Motography (Apr-Dec 1911)

218 MOTOGRAPHY Vol. VI, No. 5. vertising purposes, however, it is a different story. It is with a feeling of mingled surprise and relief that one looks upon really good lecture slides in a theater at the present day. With the increasing demand for "travelogues," there is certainly room for improvement in the slides. As it is, most of these lectures are little else than "chasers," although in many theaters they are not used for that purpose by the management. Interviews with a number of prominent managers have led the author to believe that they are more than willing to pay for slides of the finest quality, were such available, and their principal complaint is that they have to pay high rates for disgusting copies from half-tones in magazines, slides pirated from sets of well-known manufacturers of years ago, and to make matters worse, slides which are neither exposed nor developed properly. These slides are used in practically every moving picture theater of any pretentions in the country today and they are in demand by a certain class of theater patrons who find in them a pleasing diversion from a program made up entirely of motion pictures. The use of advertising slides is probably too well known to most readers to need lengthy comment. Suffice it to say that they are profitable to maker, renter, and advertiser alike. The making of advertising slides and title slides will be fully discussed in later articles, and a few suggestions in the way of appropriate designs will be offered. Before considering the various processes by which slides are made, let us think of the negative itself, for it is upon the negative that much of the success of the slide Hoard about ttirae ft. /onff Fig. 3. Exposure Board for Slide Printing'. depends. The positive made from a harsh negative will have an unpleasant "pen-and-ink" appearance, which is not, as a rule, received with much favor. On the other hand, a flat negative will produce, if anything, a worse slide than the harsh one. The ideal negative is full of detail and has a large amount of gradation in the halftone. It is undeniably true that the most pleasing slide is the clear and snappy one, and this can only be made from a properly exposed and developed negative. In order to get "life" in the slide, many makers use harsh negatives, and the resultant slides, even though they be toned until "warm," bear more resemblance to a wash drawing than a photograph. In the majority of cases there is no necessity for this recourse, and the maker will do well to take the proper care with his exposures and to back this up with intelligent developing of the negative. With proper exposure, the sky will be of sufficient density to render a clear glass sky in the slide. If such is not the case, the worker must have recourse to the blocking-out process, which will be discussed later. Clouds are desirable in the negative, but this is not at all essential for their appearance in the slide. Some of the most pleasing cloud effects are produced by printing clouds on the cover glass of the slide, and in cheap slides the appearance of clouds is given by a clever manipulation of the tinting fluid. For the exposure of the negative, suffice it to say that the time should be carefully considered, and all attempts to do "faking" in this quarter should be studiously avoided. Given a good nega tive, the ingenious worker can do an astonishing amount of faking on the slide without detracting from its artistic value. It is useless to offer suggestions on the length of exposure to readers of this magazine, and the author will only venture to say that the well known "Photo-Beacon Exposure Card" may prove of great assistance to those to whom this subject is still more or less a mystery. The choice of plates for this purpose will depend largely upon individual preference and upon the particular line of work it is desired to do. For general work, which includes landscapes, portraits, and interiors, such as would be used in the average set of lecture slides, the author greatly favors an orthochromatic plate. Films may be used with great success, and the film pack is, in some cases, an acquisition. On long trips, and especially in rough country, it is highly desirable to be burdened with as little weight as possible, and the film pack camera is splendidly adapted to this use. The films are properly orthochromatic and give excellent renderings of the color values. One objection to the films, whether in roll or pack, is the difficulty in developing by the fourtray method, which is, in the opinion of many, the most desirable one to use. With care, however, this method may be employed with great success, even though films are used. The excellent results obtained by many amateurs through the medium of the developing tank somewhat offsets the difficulty mentioned in connection with films. It is highly probable that the majority of amateurs would obtain better negatives by tank development than by the tray method, and certain it is that the tank saves a great deal of time over the older method. The negatives coming from the tank may be of varying relative densities, but the proper range of gradation will be established in each one, and for our purpose it is the proper rendering of half-tones to strive for. The size of the negative will depend upon which of two methods of printing it is desired to use for the slide. The standard size of American lantern slides is 3J4 by 4 inches, and although a few English slides which are 3*4 inches square are still to be seen in this country, the rectangular slide is accepted as the standard here. If printing is to be done by the "contact" method, the slide plates are placed with their sensitized side in contact with that of the negative, after which they are printed by transmitted light in a similar manner to that used in making prints on paper. The second method is used where very fine slides are to be made, and it is just the reverse of the familiar enlarging process. The negative which may be of any size larger than the slide plate, is placed in a suitable reducing camera or lantern, and the image of the negative is reduced to the size of the slide, Transparencies made by this process are exceedingly sharp and possess a wealth of detail. The process is somewhat expensive, however, and for the commercial production of slides it is not used to so large an extent as the contact process. If the worker is getting up a single set of slides to illustrate a travel lecture, for instance, the slides should certainly be made by reduction. It therefore follows that for contact printing the negatives should be 3J4 by 4J4, or, at the oustide, 4 by 5 or 3^4 by hy2. The printing frame to be described will permit the use of a negative larger than the slide, and it is sometimes desirable to pick out the most interesting portion of a given negative for the slide. For general use, however, a negative of approximately the same size as the slide will be found more convenient and decidedly more economical than a larger one. For the reduction