger than that of the standard phonograph. The upper part contains the phonograph; the lower a motion-picture projector.

The films are exhibited on a silk screen, measuring 18 by 22 inches, which is placed behind the doors of the sounding-box. It is claimed that the pictures are projected clearly enough to be seen by an audience 40 feet away.

Little change has been made in the phonograph, except that the speed governor of the record also controls the rate at which the film is displayed. Similarly, an adjusting clutch starts the record and the film simultaneously. The film is placed in a fireproof magazine, passes through a fireproof gate, over an adjusting sprocket and thence loops downward through the lens gate and back through the release sprocket. After exposure the film rewinds automatically. A cord and plug fit an electric-light socket for power and light, and a system of multiple mirrors gives a fairly large focal projection length in a small space. The illumination of the screen is so intense that the films can be exhibited in broad daylight.

NATURALIST, POSING AS CACTUS, SNAPS DESERT ANIMALS

No Sherlock Holmes of fiction ever disguised himself with more versatility than Arthur N. Pack, president of the American Nature Association. When this well-known naturalist wants to approach timid animals in their native haunts, without frightening them out of range of his camera, he dons an appropriate costume.

A disguise resembling a giant desert cactus was his creation during a recent expedition through the desert wastes of Arizona along the Mexican border, with William L. and Irene Finley, noted naturalists. Clad thus, shy desert animals walked up to him to be photographed.

Mountain goats, among the most difficult of wild animals to approach, were successfully photographed by Pack. He fashioned for himself a white goat costume with horns and long whiskers.

Pack’s use of disguises was suggested by natives of central Africa who creep through the tall grass, wearing a wooden headdress carved to resemble a bird. Pretending to stop and peck, from time to time, the hunter can approach birds and other game dose enough to capture them.

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He Made Sky Mapping a Big Business

High above the broken floor of the Rio Grande River basin, an airplane growls monotonously over 32,000 square miles, each click of its Cyclopean camera bringing nearer to completion the largest photographic mapping project ever undertaken in the United States.

EXACTING and tedious is the scientific job of gathering up 32,000 square miles and literally pasting them in your hat. Only one man is utterly capable and he is the fellow who supervises the shooting and assembling of this vast mosaic.

He is the 39-year-old president of the Fairchild Aviation Company—Sherman M. Fairchild. The planes are his, the cameras are his and the science of aerial mapping grew from the two decades of study he put into air photography.

It isn’t easy even now, this business of sweeping up miles and not losing a single detour. And it wasn’t easy back in 1918, when Fairchild tried to interest U. S. Army officials in his new and revolutionary type of aerial camera, for he met with polite indifference and downright skepticism. But today he is world famous as the man who made sky mapping a big business. His latest invention, a $26,000 ten-lens camera, will photograph in one operation a ground area twice the size of New York City.

Fairchild’s interest in photography began while he was still in college. After the army had rejected his new type of aerial camera, he went to work in the engineering department of the Eastman Kodak Company. Then, again in 1922, he tackled army officials once more, this time persuading them, to purchase twenty of his new cameras for $1,800 apiece.

Two years later found him organizing an aerial magazine and newspaper photographing service, with two planes from Huff-Daland & Company and representing them exclusively in the field of photography planes. But no clients appeared. Just when he was ready to give up an order came from the Brazilian Government for two machines.

Jubilant, he informed his sponsors, only to learn with dismay that his agency contract had expired three days previously. This news was a bitter pill to swallow but young Fair-child got out of that predicament by cabling Brazil that his present planes were “unsatisfactory” and that newer and better ships had just been developed. Brazilian officials took him at his word and ordered two.

At that time one of the greatest airplane designers, Igor Sikorsky, was at Roosevelt Field—loafing. Fairchild hired him on the spot. Sikorsky jumped at the chance—his first job in America since he came over from Russia as a refugee. And the contract with Brazil was fulfilled successfully. A Fairchild cabin monoplane is now a common sight, and this company ranks among the leaders in American private plane production. The corporation has four subsidiaries, manufactures 75 per cent of the world’s aerial cameras and owns the largest aerial picture library in existence—in fact, the entire world.

Already referred to is Fairchild’s latest survey—the Rio Grande project. This is the third consecutive job his organization has undertaken for Uncle Sam. The first two were the aerial mapping of Boulder Dam and 25,000 square miles of watershed in the Indian Reservations of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.

All these jobs, which take in more than 84,000 square miles of terriotory, are part of the government’s program for soil conservation. From the completed maps, experts will be able to plan the control of this vital problem and, in the case of Boulder Dam, will be able to determine in advance the number of auxiliary dams needed to control the silt now being washed into the reservoir from the various tributaries.

Preparing an aerial map involves a tremendous amount of detailed work, work which can be entrusted only to men skilled in the art of aerial photography.

First, before any flying is started a sketch of the operations contemplated is drawn on a master chart, the area being split into small working assignments by dividing it into a number of parallel, rectangular strips. Each strip represents the central portion of photographs to be taken during a single flight across specified ground.

On this master chart is recorded the elevation from which each strip has to be photographed to obtain the desired scale, the altitude in each case being determined mathematically. The chart also shows the various landmarks, for these serve as guides to the pilot and photographer.

When the master chart is completed, the plan of operations is reviewed with the air crew and then the job of “flying the map” is begun. The pilot flies along the guide of flight lines back and forth, forming “strips” until the entire area is covered. Aerial photographic mapping operations are usually flown at altitudes as high as two to three miles, necessitating the use of oxygen by both pilot and photographer.

In mapping large areas a 5-lens camera is commonly used, pointing downward through a hole in the bottom of the plane. The central lens takes a vertical photograph, while the other four lenses simultaneously take oblique shots. The five prints are assembled into one group in the shape of a Maltese Cross (see diagram).

While pilots and photographers ride their aerial pendulums, the ground crew swarm scorpion-like to the control points. This work is very important because it makes positive the accurate piecing together of the individual photographs to form the mosaic map. But securing the ground control points is costly, slow and hazardous work, for the Rio Grande country is mostly on edge.

When the photography work is completed, the films are developed and a set of contact prints turned over to the engineering department. The scale ratio of each print is carefully figured to the known distances on the equivalent terrain. After any accuracies are corrected, the prints are re-photographed to a common, accurate scale.

The central portions of these corrected prints are then cut on lines which are determined by the ground contours and cemented down upon a composition base board, laid out with drawn pencil control lines worked up from previously gathered data. This master map is then rephotographed.

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Camera Worn Like Wrist Watch Loads Thirty Six Pictures

Latest in the line of miniature cameras is a tiny affair worn like a wrist watch. Sighted easily by raising the wrist to eye level, it carries a load of thirty-six exposures despite its diminutive size. It has an f4.5 lens and a focusing scale graduating from one foot to infinity.

Flashlights Reveal Frog Monsters

Camera Hunters Find Strange Reptiles EXTRAORDINARY flashlight photographs of strange barking and climbing frogs that inhabit the coral island of Santo Domingo in the West Indies form part of a valuable collection of reptilian life recently gathered for the American Museum of Natural History by Dr. and Mrs. G. Kingsley Noble.

In one of the most unusual scientific expeditions ever undertaken, the explorers used automatic flashlights to photograph frogs in their native haunts. Months of preparatory labor were spent in perfecting this method of photography, which Doctor Noble first practised in obtaining pictures of frogs that infest New Jersey meadows.

In addition to their large collection of photographs, preserved specimens, and skins, Doctor and Mrs. Noble brought back nearly 40 living specimens of the largest lizards in the world, believed to be direct descendants of giant prehistoric reptiles; a huge tree frog; and an amazing species of frog that “barks like a dog and squeals like a pig.”

The Santo Domingo horned lizard, which sometimes reaches a length of five feet, has an enormous head, powerful jaws, a wide gaping mouth with deep indigo interior, a red tongue and little pink projections dotting its face. The entire upper body is armored with a crest of spines running from the back of the neck to the tail. It bears a close resemblance to certain dinosaurs.

Natives of Santo Domingo believe that weird barking sounds, which emanate from their forests at night, are caused by ghosts. Doctor Noble traced these noises to tree frogs. Even more curious are the larger tree frogs that hatch from eggs into tadpoles, and reach their complete development while still in the water. They weigh a pound or more and perspire a strange milky liquid that causes blisters if it touches a person’s skin, and fills the air with an intolerable odor.

NEW YORK SKYLINE NOW AND FIFTY YEARS AGO

Nearly half a century lies between the two views of New York City’s skyline shown in the pictures above. The two photographs were taken from the same point—a tower of the famous Brooklyn Bridge. The upper one was made only the other day and the lower one is over forty-seven years old.

Architects, engineers, and modern machinery seem literally to have raised Manhattan Island out of the waters surrounding it. In the lower view, Brooklyn Bridge, opened in 1883, was just being built. Note how the buildings at that time seemed to crouch low on the island, only here and there an occasional church, spire throwing itself defiantly skyward.

In the upper view the buildings have fairly freed themselves from the land and apparently have become decidedly air-minded. In the immediate foreground is the office building at 120 Wall Street. Looming gigantic behind it is the Bank of Manhattan Company building, and far to the right of it appears the famous Woolworth Tower.

Still farther to the right, and beyond the Manhattan end of Brooklyn Bridge, is the Municipal Building. Note how the present height of the buildings almost completely obscures the distant west shore of the Hudson River, which in the lower picture is plainly visible across Manhattan.

BANKS PROTECTED BY CAMERA

AN AUTOMATIC movie camera which is expected to play a big part in the detection of criminals has been invented by John E. Seebold of Los Angeles. The camera is hidden inside an automatic telephone box, where it is invisible and silent. The device will be installed in banks and other places likely to be visited by criminals, and in case of robbery the cashier can set the hidden camera going by pressing a button, getting a clear action picture of the holdup men. Pictures have been taken at a distance of 85 feet, the subjects being unaware of the camera’s presence.

COLOR PRINTING by the yard

A NEW assembly-line technique is turning out as many as 300 prints an hour from Kodachrome and Ansco transparencies, providing seven-day service to the growing army of color photographers. The speedy apparatus that makes this possible has recently been put to work by Pavelle Color, Inc., at its plant in New York City. Electronic controls in the enlarging machines make them function almost automatically in blowing up 35-mm. transparencies to 3 by 4-1/2-inch “Printon” prints.

Human judgment is still needed to decide the best exposure range for the principal subject matter on a color transparency. But once expert coders have marked a frame “normal,” or with a double or single plus or minus sign, the printing-machine operator has merely to press a correspondingly marked button to obtain a proper exposure for each frame.

As light from an R-2 photoflood lamp shines through a transparency, one image is projected on printing material (passing through the machine on a 240-foot roll) and another is thrown horizontally toward a photoelectric cell in the housing at the rear of the machine. The cell, assisted by a battery of electronic tubes behind it, determines each exposure on the basis of the total light that passes through the film. The amount of light therefore must be controlled, and is gauged by the button that the operator pushes. Prints are clipped and mounted as they come off the assembly line.

Eye-Stoppers

QUAFFER EXTRAORDINARY is Auguste Maffrey, French beer-drinking champ, who slurps up about 12 quarts of suds in 52 minutes from king-sized vat. Any challengers?

GRIZZLY-BEAR chair presented to President Andrew Johnson in 1865 won’t take a chunk from your hide when you sit down, but only a man with steady nerves can relax in it

TIBETAN GHOST TRAP imprisons visitors from space, it says here. Trap at rear is for demons who bring illness.

TIPPER is tops when it comes to scaring intruders. These comic mechanical choppers give this pooch a biting look.

WINDOW LAUNCHING is key to New Yorker Joe Weckstein’s woes. He removed one to get boat from cellar.