Chapter 4

The first aid I have to suggest is the use of such a table as Mr. Burton's. Before we do anything more in this direction, we must consider the influence of the lens and its diaphragms. In theory the single landscape lens is more rapid than the doublet of equal aperture, but the difference is so little that it may be disregarded in practice, and my remarks will apply to both.

The rapidity of a lens depends mainly on its aperture and its focal length. Thus a lens of twelve inches focus will require four times the exposure of a six inch, with an equal sized diaphragm, and a quarter inch diaphragm will require four times the exposure of a half inch when used in the same lens.

The Photographic Society of Great Britain have recommended that the diaphragms of all lenses should bear such relation to the focal length that each should require exactly double the exposure of the next smaller. Now, if we turn again to Mr. Burton's table, we shall find that it is constructed on this principle, and that each stop is numbered so as to show its exposure. Obviously, the most sensible thing would be to get a set of stops made to correspond with this arrangement, but we will see how we can construct a table for stops of any size.

First, if possible, find the equivalent focus of your lens. If it is made by a known maker, you will find it in his price list, and if not, you may calculate it for yourself by the rules given in the various text books, provided you have a camera of pretty long focus. However, it will be near enough for our purpose if you get a sharp image of the sun on a piece of paper, and while you hold lens and paper, get some one to measure the distance from the paper to the diaphragm aperture, or, in the case of a single lens, to the center of the lens. Note down this focal length, and proceed to measure your diaphragms in sixteenths of an inch.

Then, with pen and paper, proceed to divide the diameter of each stop into the focus, and state the result as a fraction of the focus, thus f/8. For example, a Ross half plate rapid symmetrical has a focal length of 7½ in.; for convenience reduce this to sixteenths=120. A diaphragm measuring seven sixteenths will give the fraction f/17. Now let us see if any of these stops correspond with Mr. Burton's. The first two in his table will only be found in portrait lenses, but we shall probably find one to correspond with the third, if we are using a doublet lens; with a single lens we won't find any so large. Having picked out those that correspond, and filled in the exposure for them, we have now to deal with the odd sizes. Here is one, f/27, which is just half way between No. 16 and No. 32, but a moment's thought will show that as the exposure increases as the square of the diameter, it won't do to take the exposure half way between the two.

We have another factor to consider now: that is, the rapidity of the plate. If you use plates by a maker who has a name to sustain, you may be pretty confident that they are of fairly uniform rapidity, so after you have got into the way of working any particular brand, the best thing you can do is to stick to it. The exposures in our table are for plates of medium rapidity in good spring light. In my own experience I find that they just suit "thirty times" plates, or fifteen on the sensitometer; but then I like a full exposure with slow development, and I know that others find these exposures just right for "twenty times" plates developed in the usual way. The most rapid plates in the market will not be overdone with half the given exposures. It must always be borne in mind that an error of a fraction of a second in either direction may be corrected in development, and it is impossible to make a very serious error if you refer to the table.

We come now to the light. If you depend on the eye entirely in judging the quality of the light, it will sometimes play you tricks. The rays which are most active on the plates are those which have the least effect on the eye. We can, however, by chemical means arrive at an exact estimate of the active power, and for this purpose an actinometer is used. This is simply an arrangement whereby a piece of sensitized paper is exposed and allowed to darken to a standard tint, and by the time it takes to reach that tint the value of the light is judged. Capt. Abney has, however, pointed out that ordinary sensitized paper is not suitable for bromide plates, since there are conditions of light in which the plates will be fairly rapid while the paper will be very slow. He gives a formula for a bromide paper, which is treated with tannin in order to absorb the bromine set free during exposure, otherwise the darkening would be very slight. I used this paper for a while, but found it rather slow. The tannin also turned brown on keeping for a week or so. I then made some more, substituting for tannin potassium _nitrite_ (not nitrate), which is colorless. This was an improvement, but still it was just slow enough.

However, noticing in Capt. Abney's article the statement that the bromide of silver should be as nearly as possible in the same state in the paper as in the plate, I thought "Why not Morgan's paper?" This, of course, is just bromide emulsion on paper, and if, as I suspect from its color, it contains a trace of iodide, why, so do most commercial plates. A sheet of this paper cut into strips, soaked for ten minutes in a fifteen-grain solution of potassium nitrite, and dried, gives a sensitive paper which darkens with great rapidity to a good deep tint, and keeps indefinitely. Here is some prepared last summer, which is still quite good. To use this paper make a little box so that a little roll of it can be stored in one end, and drawn forward as required beneath a piece of glass.

Bearing in mind that your table of exposures is calculated for the best spring light, go to the country some bright day next month with note-book, actinometer, and the necessary appliances for exposing a few plates. Select, say, an open landscape, and use your smallest stop. When all ready to expose, get out your actinometer and expose it to the reflected light of the sky for ten seconds (if the sun is shining, turn your back to it, and keep the actinometer in your own shadow); then put it in your pocket, expose a plate according to your table, and in case the light or plate should not be just in accordance with the conditions under which the table was prepared, expose other two plates, one a little less and one a little more than that first exposed. Then note down everything you have done--kind of view, stop, speed of plate, exposure of each plate, and length of exposure of actinometer.

When you get home, the first thing to do is to get hold of a paint box and paint the underside of the glass of your actinometer to match the darkened paper. Do this by gas light. Then scrape away a little of the paint, so as to let a strip of the paper be seen below it. After this develop your three plates with a developer of normal strength, and see which is best. If you have chosen a really bright spring day, and are using plates of medium rapidity, you will most likely find that exposed according to the table just about right.

Now let us see how we can use these aids in our field work. We have ascertained the correct exposure with a given stop on one class of view, with light of a given quality, but now suppose all these conditions altered. Let the view have heavy foliage coming close up to the camera, the stop be a size larger than that used in our first experiment, and the day rather dull. The table tells us what the exposure would be with this stop on this view, on a bright day; and if the actinometer take twenty seconds to reach the painted tint, then we must double the exposure given in the table.

You may sometimes find that the actinometer indicates a very different exposure from what the eye would lead you to expect. For instance, one day last September I went to Bothwell Castle, to get a picture I knew of in the grounds. It was one of those strange yellow days we had then, and the sun, though shining with all his might, was apparently shining through orange glass. The actinometer indicated an exposure of thirty seconds where in good light one would be right. I was rather incredulous. Thirty seconds in broad sunshine! However, I gave this exposure, but for my own satisfaction I gave another plate fifteen seconds only.

On developing, the latter was hopelessly underexposed while that having thirty seconds gave a negative which furnished one of my exhibition pictures.

I have shown you how to reduce the quality of the light to a certainty, also how to reduce to rule the exposure with different lenses and stops on certain classes of subjects, and it remains with you only to guess correctly to what class the view you wish to take belongs; I can assure you from my own experience that there is enough uncertainty about that point to prevent good negatives ever becoming monotonous.

The only aid I can suggest in this case is the continual use of a note-book. Note every plate you expose, and when you have a failure be careful to record the fact, and you will gradually find these accumulated notes becoming a great help in cases of doubt. One hint I can give to beginners is that a great number of the pictures to be met with in this part of the country are intermediate between "Open Landscape" and "Landscape with heavy foliage in foreground;" and it is scarcely needful to say that if you are in doubt, let the exposure be rather too much than too little; you _may_ make a negative of an overexposed plate, but never of an underexposed one.

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ISOCHROMATIC PHOTOGRAPHY.

[Footnote: Read at the stated meeting of the Franklin Institute, March 18, 1885.]

By FRED. E. IVES.

It is well known that the ordinary photographic processes do not reproduce colors in the true proportion of their brightness. Violet and blue photograph too light; green, yellow, orange and red, too dark. For a long time it was believed to be impossible to remedy this defect; and even when it became known that bromide of silver could be made more sensitive to yellow and red by staining it with certain dyes, the subject received very little attention, because it was also known that the increase of sensitiveness was too slight to be of practical value in commercial photography.

Dr. H.W. Vogel, who was one of the first, though not the first, to devote attention to this subject, announced, in 1873, that he had succeeded in making a yellow object photograph lighter than a blue or violet one, by using a silver-bromide plate stained with coraline, and exposed through a yellow glass. The plate showed no increased sensitiveness to red, and the experiment, although of considerable scientific interest, did not indicate a practically useful process.

In the spring of 1878 I became interested in this subject, and tried to discover a method of producing plates which should be sensitive to all colors, and capable of reproducing them in the true proportion of their brightness. I commenced by trying nearly all the color sensitizers which had already been suggested, in order to learn which was the best, and then, if possible, _why_ it was the best, as a guide to further research. Chlorophyl was the only thing I tried which was sufficiently sensitive to red to offer any encouragement in that direction; but the solution which I obtained was weak and unstable, and far from being a satisfactory color sensitizer. Hoping to obtain a better solution with which to continue my experiments, I made extracts from many kinds of leaves, and found that a solution from blue myrtle leaves looked better and kept better than any other, and when it was applied to the silver-bromide plates they became remarkably sensitive, not only to all shades of red, but also to orange, yellow, and green. By placing in front of the lens a color-screen consisting of a small glass tank containing a weak solution of bichromate of potash, to cut off part of the blue and violet light, I obtained, with these chlorophyl plates, the first photographs in which all colors were reproduced in the true proportions of their brightness. But my chief desire at that time was to realize a method of producing from any object in colors a set of three negatives, in one of which the shadows should represent the blue of the original, in another the yellow, and in another the red, in such a manner that transparent pigment prints from these negatives--blue, yellow, and red--would, when superimposed on a white surface, represent not only the lights and shadows, but also the colors of the object. This had already been attempted by others, who failed because their plates were not sufficiently sensitive to red and yellow.

Having succeeded perfectly in my undertakings, I published my discovery in 1879,[1] explaining how to prepare and use the chlorophyl plates, in connection with the yellow screen, for the purpose of securing correct photographs of colored objects.[2]

[Footnote 1: _Philadelphia Photographer_, December, 1879, p. 365.]

[Footnote 2: I intended this publication to be a very full and explicit one, and it was sufficiently so to be perfectly understood by most who saw it; but some may think I did not sufficiently emphasize the importance of using the particular kind of chlorophyl which I mentioned. In a brief communication to the editor of the _Photo. News_, in 1883, I described some experiments with eosine as a color sensitizer, and then called attention to the superiority of blue-myrtle chlorophyl for this purpose, stating that I had not been able to secure such results with any other kind of chlorophyl, and that a fresh solution from fresh leaves must be used to secure the greatest possible degree of sensitiveness. See _Photo. News_, Nov. 1883, p. 747.]

So far as I know, nobody tried the process. Nearly five years later Dr. Vogel announced that, after eleven years of investigation, he had at last realized a successful process of this character, and that this new process of his was the "solution of a problem that had long been encompassed with difficulty." This publication attracted a great deal of attention, and gave me occasion to again call attention to my process,[3] and point out that it was not only the first practical solution of this problem, but the only truly isochromatic process ever discovered. Dr. Vogel's new process was not only no better in any respect, but the plates were insensitive to scarlet and ruby-red, and therefore would not photograph all colors in the true proportion of their brightness.

[Footnote 3: _Photo. News_, London, September 5, 1884, p. 566, and _Year Book of Photography_ for 1885, p. 111.]

My method consists in treating ordinary collodio-bromide emulsion plates with blue myrtle chlorophyl solution, exposing them through the yellow screen, and then developing them in the usual manner. The emulsion which I have employed is made with an excess of nitrate of silver, which is afterward neutralized by the addition of chloride of cobalt; it is known as Newton's emulsion. I now prepare the chlorophyl from fresh blue myrtle leaves, by cutting them up fine, covering with pure alcohol, and heating moderately hot; the leaves are left in the solution, and some zinc powder is added, which helps to keep the chlorophyl from spoiling. I have a bottle of this solution which was prepared about six months ago, and now appears to be as good as when first made.[4] A glass plate is flowed with the emulsion, and as soon as it has set, the chlorophyl solution is applied for a few seconds, after which the plate is washed in pure water until smooth, when it is ready for exposure.

[Footnote 4: I originally recommended chlorophyl extracted from dried leaves, because I had not yet learned how to preserve the solution for more than a few weeks; and at some seasons it would be difficult, if not impossible, to obtain fresh leaves. The tea organifier which I recommended is also a color sensitizer, and when it is used in connection with the chlorophyl from dried leaves the plates are as sensitive to red as can be safely prepared and developed in the light of an ordinary photographic "dark-room." Plates prepared with chlorophyl from fresh leaves do not require treatment with the tea organifier to secure this degree of sensitiveness. Recently I have used the tea organifier and some other sensitizers, in connection with the solution from _fresh_ myrtle-leaves, and in this way have produced plates having such an exalted color sensitiveness as to be unmanageable in ordinary "dark-room" light. Possibly, such plates might be prepared and developed in total darkness, by the aid of suitable mechanical contrivances, but I am not sure that they would work clear even then, because they appear to be sensitive to heat as well as to light.]

My color-screen consists of a small plate-glass tank, having a space of 3/16 of of an inch between the glass, filled with a solution of bichromate of potash about one grain strong. I place the tank in front of the lens, in contact with the lens-mount. The advantage of this tank and solution is that it can be more easily obtained than yellow plate glass, and the color can be adjusted to meet any requirement.

The plates require about three times as much exposure through the yellow screen as without it, and may be developed with the ordinary alkaline pyro-developer.

In order to illustrate the value of this process, I made two photographs of a highly-colored chromo-lithograph, representing a lady with a bright scarlet hat and purple feather, a yellow-brown cape and a dark-blue dress. One, by the ordinary process, represents the blue as lighter than the yellow-brown, the bright scarlet hat as black, and the purple feather as nearly white. The other, by the chlorophyl process, reproduces all colors in nearly the true proportion of their brightness, but with a slight exaggeration of contrast produced purposely by using a too-strong color solution in the small tank.

I also made two landscape photographs, one by the ordinary process, and the other by the chlorophyl process, exposing them simultaneously. In the ordinary photograph, distant hills are lost through overexposure, yet the foreground seems underexposed, and yellow straw-stacks and bright autumn leaves appear black. In the chlorophyl photograph, the distant hills are not overexposed, nor is the foreground underexposed; the yellow straw-stacks appear nearly white, and bright autumn leaves contrast strongly with the dark green about them.

To test the relative color-sensitiveness of plain emulsion plates, plates stained with eosine, and plates stained with the blue-myrtle chlorophyl, I exposed one of each kind through the same yellow screen, giving each five minutes exposure, on the same piece of copy, which was the chromo-lithograph already described. The plain emulsion plate showed only the high lights of the picture, after prolonged development. The eosine plate was underexposed, but brought up everything fairly well except the scarlet hat, which came up like black. The chlorophyl plate was overexposed, brought out all colors better than the eosine plate, and gave full value to the bright scarlet of the hat, the detail in which was beautifully rendered.

Dr. Vogel advanced the theory that silver-bromide is insensitive to yellow and red, because it reflects or transmits those colors; and that it becomes sensitive when stained, because of the optical properties of the dyes. He afterward admitted that only such dyes as are capable of entering into chemical combination with the silver-bromide proved capable of increasing its sensitiveness to color, but he held to the theory that the optical properties of the compound were the cause of its color-sensitiveness.

I have shown that the color-sensitiveness can be produced by treatment with an organic compound which has none of the optical properties characteristic of dyes; and that chlorophyl, which absorbs only red light, greatly increases the sensitiveness also to yellow and green. There is, therefore, good reason to doubt if the color-sensitiveness is ever due to the optical properties of the dye or combination.

Attempts have been made to produce isochromatic gelatine dry plates which, while many times more sensitive to white light than my chlorophyl plates, shall also show the same relative color-sensitiveness. Such plates would be very valuable but for one fact: it would be necessary to prepare and develop them in almost total darkness. Gelatine bromide dry plates extremely sensitive to yellow, but _comparatively insensitive to red_, might be used to advantage in portrait and instantaneous photography, because they could be safely prepared and developed in red light; but when truly isochromatic photographs are required, the time of exposure must be regulated to suit the degree of sensitiveness to red, which cannot safely be made greater than I have realized with my chlorophyl process.

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DISTORTION FROM EXPANSION OF THE PAPER IN PHOTOGRAPHY.

The effect of the unequal expansion of paper, when wetted, in causing distortion of the photographic image impressed upon it, has, in the case of ordinary photographs upon albumenized paper, been well recognized; but the extent to which such distortion may exist under different treatment is worthy of some special consideration, particularly with reference to the method of printing upon gelatinized paper, which has been thought by some likely to supersede the method now usually employed with albumenized paper.

When a print upon the ordinary photographic (albumen) paper is wetted, the fiber expands more in one direction than in the other, so that the print becomes unequally enlarged, very slightly in one and much more so in the other way of the paper. When the paper is dried without any strain being put upon it, the fibers regain very nearly their original dimensions and position, so that the distortion which has existed in the wet condition nearly disappears.

If the photograph is cemented, while in the expanded condition, upon a rigid surface, the distortion then existing is fixed, and rendered permanent. Such a cementation or method of mounting is that which has been generally adopted, and the consequence has been that every now and then complaints have justly been made of the untruthfulness--owing to this particular distortion--of photographs; productions whose chief merit has often been asserted to consist in their absolute truthfulness. This distortion is very manifest when, in a set of portraits, some of the prints happen to have been made in one direction of the paper, and others with the long grain the other way. I have known a case where a proof happened to increase the face in width, and all the other prints increased it in length. Of course, neither was correct, but the proof had been accepted and liked, and the remainder of the set had to be reprinted with the grain of the paper running in the same direction as that in the first one which had been supplied.

Another evil arising from mounting prints while expanded with moisture is, that in drying the contraction of the paper pulls round the card into a curved form and although by rolling this curvature may be temporarily got rid of, the fiber of the paper is in a strained condition, and the bent state of the mount is, sooner or later, renewed thereby.