[Footnote: Abstract of a paper communicated to the Glasgow and West of
Scotland Amateur Photographic Association.--From the _Photographic
News_.]
By T.N. ARMSTRONG.
When the season for out-door work closes, amateurs begin to look about
for means of employment during the dark evenings. There is, fortunately,
no necessity for being idle, or to relinquish photographic pursuits
entirely, even though the weather and light combine to render out-door
work almost impracticable; and most amateurs will be found to have some
hobby or favorite amusement which enables them to keep in practice during
those months when many channels of employment are closed to them; and
probably one of the most popular as well as the most pleasing occupations
is the production of transparencies for the lantern.
It is not my desire to enter into any discussion as to this or that being
the best means of producing these delightful pictures, but merely to
describe a way by which a pleasant evening can be spent at photography,
and slides produced of much excellence by artificial light.
To-night I propose, by the aid of artificial light, to make a few slides
with Beechy's dry plates. On the whole, I have been most successful with
them, and have obtained results more satisfactory than by any of the
other processes I have tried. I do not say that results quite as good
cannot be obtained by any other method, for I know manipulative skill
plays a most important part in this class of work.
When I first took up the making of transparencies with wet collodion, I
was told that my sorrows would not be far to seek, and so I soon found
out. Need I tell you of all my failures, such as films floating off the
glass, oyster-shell markings, pin-holes, films splitting when dry, etc.,
etc., not to speak of going to business with fingers in fearful state
with nitrate of silver and iron developer? Now all these miseries have
gone, and I can, with dry collodion plates, work with the greatest of
comfort, and obtain results quite equal to the best products of any
method.
It may be interesting to some to know the formula by which the emulsion
is made, and as the making of it is by no means a difficult operation, I
may be pardoned if, before going fully into the more practical part of my
paper, I describe the formula, and also the manner in which I coat and
dry the plates. The formula is as follows, for which the world is
indebted to Canon Beechy:
In 8 ounces of absolute alcohol dissolve 5 drachms of anhydrous bromide
of cadmium. The solution will be milky. Let it stand at least twenty-four
hours, or until perfectly clear; it will deposit a white powder. Decant
carefully into an 8-ounce bottle, and add to it a drachm of strong
hydrochloric acid. Label this "bromide solution;" and it is well to add
on the label the constituents, which will be found to be nearly:
Alcohol. 1 ounce.
Bromide of cadmium. 32 grains.
Hydrochloric acid. 8 drops.
This solution will keep for ever, and will be sufficient to last two or
three years, and with this at hand you will be able in two days to
prepare a batch of plates at any time. In doing so, you should proceed
thus: Make up your mind how many plates you mean to make, and take of the
above accordingly. For two dozen ½-plates or four dozen 3¼ by 3¼,
dissolve by heat over, but not too near, a spirit lamp, and by yellow
light, 40 grains of nitrate of silver in 1 ounce of alcohol 0.820. While
this is dissolving in a little Florence flask on a retort stand at a safe
distance from the lamp--which it will do in about 5 minutes--take of the
bromized solution ½ an ounce, of absolute ether 1 ounce, of gun-cotton
grains; put these in a clean bottle, shake once or twice, and the
gun-cotton, if good, will entirely dissolve. As soon as the silver is all
dissolved, and while quite hot, pour out the above bromized collodion
into a clean 4-ounce measure, having ready in it a clean slip of glass.
Pour into it the hot solution of silver in a continuous stream, stirring
rapidly all the while with a glass rod. The result will be a perfectly
smooth emulsion without lumps or deposit, containing, with sufficient
exactitude for all practical purposes, 8 grains of bromide, 16 grains of
nitrate of silver, and 2 drops of hydrochloric acid per ounce. Put this
in your stock solution bottle, and keep it in a dark place for
twenty-four hours. When first put in, it will be milky; when taken out,
it will be creamy; and it will be well to shake it once or twice in the
twenty-four hours.
At the end of this time you can make your two dozen plates in about an
hour. Proceed as follows: Have two porcelain dishes large enough to hold
four or six of your plates; into one put sufficient clean water to nearly
fill it, into the other put 30 ounces of clear, flat, _not acid,_ bitter
beer, in which you have dissolved 30 grains of pyrogallic acid. Pour this
through a filter into the dish, and avoid bubbles. If allowed to stand an
hour, any beer will be flat enough; if the beer be at all brisk, it will
be difficult to avoid small bubbles on the plate. At all events, let your
preservative stand while you filter your emulsion. This must be done
through perfectly clean cotton-wool into a perfectly clean collodion
bottle; give the emulsion a good shaking, and when all bubbles have
subsided, pour it into the funnel, and it will go through in five
minutes. The filtered emulsion will be found to be a soft, smooth, creamy
fluid, flowing easily and equally over the plates. Coat with it six
plates in succession, and place each, as you coat it, into the water. By
the time the sixth is in, the first will be ready to come out. Take it
out, see that all greasiness is gone, and place it in the preservative,
going on till all the plates are so treated.
A very handy way of drying is to have a flat tin box of the usual hot
plate description, which fill with hot water, then screw on the cap; on
this flat tin box place the plates to dry, which they will do rapidly;
when dry, store away in your plate box, and you will have a supply of
really excellent dry collodion plates.
Just a word as to the preparation of the glasses before coating. It is
very generally considered that it is better the glasses receive either a
substratum of albumen or very weak gelatine. I use the latter on account
of the great ease of its preparation. After your glasses are well
cleaned, place them in, and rub them with a weak solution of hydrochloric
acid of the strength of 2 ounces acid to 18 ounces water.
Prepare a solution of gelatine 1 grain to the ounce of water, rinse the
plate after removal from the acid mixtures, and coat twice with the above
gelatine substratum; the first coating is to remove the surplus water,
and should be rejected. Rear the plates up to drain, and dry in a plate
rack or against a wall, and be careful to prevent any dust adhering to
the surface while wet.
Having now described the plates I intend to use, let us next consider
what a transparency is, that we may understand the nature of the work we
are undertaking. You are all aware that if we take a negative, and in
contact with it place a sheet of sensitized paper, we obtain a positive
picture. Substitute for the paper a sensitive glass plate, and we obtain
also a positive picture, but, unlike the paper print, the collodion or
other plate will require to be developed to bring the image into view.
Now this is what is termed making a transparency by contact. It often
happens, however, that a lantern slide 3¼ by 3¼ has to embrace the whole
of a picture contained in a much larger negative, so that recourse must
be had to the camera, and the picture reduced with the aid of a short
focus lens to within the lantern size; this is what is called making a
transparency by reduction in the camera. Both cases are the same,
however, so far as the process being simply one of printing.
Those who have never made a transparency will have doubtless printed
silver prints from their negatives, and when printing, how often do you
find that to secure the best results you require to have recourse to some
little dodge.
Now, let us bear this in mind when using such a negative for the printing
of a transparency, for, as I have said before, it is only a process of
printing, after all. Although we cannot, when using a sensitive plate,
employ the same means of dodging as in the case of a silver print, still
we are not left without a means of obtaining the same results in a
different way, and this just brings me to what I have already hinted at
previously, that a deal more depends on the manipulative skill of the
operator than in the adoption of any particular make plate or formula;
and not only does this manipulative skill show itself in the exposure,
development, etc., but likewise comes into play in a marked manner even
in the preparation of the negative for transparency printing.
Let me deal with the latter point first. You will at once understand that
a negative whose size bears a proportion similar to 3¼ by 3¼ will lend
itself more easily to reduction; thus whole plate or half plate negatives
are easy of manipulation in this respect, and require but little doing
up. But as other sizes have at times to be copied into a disk¼ by 3¼,
recourse must be had to a sort of squaring of the negative. Now, here I
have a negative 7¼ by 4½, which is perhaps the worst of all sizes to
compress into the lantern shape, so I have, as it were, to square this
negative, and this I do by simply adding to sky. I take a piece of
card-board and gum it on to the glass side of the negative, and this
addition gives me a size that lends itself easily to reduction to the
lantern disk, and in no way detracts from the picture.
Having said so much about making up the size, let me add a few words as
to other preparations that are sometimes necessary. In a good lantern
transparency, it is, of all things, indispensable that the high lights be
represented by pure glass, absolutely clean in the sense of its being
free from any fog or deposit, to even the slightest degree; it is also
necessary that it be free from everything of heaviness of smudginess in
the details. To obtain these results, I generally have recourse to the
strengthening of the high lights of my negatives, and this I do with a
camel's hair brush and India ink, working on the glass side.
I nearly always block out my skies, and so strengthen the other parts of
my negatives, that I can rely on a full exposure without fear of
heaviness or smudginess. This blocking out is easily done.
Haying said so much about the preparation of the negative, let me now
describe the apparatus I use. I have here an ordinary flat board, and
here my usual camera; it is the one I use both for outside and inside
work. It is a whole-plate one, very strongly made, and has a draw of
twenty-three inches when fully extended; but this is not an unusual
feature, as nearly all modern cameras have their draw made as long as
this one. The lens I use is a Ross rapid symmetrical on five inches
focus, and here I have a broken-down printing frame with the springs
taken off, and here a sheet of ground glass. This is all that is
required. I mention this because I find it generally believed that a
special camera is required for this work, such as to exclude all light
between the negative and the lens; in my practice I have found this
unnecessary. There is nothing to hinder the use of ordinary cameras,
provided the draw is long enough, and the lens a short focus one.
Now let me describe how to go to work. I take the negative and place it
in the printing-frame, holding it in its place with a couple of tacks,
film-side next the lens, just as in printing; then stand the printing
frame on its edge on the flat board, and place the ground glass in front
of it--when I say in front of it, I mean not between the negative and
lens, but between the light and the negative. The ground glass can
conveniently be placed in another printing frame, and both placed up
against each other. I then bring my camera into play, and so adjust the
draw and distance from the negative, till I get the picture within the
disk on my ground glass. I find the best way is to gum a transparency
mask on the inside of the ground glass; this permits of the picture being
more easily brought within the required register. This done, focus
sharply, cap the lens, and then proceed to make the exposure.
Now, what shall I say regarding exposure? Just let us bear in mind again
that it is merely a printing process we are following up, as you will all
know that in printing no two negatives are alike in the time they
require. So in this case no two negatives are the same in their required
exposure. Still, with the plates I am going to use, so wide is their
range for exposure that but few failures will be made on this score,
provided we are on the safe side, and expose fully.
Although these plates are not nearly so fast as gelatine plates, it may
surprise you to be told that working with a negative which to daylight at
this dull time of the year required an exposure of sixteen minutes, will,
I hope, give me good results in about a tenth of this time; and this I
obtain by burning magnesium ribbon.
At first the error I fell into when using magnesium ribbon was too much
concentration of light. I now never allow the ribbon, when burning, to
remain in one position, but keep it moving from side to side, and up and
down, in front of the ground glass while making my exposure; and if there
be any dense place in the negative which, as in printing, would have
required printing specially up, I allow the light to act more strongly on
that part; the result, as a rule, being an evenly and well exposed plate.
I must not forget to explain to you the manner in which I coil up the
ribbon before I set it alight. I take an ordinary lead pencil, and wind
the ribbon round and round, thus making a sort of spiral spring; this
done, I gently pull the coils asunder. I then grasp the end of the ribbon
with a pair of pincers, light the other end, and make my exposure.
Having said so much regarding exposure, I shall now proceed to deal with
development. You will see me use a canary light, with which I can easily
see to read a newspaper. It may cause some of you surprise to see me use
so much light. It is the same lamp that I use for developing all my rapid
bromide plates; it is the best lamp I ever used. The canary medium is
inserted between the two sheets of glass 7¼ by 4½, the two glasses are
then fastened on to the tin with gummed paper, a few holes are bored in
the back for air, a funnel let in, and the thing is complete.
The formula for development is as follows:
Pyro. 96 grains.
Methylated spirits. 1 ounce.
Bromide of potash. 12 grams.
Water. 1 ounce.
Carbonate ammonia. 60 grains.
Water. 1 ounce.
Mix 30 drops pyro with from 30 to 60 drops bromide, then add 2 drachms
ammonia solution and 2 drachms of water.
I find a thin negative requires a slow development, and so gain contrast;
while hard negatives are best over-exposed and quickly developed.
The plate is first placed in water or rinsed under a gentle stream from
the tap till all greasiness has disappeared, it is then placed in a flat
dish, and the developer applied. Should it be found that some parts of
the picture are denser printed than should be by the ribbon acting more
strongly on some particular part--this is often the case if the negative
has been thinner in some parts than others, through uneven coating of the
plate--the picture need not be discarded as a failure, for I will explain
to you later on how to overcome this difficulty.
Fix the plate in hypo--the fixing takes place very quickly--then examine
the picture for the faults above described; if they are found, wash the
plate under the tap gently, and bring into operation a camel's hair brush
and a weak solution of cyanide of potassium. Apply the brush to the
over-printed parts, taking care not to work on the places that are not
too dense. Do not be afraid to use plenty of washing while this is being
done; let it be, as it were, a touch of the brush and then a dash of
water, and you will soon reduce the over-printed parts. It only requires
a little care in applying the brush.
After this wash well, and should it be deemed necessary to tone to a
black tone, use a weak solution of bichloride of platinum and chloride of
gold, or a very weak solution of iridium, in equal quantities, allowing
the picture to lie in the solution till the color has changed right
through to the back of the glass. Should a warm pinkish tone be desired,
I tone with weak solutions of ferri cyanide of potassium, nitrate of
uranium, and chloride of gold in about equal quantities.
After toning, wash well and dry; they dry quickly. Varnish with Soehnee
crystal varnish, then mount with covering glasses, and mark. Bind round
the edges with paper and very stiff gum, and the picture is complete.
The making of a really good transparency is by no means an easy or
pleasant task with a wet collodion plate, but with these dry plates an
amateur can, with a little practice, produce comfortably slides quite
equal to those procurable from professional makers.
* * * * *