Amusing caricatures may be obtained by deforming the sensitive surface
of the negative. The accompanying conical portrait is one.[6]
[6] From "Les Recreations Photographiques."
[Illustration: FIG. 76.]
To depict the features of a person on a paper cone is not an easy
matter; whilst to obtain them by photography is a tolerably simple
operation.
[Illustration: FIG. 77.]
[Illustration: FIG. 78.]
Having glued on the interior face of a plate-holder (the slide being
drawn), in the place of a sensitive plate, a cone made of strong
cardboard, superpose on it an unexposed film which has been cut to
the form of the development of the cone (as shown in Fig. 77). The
film is secured by means of two or three pins. Having focused on a
point of the subject in a middle plane, the ground glass is afterwards
drawn back a distance equal to half the height of the cone, taking
care not to derange either the subject or the objective. To obtain a
sharp image a very small diaphragm must necessarily be used, but with
a rapid plate and good light that is of little moment. The camera
should be placed in the dark room, the lens being inserted in a hole
in the partition just its size, and the subject in the adjoining
apartment opposite the lens--this because the cone will not allow the
plate-holder to be closed by the slide.
Fig. 76 shows the arrangement of the camera and holder. The exposure
made, the film is developed, as usual. The negative gives a print
deformed as shown in Fig. 76. The original, if not grotesque
appearance of the head disappears when the print is rolled into a
conical form and the observer places his eye in the prolongation of
the axis of the cone. Fig. 78 shows the head as seen under these
conditions.