ance of having a valuable negative cracked or broken, and the bother of changing them around when in a hurry has never appealed to me. Of all these cameras, the last one has suited me the best. The first two were inadequate for high speed work. The third was undoubtedly the best instrument of all, the reflecting mirror having a distinct advantage over an ordinary finder, and my experience leads me to think that for the ordinary amateur this advantage is more than counterbalanced by the extra weight and size it gives to the camera. The last one I found small, light, handy, and doing all kinds of work equally well. A great many people, far more experienced than myself, claim that a small folding camera with an anastigmat lens and a fast shutter is more serviceable for amateurs, as they do not do very difficult and heavy work. This is not entirely correct. It is foolish to suppose that an amateur will not meet occasional situations where the speed of the smaller shutters is not sufficient to produce a good picture. A great many times when looking through the bellows of the larger camera, or the finder of the small one, I have been mighty glad to have a focal plane shutter at hand, ready to slide. Of course as stated above, it all depends upon what you are going to do with it. If you are traveling in foreign countries where you will be taking nothing but street scenes and don't need a high grade equipment, by all means get one of the regular small folding pocket cameras. Likewise, if you are going to do a great deal of speed work, as in ball games, racing, etc., the larger camera has no equal-but granting that you want to do both light and heavy work, and will use it under all kinds of conditions, there is no style camera as good as the one described above. Editorial Notes AY the old, glad spirit of Christmas grip us again as in our childhood days; to renew our youth and to set our hearts aglow with the old-time spirit of joy, joy, and still more joy. May health and prosperity attend us and may the gladness of living increase and spill over into the lives of those about us, far into the New Year. Or, in cther words: Ho! for the old-time holiday glee, The Santa Claus myth and the joy; The well-filled stocking, the Christmas tree, Long have they made this old world gay; May they do it again for us to-day And fill our lives with a wholesome cheer W ITH this number of THE PHOTOGRAPHIC TIMES we complete the forty-second volume. We have made considerable improvement in the magazine during the past twelve months, increasing the amount of reading matter, as well as the number of illustrations; and, as we believe, improving the quality of both reading matter and pictures, as well. As a natural result of our efforts to make THE PHOTOGRAPHIC TIMES more valuable, the subscription list has swelled, in a gratifying manner, during the past year, and the advertising pages have correspondingly expanded. We shall continue our endeavors to improve the magazine during 1911, and have already completed arrangements for next year which we think will meet with the approval of our readers. The valuable series of papers, "What Photographers May Learn from Old and New Masters," by Sadakichi Hartmann, will be continued next year, and we have also arranged with Mr. Hartmann for two or three extra special articles on art subjects. Mr. W. I. Lincoln Adams, Editor-inChief of our publication, will contribute a number of special articles with his own illustrations. Our foreign correspondence, by the Rev. F. C. Lambert, has become so popular a feature with our readers, that we have arranged to continue this correspondence during 1911. We shall also print a frequent article from our foreign contributor and editorial writer, Professor G. Watmough Webster. In addition to these regular contributors, we have arranged for illustrated articles by C. H. Claudy, W. S. Davis, Dr. R. W. Shufeldt, and others equally well-known. Our magazine will continue to be made up entirely of original matter, and pictures that have never before been published. The only reprinted matter is the Monthly Foreign Digest, which, we have reason to believe, our readers find very valuable. The departments devoted to Discoveries, Among the Camera Clubs, Photographic Reviews, Items of Interest, and Trade Notes, will be continued; and we shall continue. to exercise a careful scrutiny over the advertising pages, admitting nothing that is not exactly as it is represented, and conducting our magazine, as heretofore, as an entirely independent publication, devoted solely to the interests of pictorial and scientific photography. N EXT month, THE PHOTOGRAPHIC TIMES will appear on the first of the month, instead of about the fifteenth, as heretofore. This will necessitate our advertisers and contributors sending in their copy about two weeks earlier, in order to insure insertion in the following month's issue; as we shall have to close our forms, of course, that much earlier in order to allow time for printing our increasing editions. We trust that the earlier date of issue will meet with the approval of our readers, as it seems to us to be another step in the steady advance which our magazine is making. O UR cover illustration this month is a charming child picture by an amateur friend, Mr. Willard G. Moore, of Frankford, Philadelphia, Pa., entitled, "A Youthful Dreamer." The expression of the subject well portrays the title of the picture, and is an excellent example of artistic merit, and shows what our amateur friends can do when they put sufficient thought and care into their work. There were about six hundred prints on exhibition in all, of which nearly four hundred were by Americans. The American examples were superior in portraiture, according to our special representative at the Exhibition; but the English and German photographers were ahead of us in their landscapes and genre pictures. A notable feature of the Exhibition was the work of Daniel Octavius Hill, a Scotch painter, who made excellent portraits in the Daguerreotype period, about the middle of the last century. His pictures were the only historical feature of the Exhibition. It was interesting to note that there is a decided tendency back to the "straight" photography, as it is called, in contra-distinction to the work of those men who manipulate the negative by hand, and sometimes also the print, which, of course, is not photography at all. There were fewer "freak pictures" in this exhibition than in some of the previous shows by the Photo-Secessionists; and, on the whole, the Exhibition was one of which all those who are interested in photography may justly be proud. Monthly Foreign Digest TRANSLATED BY HENRY F. RAESS. A BIT OF HISTORY. She con see Monsieur J. Dumas, the famous French chemist, speaking before the Société d'Encouragement Pour l'Industrie Nationale, in 1864, said that one day a woman, the wife of a poor painter, called on him to ask his advice, saying her husband was on the point of losing his reason. tinued to say that he had abandoned his art work and was busy with fruitless chemical investigations. "He is now attempting to fix pictures on polished metal plates," she said. "He sold our effects to obtain chemicals and to have apparatus built." Dumas replied: "I do not what I can do for you or how I can assist you." The wife explained that that she thought he, being one of the greatest of chemists, through the power of his authority could convince her husband of the uselessness of his experiments. Dumas went the next day and visited the painter. The result was quite different from what the good wife had expected, for after a short conference Dumas told him to continue his tests and if means were wanting to apply to him; he also gave him access to his laboratory and advised him along chemical lines. This happened in 1824. The painter was Louis Daguerre, who fifteen years later succeeded in fixing pictures on metal plates and gave the world the "Daguerreotype." No doubt the help obtained from Dumas went far toward bringing about the result, as Daguerre was not versed in chemistry. Photographische Rundschau, Vol 20, No. 13. * SNAPSHOTS ON AUTOCHROME PLATE. BY CH. SIMMEN. Since the introduction of the Autochrome plates I have mentioned their rather After numerous trials I used the three well-known sensitizers, Pinaverdol, Pinacyanol, and Pinachrome mixed in certain proportions. Pinachrome cannot be used alone, as it is difficult to balance the extreme from yellow to violet. Plates sensitized with it show yellowish green with violet shadows. The latter could be corrected with a green-blue filter, but it would increase the exposure. Pinaverdol and Pinacyanol exhibit the opposite fault, for they give a poor rendering of yellow and violet and consequently they equalize each other. Although other commercial coloring matters may be used, the above mentioned give the greatest speed with increased color sensitiveness. The only real difficulty is the proper amounts of coloring matter to use, as it is impossible to give a mixed formula, for properties of Pinacyanol differ. In one case I used eight parts of the first and one part of the second and at another Have you renewed your subscription to THE PHOTOGRAPHIC TIMES? |