AN IDEAL OUTFIT FOR THE AMATEUR

By GASTON M. ALVES.

N this I shall advise as to the size of the camera, the kind of lens, and a suitable enlarging box.

Lightness and small size is important in a camera, and a 4 x 5 is as large as should be procured. The bellows extension need not be but

little over twice the focus of the lens used, unless one wants to do telephoto work. The camera should have a good leather case, which will accomodate six plate holders, thus giving us the use of twelve plates. When one wants pictures larger than the 4 x 5, an 8 x 10 size can always easily be had, as explained hereinafter.

The lens should be of superior type, i. e., an anastigmat. The focus may be from six to seven inches-not less than six, or more than seven. Enlarged images can if wanted, be had with the use of only one combination of the lens. Some who affect the picturesque, advise a common lens, but this is a mistake, as a superior lens will do work which a common one cannot do, and besides by proper use, give any picturesque effect wanted. In fact, it is only a foolish workman who wants a poor tool.

With the above outfit, of course the pictures by contact printing will be 4 x 5 inches. For the majority of photographs this size will be quite satisfactory. If post cards are wanted, use a 5 x 7 printing frame and a bit of nonactinic paper for the side margin, thus giving a suitable margin for the writing. Should we have some much prized negatives, and from which we would like some wall photos, we may by the following method get them quite as easily to say an 8 x 10 size as we can get a contact print: From three eighths or one half inch lumber make a box. In one end cut a 4 x 5 hole to receive the negative. Make a diaphragm or partition to the box, and in the center of the partition fasten in an extra flange to your lens. Screw in the lens, and so secure the partition that the diaphragm of the lens will be distant from the negative, just

one and one-half times the focus of the lens-if the focus is six inches, then the distance should be nine inches, etc. Now procure an 8 x 10 plate holder, and nicely fit it in the other end of the box at a distance from the diaphragm of the lens of three times the focus of the lens-if the focus is six inches, then the distance should be eighteen inches, etc. In getting this last 'distance it is best in practice to get it by trial. Make the box a little long, and with the negative and lens in place, hold a sheet of ground glass at such a distance in the end of the box, that a distant scene will be nicely in focus. Mark the position of the ground glass, and place the grooves of the plate holder so that the sensitive paper will come even with the marks.

To make enlargements in daylight, expose the negative end to a northern sky, using by preference a gaslight paper. To make enlargements by artificial light, a regular bromide paper, with a bright tin reflector over a 32 candle power electric light will be sufficient for the printing. By the above means, enlargements can be made quite as easily as contact prints can be produced.

The foregoing outfit is an ideal one for a critical amateur. If, however, he wishes to do telephoto work, he will need about double the bellows extension to his camera, as that indicated above.

66

THE JEWEL OF GREAT PRICE.

By W. F. OLIVER.

(ONSISTENCY, thou art a jewel." I have often wondered how the public became agreed upon this proposition; a jewel is generally supposed to be something rare and valuable. As we all know, consistency is a virtue every individual is conscious of possessing, at the same time he seldom perceives this virtue in another; possibly this explains why consistency seems so rare and precious, possibly it may explain why I take the liberty to write what is to follow, why I studiously avoid anything that may be controverted by scientific fact and lurk in the realm of argument.

In a previous issue, I note a complaint against certain unjust discriminations pertaining to the so-called faking in photographic portraits, most insistence being placed upon the objections raised against those manifestations of faking which are immediately and strikingly noticeable as being wholly foreign to photographic effects, as they are generally understood. The miscarriage of justice seemed to lie in the fact that judges and art critics had overlooked or failed to debar various other forms of manipulation though such might represent a far greater amount of time, energy and skill.

Harmony and unity are universally recognized to be the prime, the basic essentials of pictorial art. Volumes would scarcely elucidate the full import of these art terms, but it is safe to assume they are more concerned with results than with methods. I never chanced to hear a violin solo with a drum-corps accompaniment,-I never chanced to see a painting, part water-color and part charcoal drawing,-I never saw an architectural triumph with gilded domes and shining minarets reared high upon a skeleton frame of posts and girders, nor the full sculpture of a head placed upon a figure in bas-relief; so, when I see a portrait wherein the head, and possibly some of the adjacent anatomy, is rendered in the incomparably fine and inimitable "full presentation" peculiar to photography, while