The Photographic Historical Society of Canada Show & Tell 2007 guided by Clint Hryhorijiw Program date: December 19, 2007
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Clint and Ingrid
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President Clint Hryhorijiw organized tonight's Show and Tell extravaganza and gift exchange. To my surprise, I was the opening act. As always our members came up with many interesting and thought provoking items to share with us. Restorations were featured along with unusual instruments, photographs, books, and an impressive collection of Karsh portraits. The PHSC has received a copy of a new biography of Karsh and will report on it in due course. May you have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year as 2008 comes thundering through the calendar...
Bob Carter - Tami.
Bob Carter
John Morden
Robert Gutteridge
Moritz Hensoldt and Carl Kellner apprenticed together as mechanics. Hensoldt worked briefly with Carl Kellner when Kellner set up his Optical Institute in Wetzlar (some references indicate the two were related). Kellner's Optische Institut went on to become Ernst Leitz Wetzlar, but that's another story. Hensoldt had founded his own company in 1852 making binoculars and microscopes. At some point he moved his company to Wetzlar. In 1897 his roof prism design to erect the image revolutionized binocular design and made Hensoldt the leading manufacturer of binoculars and scopes. After the Great War, demand for binoculars dropped and Hensoldt went back to making microscopes too - both traditional designs and some innovative models like the Tami. The Tami series began in 1920 and the little device was patented 1921 (Germany) and 1922 (USA). The name Tami is an abbreviation for TAschen MIcroskop - German for pocket microscope. Two telescopic tubes allow the tube length to be changed to give a magnification of 35x to 225x. The front element of the objective is removed to reach the lower magnifications. The removable base contains a sealed mirror for traditional slide viewing. Without the base, solid objects can be inspected by direct light. The rugged little instrument comes with a sturdy threaded cover. In 1928, after years of assistance from Zeiss, the Hensoldt company became part of the Zeiss group, and today, as Hensoldt AG they continue to make all Zeiss binoculars.
John Morden - Black Box.
Mark Singer
Shelton Chen
Les Jones
Judy Rauliuk
At our 2006 auction on the Lakeshore, John bought a beat-up old view camera for five dollars. He took the orphan home, cleaned it up, freed up the various mechanical adjustments, painted it, and made a box for it. The camera turned out to be the first model made by the Brand Camera Co, founded in 1945/6 in Los Angeles, California. Called the Pressview 17, it was briefly made just after World War 2, using war technology to cast parts of aluminum from surplus bombers. The rails and other parts were sturdy stainless steel.The camera sported bellows of various colours - John's example has its original green bellows made of a synthetic material and still in excellent condition after a good cleaning. John added a 127mm lens/shutter from an old Polaroid 110 camera to complete his restoration. The cameras were not sold with a lens as Brand did not manufacture or sell lens-shutter combinations. A Pressview 17 sold on eBay in 2006 (with a lens) for $200. A second camera model was designed by the company but it was a market failure, driving the young company into bankruptcy in 1947. Its assets were sold to the Newton Camera Co and the Pressview became a New-Vue. The one ray of sunshine during Brand Camera's short life was teacher Fred Archer in Los Angeles who provided Pressview 17s to his students. It was ideal for students - rugged construction and a full range of movements including a 17 inch bellows extension, back focus. rotating back, front and back tilts and shifts, front twists. The camera included a sports finder and rangefinder, but it was far too heavy for use as a handheld shooter like its competition, the Graflex. The camera had limitations besides weight that offset its flexibility - a lack of indents or registers to lock the movements in neutral, and an excruciatingly slow screw thread focusing control.
Felix Russo Tami drawing
Tami open
John's Project...
...A Pressview 17
Pathé Studio 35mm Pathé Studio 35mm
Tami signature
Tami scales
Mark's Kodascope 8 Mark's Kodascope 8 Mark Singer's # 40
Wilson article
Pathé Studio 35mm
Robert Gutteridge - Solving a Mystery. Showing more
Ed Warner
Film holder
Processed negative
Side view
Label replicate
Front view
Back view
Bob has been searching for one of these cameras for many years. It was the most popular professional movie camera of the silent era. Made in France by Pathé, it was called the Pathé French Studio Movie Camera although it was used outdoors as well. The Pathé Studio was popular because the magazines mount on the top making it very compact - and all the controls are in easy reach. When it arrived, the camera looked a mess - and was missing its magazines and lens as usual, but what a camera! Well worth the effort to restore it. The story begins when Bob spotted an old movie camera with battered leather on eBay in November, 2007. It was advertised as "an old wooden camera - hand cranked". Bids exceeded $1,000 US and Bob dropped out at $1,400. To his surprise, the camera reappeared on eBay the next day. The winning bidder had used a stolen identity and eBay disqualified the auction! The next round of bidding was dampened by the incident and the camera went to Bob for $800. When he received it, the camera appeared to be in much worse condition and it took a lot of effort and lubrication to clean up the body, clean out the cobwebs, and free the mechanism which otherwise was in excellent condition. The basic claw mechanism follows the Lumière Brothers patent and as such is very compact and precise. To advance each frame, pins move in and out along grooves. Bob noted there is no standard Pathé Studio camera. Pathé used a basic platform and customized it with accessories for each order. Examples of this camera are worth $4,000 in good condition (some leather is almost always missing, and usually the lens as well). Bob's camera has a control built-in to slowly move the aperture from f/3.5 to f/22 and back again for fade-in and fade-out. And it also has a built-in device to allow the operator to verify focus - the old film was translucent so you could see through it to focus, while modern film is opaque. Some of the cameras include a second lower speed crank gearing at 1 rpm to record animations. The cameras were never inscribed with a serial number - just part numbers used to match the camera pieces during manufacture. The Pathé factory records have been lost so Bob has no idea what system they used to identify individual cameras. Bob left the remaining leather on the body to to guide him in the restoration. He found a source for Moroccan pig skin leather in California through Sam Dodge, another movie camera enthusiast. Both the film magazines and the lens are hard to find for these cameras. The 100m magazines are rectangular boxes covered with the same thin leather as the camera. The dual feed and take up magazines fit on top of the camera in line with the lens and shutter mechanism. The film threads in a semi-automatic fashion. The standard lens is a brass Zeiss Tessar made under license by E. Krauss, Paris. Standard focal length was 5 cm but focal lengths from medium wide angle to medium telephoto were also common. The unique feature of the Tessar for the Pathé Studio is a mechanical connection to hook the aperture diaphragm to the fade mechanism. Contact Bob Gutteridge or Sam Dodge if you have or know anyone who has magazines or lenses for this camera.
Back view
Mark Singer - Found item.
Guayaquil, Ecuador
Phantograms Barry Rothstein
Mark seems to find interesting things along the way. Recently, he noticed a black box with a handle sitting by the curb near his house, waiting for garbage pick-up. He brought it home and when he opened the small suitcase-size box, it revealed an old Kodak 8 mm movie projector circa 1932. The Kodascope Eight Model 40 was signed as made in U.S.A. by Eastman Kodak Co. Rochester, N. Y. The case markings indicated the projector was sold by the Canadian Kodak Company. It came complete with a lens and two empty reels. This model was rated at 325 watts. Bob Gutteridge noted that Model 50 and Model 60 versions were also made with brighter illumination. And a model 20 sporting a 100 watt bulb was identified in McKeown’s as the first 8 mm projector ever made (1932).
Shelton Chen - Karsh Portraits. The largest collection of this show and tell by far is Shelton’s Karsh portraits and ephemera. Shelton told an interesting and exciting tale of his search for these portraits. He acquired 18 all included in the 48 portraits that illustrate the Karsh book “Portraits of Greatness” - through PHSC president Clint Hryhorijiw. Shelton cautioned the audience that many fakes show up on eBay. He had two examples he passed around tonight. Each was an 8x10 copy print from a museum or archive holding and so stamped on the reverse. Authentic Karsh photographs were printed by his darkroom staff to his explicit specifications capturing the contrast range and mood he wished to project. Shelton told of a three hour trip he and Clint took to attend an auction where the only worthwhile lot was a portrait by Karsh that had been posted on eBay. The trip was necessary to ensure the print was worth bidding for - which it was (and the only lot worth the trip that day). Shelton came home with one more print for his collection. On another occasion Shelton bought a portrait of Humphrey Bogart via eBay from California while he was in Japan. The seller said he would need the "other" Casa Blanca portrait to complete the set: Ingrid Bergman. When he arrived home, there was a package for him from a picker in Brooklyn. Included in the package was the Ingrid Bergman portrait! Shelton received a call one day from a lady wishing to sell a Karsh image once owned by Dr MacDonald - physician to Karsh’s first wife, Solange. It was a rare portrait of Churchill smiling - not the famous portrait of his scowl. The margin was signed by Solange with a note to Dr. MacDonald. As far as Shelton can tell, this version of the Churchill sitting was only printed on requests from Churchill's family and there is no record of the number printed. Shelton showed a copy of the Hemingway portrait which he acquired on eBay. The bidding started at $1.00 and rose to $400. However; in the last seconds, the bidding shot up well past the $400 mark. Sheldon bid and won - only after the seller guaranteed the authenticity of the image and agreed to refund the purchase if there was any problem. Shelton also displayed a number of Christmas cards, price lists, and letters he has in his Karsh collection in addition to the portraits.
Winston Churchill
Humphrey Bogart
Ingrid Bergman
Cheerier Churchill
Christmas card
Tipped-in photos
Notman photo
Judy with photo
close-up
other close-up
Below is an image of Karsh's portrait of Bertrand Russell owned by Shelton. The glare is from the meeting hall lights.
Bertrand Russell
Les Jones - A commercial and a book. Les started with a commercial - the GTCCC nature photo contest needs six photographers for club recognition. He is submitting a photo of a Camel Race which he took in India. He encouraged all members to consider submitting a photograph before January 22, 2008. Please contact Ed Warner for details. Les presented a book - one of a three volume edition of Portraits of British North Americans. He quoted from the first volume (1865) to show the colourful language of the day (topic was D’Arcy Magee). Les noted that many old books, like this one, have tipped in vintage photographs. This particular three volume set has 84 tipped-in Notman prints. Small, but nevertheless Notmans.
Judy Rauliuk - Snapshot Souvenirs. Judy’s show and tell was the opposite of Shelton’s - instead of portraits of famous people, she had family groupings collected on her travels with Les as mementos of the countries they visited. These are of unknown people by forgotten photographers. A family group in Guayaquil, Ecuador, posed on an outdoor stairway in their Sunday best - with laundry set out to dry on shrubs in the background. Situated on the coast of Ecuador, the houses were all built on stilts. The second picture is a wedding party from 1910s or 20s standing in front of a store in France, the people dressed in the wonderful style of the French. Memories of a former time in places Judy and Les visited.
Felix Russo - 3D Issue. Our program director is also editor of the popular PhotoEd magazine. His show and tell this year was a peek at the new 3D issue of PhotoEd replacing the issue printed four years ago and long sold out. Articles by PHSC members Bob Wilson (Stereo History) and Stan White (3D 101) have been repeated in the new issue, with a digital update added to Stan’s article. Cover photo is by Christopher Schneberger (our September 2008 speaker), Other articles are by Stan White (infra-red 3D), John Long, Simon Bell, Steve Hughes (on phantograms anaglyphic stereo images intended for viewing at an angle using the traditional red/blue lens glasses to make the image appear to rise off the page), and Felix's own articles on stereo techniques. Felix also noted that another source of information on Phantograms is Barry Rothstein (book: Phantograms from Nature).
Ed Warner - The Restoration Project. Ed brought his camera that has, like the Phoenix, “risen from the ashes” with his help, of course. (see "Reclaiming a Classic" in PHSC E-mail Newsletter 7-7 for extensive details not shown here). The oversize studio camera restoration project began with a call to Ed from Michael Oesch, offering a free camera that needed some restoration... What an understatement. Parts of the camera were burnt to a crisp, other parts like the bellows just disappeared in the fire. Some of the wood had turned to charcoal - indicative of an anaerobic fire. Ed made a new bellows from scratch (see his article in Photographic Canadiana V32-2) along with some of the wood and metal parts. Other parts were scrounged from the junk box. Ed has three lens for the camera - an 10 inch wide-angle, 12 inch normal, and 16.5 inch medium telephoto. He has a 4x5 back, ready to modify to fit the camera which currently uses 8x10 cut film in holders. For illustration, Ed showed a negative of downtown Belleville taken with another 8x10 camera. To print the 8x10 negatives Ed can contact print or scan the negative in his V700 Epson and print from his computer. Ed recreated the name plate on the camera using his computer skills. It is based on photos of original name plates on other examples of this camera. He mounted the name plate using a small antique brass frame from Lee Valley Tools. This page was designed in Dreamweaver CS3 on an iMac running OS X 10.5 (Leopard). Unless otherwise noted, images on this page were taken with a Sony F828 digital still camera and subsequently adjusted in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom V1.3 and Photoshop CS3. Contents and images are ©2007 by the Photographic Historical Society of Canada may be used freely provided the source is clearly indicated. Copies of photographs displayed during this presentation may not be used without the copyright holder's permission. Contact PHSC at
[email protected] if you would like more information on the items discussed on this page. Click on most of the small images to see a larger version in a separate window. Bob Carter
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