Amateur Photographer & Cinematographer (1937)

ffmAMATEUR PHOTOGRAPHER 1 p 6 CINEMATOGRAPHER o January 13th, 1937 Headers9 Hints, Tips and Gadgets A DEVICE FOR ACCURATE SHADING. THERE are many occasions in making contact prints, enlargements, or lantern slides, when it is necessary to shade a certain portion during the exposure. Unfortunately, there is often some doubt during exposure as to whether the correct part is being shaded. The simple device described here is intended to remove this uncertainty. The idea is to mark a scale on each of the four sides of the printing frame, as illustrated in the diagram. The numbered points should be about £ in. apart. Any straight line across the frame can then be identified by remembering the appro¬ priate number on opposites sides of the frame, and masking or shading along this line can be done with certainty. This device is, incidentally, extremely useful for double printing, such as printing clouds from a separate negative into a print with a blank uninteresting sky. This is done by determining the amount of foreground required, noting at the same time the numbers on the sides of the printing frame and shading accordingly. A “ sky ” negative is then put in in place of this, the shading card placed across the same numbers, covering now the foreground instead of the sky, and the second exposure is made. Leonard G. Hone. A HANDY TRIPOD ACCESSORY. w way hold HY are so many of the popular makes of folding camera only bushed to take a tripod one ? To overcome the difficulty and the camera either vertically or horizontally by means of the same bush, a right-angled piece of some stiff metal is obviously required. The ideal method of fixing would be to tap a hole in one half of it so that it screwed over the tripod, and solder a piece of thread on to the other half to screw into the existing bush. But this is probably beyond the means of most amateurs. It was certainly beyond mine. The method illustrated, however, is very simple and serves equally well. A piece of stiff brass about 3x1 in. is required. Drill a small hole in each half, then bend it in the middle up to a right-angle. A small bolt with a wing nut is now used to hold this piece to the camera, and a tripod adapter for securing it to the tripod. These adapters are procurable quite cheaply, their use being to allow a camera that is bushed with one type of thread to fit a tripod having a thread of a different kind. The right-angled piece is simply placed over the tripod thread and the adapter screwed down on top of it. The nut and bolt passes through the other hole and through the centre of the camera bush. This method takes only a moment or two to fix up, and does not interfere with the normal use of either camera bush, tripod or adapter. L. W. Bolton. FILM NEGATIVE CARRIER. WHEN enlarging from films many amateurs find that they have difficulty in producing pictures free from white spots. These are frequently due to particles of dust on the pieces of glass used for keeping the film flat. The following idea completely removes this trouble. Pro¬ cure two pieces of material, either wood or metal, the size of the carrier of the enlarger. These pieces must be flat. Hold them together and cut through both a hole about 3/i6ths in. smaller each way than the film. Chamfer the edges of the hole towards the inside. Next fit eight pins of about i/i6thin. diameter to the inside of one piece, on the inside arranging two pins on each side of the film so that it will fit closely be¬ tween the pins. Drill eight corresponding holes in the other piece so that it will drop over the first, bringing both openings together. By this means the film is held all round, which will keep it quite flat. Two small flat paper-clips will keep the whole together, making a simple glass-free carrier for the negative. F. V. Chancy. Side View 30