The photographic news

• Bandzählung: 35.1891
• Erscheinungsdatum: 1891
• Sprache: Englisch
• Signatur: F 135
• Vorlage: Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig
• Digitalisat: Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig
• Digitalisat: SLUB Dresden
• Rechtehinweis: Public Domain Mark 1.0
• URN: urn:nbn:de:bsz:14-db-id1780948042-189100009
• PURL: http://digital.slub-dresden.de/id1780948042-18910000
• OAI: oai:de:slub-dresden:db:id-1780948042-18910000
• Sammlungen: LDP: Historische Bestände der Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig
• Sammlungen: Fotografie
• Strukturtyp: Band

• Digitalisat: SLUB Dresden
• Strukturtyp: Ausgabe

480 THE PHOTOGRAPHIC NEWS. [July 3, 1891. Motes. The French paper, Les Annates Photographiques, describes a new kind of printing paper which it believes will obtain a certain degree of popularity. It is said to be the out come of certain experiments by a Russian amateur, Mr. Soukatcheff, to be five or six times more sensitive than ordinary albumenised paper, and to give prints of a rich brown tone. This colour is varied by after treatment, for the paper can be developed, like a blue print, in simple water, or can be toned and fixed like an aristotype print. A specimen of the paper has found its way to Paris, and is favourably reported upon by the journal above named. No class of photographs are more interesting to stay-at- home town dwellers than those relating to volcanic pheno mena. These phenomena are, happily, so far removed from us, and, at the same time, have about them such a spice of the mysterious—we might almost say super natural—that they possess a fascination of their. own. The photographs, moreover, show us something new, for they are vastly different from the conception of volcanic outbursts which we gathered in our childhood from the fatuous engravings which adorned the educational books of the period. Hence it is that Dr. Tempest Anderson’s photographs of the volcanic districts of Iceland, shown at the conversazione of the Royal Society the other night, were looked upon with profound interest. Some similar pic tures taken in the Lipari Islands were shown among the lantern slides at the late soiree of the Camera Club, and these, too, were of a noteworthy and interesting character, some of them being taken within the actual crater. Those who wish to see how well line drawings turned into blocks by photo-zincography can be printed on a quick machine, should buy that wonderfully cheap pennyworth, the holiday number of the Daily Graphic. This is, in many respects, the finest number of that journal which has yet appeared. The drawings have, apparently, been reduced from the originals to a greater extent than heretofore, and the result is a fineness of line which brings them into real rivalry with wood engravings. The subjects illustrated are the various sea-side resorts within easy reach of Londoners, and the places can not only be recognised at a glance, but the pictures are full of life and bustle owing to the presence of admirably drawn figures. If the Daily Graphic keeps up to its present standard, it will soon double its already large army of admirers. We are reminded of a useful old method of obtaining from a very thin negative a duplicate which will yield a vigorous print, by seeing it exhumed and published as a new discovery in a foreign journal. The method is applicable in the case of a very thin, over-exposed negative, full of detail, or in the case of an experimental picture taken by gas or other weak light, when the detail has had to be coaxed into appearance by careful and prolonged development. The negative, after fixing and thorough washing, is bleached in a solution of mercuric chloride, and dried. It now appears as a positive when backed by any dark material, black velvet being, perhaps, the best which can be selected. The glass so treated is now set up before the camera, and a new negative is made from it without difficulty. This simple process will often be found of great service, and it has the merit of not sub jecting the negative to any risk of destruction. The resources of advertisers are legion, and, since the optical lantern has been enlisted in their service, they have seen many more loopholes through which the public can be successfully shot at. The proprietor of a hair restorer has just been fined the stereotyped forty shillings for causing an obstruction in Clapham by the exhibition of lantern slides from a waggon, which slides depicted the marvellous growth of hair which might be expected on the human cranium by a steady perseverance in the use of his nostrum. We say expected, because we know that promise in these matters does not always lead to realisation. Some time ago we became acquainted with the manager of a large drug store which dealt largely in these so-called restorers, and, seeing that his head was nearly as bald as a billiard ball, we ventured to hint most delicately that he might do worse than try some of these much vaunted specifics himself. He looked up pathetically, and said, “ My friend, I’ve tried every blessed thing in the ware house !" When a policeman makes use of a telescope to detect offenders against the law, the employment of a camera cannot be far off. A Merthyr Tydvil constable, the other day, with a powerful glass watched a public house a quarter of a mile away, and witnessed, so he asserted, an infringe ment of the Licensing Act, and the magistrate, after examin ing the telescope, convicted the defendant. We are not told in what way the “examination ” of the telescope was conducted, whether it was put in the witness box or not, but doubtless its evidence was satisfactory, or the convic tion would not have been arrived at. It would, however, have been better had there been an adaptation of the camera to the telescope—by no means an impossible thing. A photograph of whatever the offence was would have been more convincing than the “examination” of a telescope. It is gratifying to learn, in spite of a foot-note in Punch that “drawings will in no case be returned,” that Mr. Punch does occasionally condescend to send back the drawings to the artists who send them in on approbation. But it is not pleasing to get a drawing doubled in half and practically spoilt—an experience which, it is said, happened to a well-known artist. To avoid this unpleasant con tingency, why do not artists become photographers and photograph their drawings, sending in copies to the editors of illustrated papers, and retaining the originals ? The Globe, in commenting upon Dr. Emerson’s paper in the Magazine of Art, is of opinion that before photo graphy becomes (if it ever becomes) absolutely artistic, it will be well for it to become accurate. At present, says our contemporary, the epithet “photographic” by no means conveys the idea of scientific exactitude. Possibly not; but are we still to believe in the time-worn phrase, “The truthful and beautiful are one,” of which the late Lord Lytton was so fond? If so, there is a field for discussion open for which even the Globe would not be large enough. If the truthful be necessarily the beautiful, another and more important question must first be asked. “ What is truth?” said jesting Pilate, and the answer is as difficult to find now as it was in his day.