The Optical Magic Lantern Journal (September 1898)

The Optical Magic Lantern Journal and Photographic Enlarger. 129 present time the writer is unable to name one exhibition in which dissolving views proper form the staple attraction. Latterly, however, owing to the introduction of animated photography, renewed interest has been manifested in mechanical effects for the lantern, and everything seems to point to a strong ' revival in this direction, for which the trade is quite prepared. We have plenty of capable men to design and paint the slides, and also a smaller number who have made a study of mechanical slides and effects ; but what we still stand in need of is a head centre where new subjects could be exhibited to the proper accompaniments and criticised. Since the decease of the Royal Polytechnic Institution in 1881, a new generation of lanternists has sprung up, to whom all the grand effects of the past are strange, and there are many perhaps to whom most of the more ordinary mechanical effects are unknown, and it is within the writer’s knowledge that an interest is felt very widely in these matters by many who have not the time or opportunity to study them for themselves, hence this and the following papers. Should any lanternists of experience honour these lines with their attention they will doubtless find many things with which they are familiar, but I must ask them to exercise their patience for the benefit of the unexperienced operator, to whom these words are especially addressed, and who will probably find something new, and it is hoped interesting. Some time since, in an article on the .Phantasmagoria, I endeavoured to trace the introduction of dissolving effects to the blacked out figures used in the Phantasmagoria exhibition, and this principle of throwing light objects upon a darker ground is the foundation of dissolving effects in contradistinction to mechanical. It has been stated at various times, even in the columns of the Lanrern Jouryat, that lantern effects consisted of photographs of natural objects coloured in different ways, such as day and night and dissolving into each other. This is scarcely accurate, as many very magnificent effects were in use before the advent of photographic slides. It is true that a number of very excellent effects are produced from nature photographsand yield fine results upon the screen, but the fact remains that pictures forming the basis of lantern effects frequently possess special features which are not to be found in views taken direct from Nature. While upon this portion of our subject, it will be as well to dispose of one point which is of the greatest ! importance to lanternists who make a special feature of effects. It has of late years been the custom to prepare some of the subjects by first photographing a fine outline upon a large scale, printing this by the albumen process, and afterwards working up the slide in the same style as a hand painting. Many customers say: ‘‘ This is partially photographed, it should not cost us so much as if wholly executed in hand work,” but this is not the case. The cost of painting is precisely the same as in the hand drawn view, while there is no comparison in the effect upon the screen. The albumen photograph possesses magnificent definition, and what is of the very greatest importance, the pictures and effects possess absolutely perfect registration, and only those who have to continually register pictures can fully appreciate what this means. The hand painting on the albumen base is far and away the best picture, and so far from being a cheaper production, the actual cost is about Ls. to 1s. 6d. extra on each slide. It is said that a little boy having been unusually ‘“‘good” for a very long time was taken to a confectioners and told to take what he liked best. He gazed around at the elegant vase-shaped receptacles for sweets, cast an eye over the ice creams, allowed the bath buns with sugared tops toattract hisattention for a moment, and then with a flood of tears rushed out of the shop. There was so much to choose from that he was unable to make up his mind. Where all appeared so desirable it was impossible to select anything. In endeavouring to describe lantern effects the . writer feels much as the small boy did—there is so much to select from that it is difficult to make a beginning, but, even at the risk of being tedious, we must commence at the very simplest forms of mechanical effects and work our way gradually up to the description of some of the grandest and most complicated pictures. Having thus cleared the stage, nothing remains to be done but to roll up the curtain and commence our show, and the reference to the curtain reminds me that we cannot do better than begin by describing that very important portion of our exhibition. The earliest curtain slides did not roll up, but remained on the screen until the time came for them to dissolve into the introductory views, but the late Mr. H. Childe, to whom lanternists are indebted for so many ingenious movements, arranged a method of causing the curtain to roll up by gradually obscuring the painting with an opaque material as we shall see in Fig. I. The curtain slide from which this diagram is