HOW CAMERA SHUTTERS WORK
CAMERAS are constructed to be light-tight, and yet in order to make an exposure it is necessary to let light into the camera and onto the film. This requires a special mechanism called the camera shutter. It is so designed that when a release is pressed, it will move, let light into the camera for a moment or so, and then close and protect the film again from the light. As films have been made more sensitive and shorter exposures made possible, the design and construction of camera shutters has been improved until today there are shutters that split seconds into almost unbelievably small fractions and let light into the camera for just that fractional part of a second. Most of the smaller hand cameras with which we are familiar are fitted with one, or even both, of two types of shutters.
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Freak Movies Easy with New Amateur Camera
A NEW sixteen-millimeter movie camera now places the professional’s bag of tricks in the hands of the amateur. Fade-outs, double exposures, animations, and enlarged close-ups are only a few of the unusual shots that can be obtained merely by pressing buttons.
Besides lens turret and slow-motion shutter, this new product of the Eastman Kodak laboratories in Rochester, N. Y., has a number of other improvements not found on the ordinary high-grade home movie camera. A crank that runs the film through the camera backwards, an accurate, geared film footage indicator, a unique focusing device, and a shutter that can be opened or closed while the camera is operating are important features.
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MM’S Cover from Painting to Magazine
Three photo negatives are made of 21″x30″ oil painting (below). At same time screen of 133 dots to inch is placed between plate and lens. On one negative all but blue color is filtered out, second all but red, and third yellow. Proof of type for the cover is photographed. Type on negative is masked for drawing.
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Making Money with Your Pictures
WOULD you take $9,000 for that prize snapshot of yours? Well, would $13,000 interest you?
It’s not ridiculous. Good shots by amateurs with ordinary cameras have turned into “best sellers” earning money in four and five figures. In fact, some are worth more—and are recognized familiarly by more people—than a painting by an old master.
Who doesn’t remember, for example, that famous picture of the sinking of the “Vestris”? It was one of the best sellers of all time; earned more than a thousand dollars for the young pantry man who was the only person cool enough in the face of death to cock a camera and click the shutter; and undoubtedly earned thousands for the picture services distributing it to newspapers and magazines. It is still earning money ten years later—witness the fact that this magazine paid sixty-five dollars for the privilege of printing it here.
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Single-Lens Camera Uses Reflex Principle
Composing, focusing and picture-taking are all accomplished through one lens of a new miniature camera that uses the single-lens reflex principle. Without increasing the convenient size of the miniature, the new design enables the photographer to focus with a brilliant, full-size image on a ground glass while holding the camera at eye level.
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Stage Your PUBLICITY SHOT
By RICHARD W. EMERY
COMPETITION in the sale of publicity shots is keen and it takes more than just luck to sell an editor. The successful free-lance photographer knows that a good publicity shot must be built around a basic idea that will attract a great amount of attention. If not, his work will never see print. The basic idea may be to entertain, instruct or arouse curiosity, or its purpose may be to kindle a desire to possess something, to go somewhere or to do some particular thing.
There are many reasons for planning setup shots. Advanced planning enables you to create a picture in which the basic idea is presented forcefully and in such a manner that the picture completely tells a story or strongly conveys one thought.
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Tricks of the Composite Photograph
by Paul Hadley
THE making of composite, or combination photos, is one of the simplest branches of trick photography, yet is one which the amateur photographer seldom attempts. Easier by far than the double exposure or distorted perspective pictures, the results are more unusual and bizarre, in that parts of any two or more photos may be combined to make a freakish result. Professionals often resort to this method in making “photomontages,” which are often seen in publications. Probably most of you have seen the novelty photo cards in which, for instance, a wagon is seen creaking under the weight of two giant apples which it is carrying to market, or perhaps an ear of corn being loaded on a flat car with a derrick. Many other variations of this type of picture are to be found, all of which were made by the simple method of combining parts of several prints to make a whole.
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Amazing Snapshots of Animals
Bring Fame to Desert Photographer
IN A desert shack that cost less than fifty cents to build, Fred V. Sampson, of Barstow, Calif., has found not only contentment but a curious road to fame. Three years ago, he left his job as a commercial artist in Los Angeles and built the low, one-room hut on the edge of the Mohave Desert. Three wails are made of mud and stones, the fourth is formed of the gold-bearing rock of a steep hillside. Here, Sampson spends his days doing what he wants most to do, making friends with curious creatures of the desert and snapping pictures of the animals in action. These photographs—some of the most remarkable wildlife pictures ever made—are attracting wide attention.
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This is a pretty crazy way to store data.
Camera Snaps Answers
To speed recording answers in computing machines, Kodak has made a new camera that snaps 1,000 12-digit numbers a second. The numbers are photographed from a cathode-ray tube as spots; retranslated into electrical impulses by photoelectric tubes as desired for feeding back into the computer. Mosaic above is film section enlarged 25 times. A 100-foot strip holds 3,000,000 digits.
