Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2010/08/01
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]"Peter Klein" <pklein at threshinc.com> wrote > Douglas: I took the liberty of adjusting the black and white points on > your photo find to give it a full range, and converted to B&W: > http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/pklein/album170/Douglas-WindsorCastle.jpg.html > > Which gives me an idea of how you could have your cake and eat it, to. > Get the photo copied on a really good, high-res flatbed scanner, or on Thanks Peter, I'd debated that course already with myself , and needless to say my "keepie" side won out. So Sonny, when do you think you'll be over in the Auld Sod? BTW, as for scanning, the picture is still in its original frame with a wooden slatted back and I'm reluctant to touch it, preferring to keep it in original condition. That sentiment may of course change! Frank as to the date I see from some searches of the internet that Vernon Heath exhibited images in the the Photographic Society of Scotland in the 1860s which included a View of Windsor Castle, and that, interestingly, enlarging was used from the 1850s onwards. The Edinburgh Photographic Society had a condenser and lens in their 1868 inventory. Here's another useful link and excerpt from same. Douglas http://sharlot.org/archives/photographs/19th/book/chapter_11.html Chapter 11 Historical Enlargements and Image Reversal This chapter also discusses tinting and age deterioration. ******* It is unfortunate that many people, including some writers, have the misconception that photographic enlarging is an advanced technology that appeared late on the scene. Several writers were under the impression that in the early days of photography enlargements weren't possible, so if you wanted an 8x10 print you needed a negative of the same size. Not so. Enlargers have existed from the beginnings of photography. Sir John Herschel described his in 1839; it even had a lens corrected for spherical aberration. That same year Talbot patented an enlarger for his calotypes. Draper enlarged Daguerreotypes with a copy camera in Massachusetts during the winter of 1839-1840. By 1857 full-figure portraits six feet tall were being made and Woodward's solar enlarger was in widespread use. It is true that most early photographers preferred large plate cameras. William Henry Jackson is famous for hauling a 20x24 inch glass-plate camera across the western mountains of the United States on muleback in 1875 and making superb contact prints. Possibly a lighter and smaller camera would have enabled Jackson to take even more breathtaking pictures. On the occasion of his ninetieth birthday in the middle 1930's Jackson was presented with a Leica 35mm camera. He remarked (National Geographic, Vol 175m No. 2, February 1989, p230.) "If I'd had one of these on the Hayden Survey, I'd have made many more pictures and lived longer." Yet Ansel Adams often used the 8 x 10 inch format for many of his classic pictures. Adams had a choice that Jackson did not. The transition from Jackson's 90 pound camera to the one pound miniature in less than a lifetime gives talent a wider scope but does not substitute for it. Enlarger Light Sources Enlargers cost money and not all photographers felt they were a business necessity. Exposures were lengthy before the days of fast bromide paper, and light sources were a problem. Inventors tried every kind of artificial light: candles, lamps burning kerosene, whale oil, coal gas, and acetylene; battery powered carbon arc lights; hydrogen-oxygen limelight. The latter consisted of a cylinder of lime (calcium carbonate), heated in a gas or hydrogen-oxygen flame. It produced a brilliant white light much superior to the yellow light of kerosene. It was first used for general illumination in 1826, and in 1841 to illuminate subjects for calotypes. Some photographers used acetylene thirty years after Edison invented the electric lamp in 1879, either because their places of business were not electrified, or simply because they thought the results were better. Also, early incandescent light bulb filaments were too large to be placed at the focus of a parabolic reflector to produce a parallel beam.>