Handicraft for boys

Since the slogan you press the button and we’ll do the rest has come to be so well known everybody makes photographs. But there are a number of kinks in and side issues of photography that are amusing, instructive or useful and which if you do not already know about will prove of service to you.

How to Make Blue Prints.

—This is the very simplest and one of the most useful kinds of photography. You need but very little material to make the pictures with and the little you need will cost less than a dollar.

The Materials Required.

—Buy, or you can make, (1) a 5 × 7 printing frame as shown in Fig. 55 and get a sheet of clear glass to fit it, and (2) a couple of dozen sheets of 5 × 7 blue-paper[43] which you can buy at any photographic supply house.

Now take one of the drawings you have made on tracing paper or on tracing cloth with India ink as I described in the last chapter and lay it with its inked surface on the glass; lay on this a sheet of blue-paper with its sensitized side on the tracing paper or cloth; put the back of the printing frame on top of the blue-paper, press the springs into place and set the frame in the sunlight.

Every few minutes open a half of the hinged back of the printing frame and take a look at the blue paper to see if the printing is far enough along. When the lines of the drawing show plainly on it take the print out of the frame and wash it, as it is called, by letting water run on it or by putting it through several changes of water.

When it is well washed hang it up on a line by a corner to dry and you will have a good, clear print with white lines on a blue ground. In this way by using a negative that you have made with a camera, especially if it is a marine view, you can get some very pretty and artistic pictures.

Another Kind of Contact Printing.

—If you like nature you can use the above process of contact printing to fine advantage. Instead of blue paper it is better to use what is known as solio paper[44] or silver paper.[45]

To make a contact silver print first put a finely veined leaf, the filmy wing of a butterfly, a piece of delicate lace or any other thin, translucent object on the glass in the printing frame, lay a sheet of solio, or silver paper over it, then put the back in the frame and fix the springs.

Set the frame so that the sunlight will fall full on the glass side of it. From time to time open half of the hinged back and see how the print is coming on; make the print a couple of shades darker than you want it when finished, but be careful not to overexpose it for silver paper prints much quicker than blue paper.

To Tone and Fix the Picture.

—To tone a silver print means to change its color and give it more brilliancy and this is done by putting it in a chemical solution made of chloride of gold, or toning bath as it is called.

To fix a print means to treat it so that the light will no longer act upon it and this is done with a solution of hyposulphite of soda or just hypo as it is called for short.

The easiest way to tone and fix your silver prints is to buy a bottle of solio toning solution[46] which is a combined toning and fixing bath. Take the print from the frame and do not wash it but put it into a tray in which you have mixed 2 ounces of solio toning solution and 4 ounces of cold water.

When the print takes on the proper color put it into another tray containing a solution made of 1 ounce of salt and 32 ounces of water; let it stay in this bath for 5 minutes to stop the toning. Now put the print into another tray and wash it in 16 changes of water or in running water for an hour. If you make a half or a dozen prints at once you can tone and fix them at the same time.

Recipe for a Combined Toning and Fixing Solution.

—To make a combined toning and fixing bath mix up two solutions, called stock solutions, as follows:

Stock Solution A.

—Dissolve in 20 ounces of cold water 2 ounces of hypo, 1¹⁄₂ ounces of alum in crystals and ¹⁄₂ an ounce of granulated sugar. Then dissolve ¹⁄₂ an ounce of borax in 2 ounces of hot water and mix it with the hypo solution; let it stand over night and then pour off the clear liquid.

Stock Solution B.

—Dissolve ³⁄₄ of a grain of pure chloride of gold and 32 grains of acetate of lead in 4 ounces of water.

Now when you want to tone a picture or half a dozen 4 × 5 prints, take 4 ounces of the stock solution A and ¹⁄₂ an ounce of the stock solution B and pour them into a tray and tone them as I have previously described.

The Simplest Kind of a Camera.

—When you can buy a real camera for two or three dollars it seems of little use to make one, so just consider the camera I shall describe as a scientific curiosity rather than an apparatus of utility.

To make a pin-hole camera, so called because a pin hole takes the place of a lens, form a box of pasteboard or of thin wood 4 inches square and 8 inches long; cut a hole ³⁄₈ of an inch in diameter in one end for the pin hole. Fit a strip of wood ¹⁄₂ an inch thick and 4 inches long, having notches cut into it to a depth of ¹⁄₈ inch, to the sides of the box as shown at A in Fig. 56. These notched strips are to hold a sensitized dry plate.[47] Next make a shutter, that is, a little device to open and close the pin-hole; it is simply a bit of sheet brass 2¹⁄₂ inches long, ¹⁄₄ inch wide at one end and ¹⁄₂ an inch wide at the other end as shown at B. Drill a hole ¹⁄₈ inch in diameter in the center of the strip of brass and pivot this to the front of the box so that it is on a horizontal line with the center of the hole.

Now to make the pin-hole, and certainly no pin-hole was ever more important than this one. Glue a thick piece of nice smooth tinfoil over the hole on the inside of the box and with a fairly good-sized pin, or better a needle, prick a smooth hole in the center of it.

You are ready now to take a picture and to do so slip a sheet of ground glass[48] into the grooves in the camera up close and then farther back until you can see the picture plain. This done take the camera into your dark-room,[49] and load a dry plate into it, put the cover on the box and fasten a black cloth over it with a rubber-band as shown at C in Fig. 56.

Go out and point your camera at the object you want to photograph, be it a landscape, a seascape or a scapegoat, press down on the lever for a second, let go of it when it will drop back and cover the pin-hole again and the exposure is made.

How to Develop a Dry Plate.

—Next take your camera into your dark-room and develop the plate, that is, immerse it in a chemical solution called a developer to bring the picture out on it. To do this you must get a tray and put the exposed dry-plate in it, film side up, and pour the developer over it.

Rock the tray after you have poured the developer over the plate to keep the solution flowing forth and back evenly over it all the time. When you see the image very plainly take the plate out of the developer, wash it in clean water and then lay it with the film side up in a tray containing the fixing bath.

Let the negative—when the plate is exposed and developed it is called a negative—remain in the fixing bath until all the white parts, that is, the free silver which was not affected by the light, have disappeared and then let a gentle stream of water run on it for an hour or wash it in 16 changes of clean water. Stand it in a negative rack over night to dry and then you can make prints from it.

How to Make the Developer.

—You can make a good, tried and true developer in two solutions as follows:

Pyro Solution, A.—Take 1 ounce of pyrogallic acid, called pyro for short, dissolve it in 28 ounces of water and then add 20 minims of sulphuric acid.

Soda Solution, B.—Dissolve 2 ounces of desiccated[50] carbonate of soda and 3 ounces of sulphite of soda in 28 ounces of water.

When you want to develop a plate mix ¹⁄₂ an ounce of the pyro solution and ¹⁄₂ an ounce of the soda solution with 4 ounces of water and to do this you need a graduated glass.

How to Make a Fixing Bath.

—To make a good fixing bath for dry plates dissolve 1 ounce of hypo, 60 grains of sulphite of soda in crystals and ¹⁄₄ ounce of borax in 20 ounces of water. A developer can only be used for one or two plates but you can fix 50 plates in the same fixing bath.

A Good and Cheap Camera.

—To take real pictures you want a real camera. Now there are many kinds of hand cameras but there is only one size that I am going to try to interest you in and that is one which will make pictures 3¹⁄₂ × 4¹⁄₂ inches.

With a camera of this size you can take nicely proportioned little pictures to give to your friends, to keep in your album, to make enlargements of and to make lantern slides of by direct contact printing and this will save you a lot of trouble.

The cheapest 3¹⁄₄ × 4¹⁄₄ camera you can buy is a No. 3 Brownie box kodak,[51] see A Fig. 57, which costs about $3.00. A folding No. 3 Brownie camera, shown at B, will serve your needs much better and this one will cost you in the neighborhood of $5.50, or you can buy a Graflex camera[52] for $75.00 if father is rich and mother doesn’t care.

Every good camera has what is called a rectilinear lens, that is, a compound lens formed of two achromatic lenses, which means that each acromatic lens is made up again of two lenses one of which is of crown glass and the other is of flint glass, and these two latter lenses are cemented together with Canada balsam.[53]

Now whereas a common convex lens will produce all the colors of the rainbow around its edges when a ray of light passes through it, an acromatic lens lets through only the white light and while a single convex lens makes the straight lines of a building curved in the picture, an acromatic lens keeps all the lines straight, or rectilinear, and hence its name.

These little cameras are filled with mechanical snap shutters and they use roll films, that is the sensitive silver and gelatine emulsion is spread on a thin celluloid film instead of on glass plates. These roll films come on spools in lengths of ¹⁄₂ and 1 dozen each and they can be loaded into the camera in daylight. The same kind of developing and fixing solutions are used for films that are used for dry-plates.

How to Make an Enlarging Apparatus.

—To make an enlarged picture of a small negative take out the back of your camera and get two perfectly clear sheets of glass to fit the opening.

Make a box of ¹⁄₄ inch thick wood, 6 inches wide, 6 inches long and 7 inches high and have the top of it separate so that it can be lifted off and put on the box. In the middle of the top near one edge cut a hole 1¹⁄₄ inches in diameter and put an electric light socket—to which a cord and plug is fixed—in it as far as it will go and then screw in a nitrogen 100 watt electric lamp[54] which gives about 75 candle power, as shown at A in Fig. 58.

Cut a hole out of the front board 3¹⁄₂ x 4¹⁄₂ inches and fasten a sheet of ground glass[55] or, better, of opal glass[56] over the opening. Get a sheet of bright tin 6 inches wide and 10 inches long, bend it into a semi-circle and set it in the box so that it will reflect the light from the lamp in front of it through the ground glass screen as shown at B.

Next make a stand for holding the bromide paper[57] which is to be used for the enlargement. About the easiest way to do this is to take a 1 inch thick board 6 inches wide and saw off a piece 12 inches long. Fasten your drawing board to it with a couple of angle blocks as shown at D, and you are ready to make an enlargement.

How to Make an Enlargement.

—When you have the apparatus ready set the camera and the illuminator, as the box with the light in it is called, on another table. Put the negative between two plain sheets of glass and then fasten them to the camera with a couple of large rubber bands; set the illuminator with the ground-glass screen close up against the negative in the back of the camera, as shown at C.

Now set the drawing board stand about 4 feet away from the lens of the camera to make an 8 × 10 enlargement. Open the shutter, turn on the light and focus the camera, that is, move the stand to and from the camera until the enlarged picture is sharp. When you get it so, close the shutter and cover up the cracks where the light leaks through with a dark cloth.

Make the room perfectly dark except for your dark-room light and then put a sheet of bromide paper on the drawing board with thumb tacks. Open the shutter of the lens and expose the paper to the light passing through the negative and then close it again. The bromide paper is developed and fixed just like a dry plate when your enlargement is done.

In handling bromide paper you must be almost as careful as you are with dry plates or films. Before making a picture it is a good scheme to test the length of time to expose the paper. To do this take a sheet of bromide paper and cut it into strips 1 inch wide and 10 inches long; fasten a strip at a time diagonally across the board and expose the first one for say 5 minutes and then develop it, when you can usually tell about how long the exposure should be.

A Developer for Bromide Paper.

—A good stock solution developer for bromide paper, velox paper, films and dry plates can be made by adding these chemicals to 25 ounces of hot water in the order named and stirring in each one until it is dissolved; elon ¹⁄₈ ounce; desiccated sulphite of soda 1⁷⁄₈ ounces; hydrochinon ¹⁄₂ ounce; desiccated carbonate of soda 5¹⁄₄ ounces; potassium bromide 30 grains and wood alcohol 3 ounces.

This developer will keep for a long time if the bottle containing it is kept full, otherwise the air will act on it. To develop six 8 × 10 bromide prints use 1 ounce of the stock solution and 6 ounces of water.

To fix bromide prints keep them moving in a bath made by dissolving 8 ounces of hypo in 2 quarts of water and then adding ¹⁄₄ ounce of metabisulphite of potassium and ¹⁄₄ ounce of powdered alum. Let the prints remain in this bath for about 10 minutes and then wash them thoroughly.

How to Make a Reflectoscope.

—A reflectoscope is a kind of magic lantern but instead of using transparent glass slides you can use any picture or opaque object such as the works of a watch, your hand, etc, and throw an image of it on the screen.

If you have a folding camera[58] you can convert it into a dandy reflectoscope, so get busy with your tools. Make a box—it is really two boxes fastened together—of the peculiar shape shown in Fig. 59, and it can be of wood or of metal as you wish.

First make the larger box, which we will call the projector, and this should be 4¹⁄₂ inches long, 5 inches wide and 5 inches high[59]—and leave the front, back and one side off. To the top and bottom fasten on two wood cleats ¹⁄₂ an inch square and 5 inches long to fix the projector to the camera with. This box is shown at A in Fig. 59.

This done, make another box for the illuminator 3 inches wide, 3 inches long on one side, and 4³⁄₄ inches long on the other side, and 5 inches high. Bend a piece of bright tin for the reflector and set this in the back as shown at B.

Cut a 1¹⁄₄ inch hole through the top for an electric lamp as described in the directions for making an enlarging lantern; the top should be tight fitting but so made that it can be taken off and put on at your pleasure.

Now glue, screw, solder or otherwise fix the two boxes together and the reflecting part of the apparatus is done. To complete it fasten the back of your camera to the cleats on the top and bottom of the box with strong rubber bands as shown at C, which is a top view of the reflectoscope.

To Use the Reflectoscope.

—Tack a white sheet to the wall and set the reflectoscope at a distance of about 10 feet from it with the lens pointing toward it, of course.

Next turn on the light in the box and turn off all the lights in the room and make it as dark as you can. Hold a picture of any kind against the opening in the back of the projector box and then focus the camera until the picture on the screen is as sharp as you can get it.

The way the reflectoscope works is like this: the picture is projected upon the screen in virtue of the fact that the direct light from the lamp, as well as that portion of it which is reflected back by the tin, is thrown against the surface of the picture or object held in the opening; from this the light is reflected through the lens which enlarges it and projects it on the screen.

How to Make a Magic Lantern.

—To make a magic lantern out of a camera is just as easy as it is to make a reflectoscope but you will have to buy a condensing lens[60] and this will cost 50 cents to $1.00, according to size.

For this lantern you can use either a box or a bellows camera, though the latter is better because the picture can be focused. Whichever you use make a base of a 1 inch thick board, 5¹⁄₂ inches wide and 14 inches long and nail or screw two strips of wood ¹⁄₂ an inch wide, ³⁄₄ inch high and 8 inches long along the edges on one side as shown at A in Fig. 60.

If your camera is of the box kind set it in between the strips on the base on the front end, but if it is of the bellows type then you will have to make a shelf for it as shown at B to hold the camera in place as shown at C.

Next make an illuminator as described above in the text How to Make an Enlarging Apparatus, but instead of covering the front with ground glass make a board to fit it and cut a hole in it the exact size of the condensing lens. This lens is a plano or a double convex lens as shown at D and while it should be 4¹⁄₂ inches in diameter to get all of the picture on the screen you can use a lens as small as 2 inches though all of the picture will not show.

Cut out six clips of sheet brass ³⁄₁₆ inch wide and ¹⁄₂ an inch long and punch a hole in the end of each piece. Screw three of these clips to each side of the board at equi-distant points around the hole so that the end of each one projects over the edge of the hole ¹⁄₈ inch. Now put the lens in the hole and adjust the ends of the clips so that they will hold the lens in place as shown at E.

The next and last thing to do is to cut two strips of tin or brass 1 inch wide and 3 inches long and bend each one over the long way as shown at F; punch three holes near the lower edge of each one and screw one of them above and one below the condensing lens on the board 3¹⁄₄ inches apart as shown at E. These bent strips form the holder for the lantern slides. The magic lantern complete is shown at G.

How to Work the Lantern.

—Tack a bed-sheet up on the wall; turn on the light in the illuminator and turn off all the lights in the room; slip a lantern slide upside down in the holder and then push the rear end of the camera—having first taken out the back—close up to the lantern slide holder.

If you are using a box camera move the whole lantern back until the picture is as large as you want it and it is still bright enough. If it is a pocket folding camera you can focus it and get a picture with much better definition.

How to Make Lantern Slides.

—A lantern slide is a sheet of glass with a transparent picture on it. A standard lantern slide is 3¹⁄₄ × 4¹⁄₄ inches and one of this size can be used in any full sized magic lantern or stereopticon.[61]

To make lantern slides by direct contact printing is not a hard thing to do at all, and all the equipment you need to make them besides the chemicals is a printing frame. Put a sheet of clean glass in it and lay your negative on it with the film side up.

Now lay the lantern slide plate[62] with the film side down on the negative just as though you were going to make a print, but you must make it in your dark room, using a white light to expose it of course, for it is just as sensitive as a dry plate or a film. When you expose it hold the printing frame about 12 inches away from the light.

A lantern slide plate is developed, fixed and washed exactly like a dry plate but to get the best results you should use the kind of developer called for in the directions that come with the plates.

When you have the lantern slide made, place a sheet of clear glass of the same size—called the cover-glass—on the film side of it and bind the edges with passepartout binding, that is a strip of paper gummed on one side. It is then ready for use.

How to Make Radium Photographs.

—You can make radium photographs, or skiagraphs as they are called, with any one of a number of radioactive substances and at a very small outlay.

The four most important radioactive substances, if we except radium itself, are black uranium oxide, pitchblende, thorium nitrate and uranium nitrate. You can buy any one of these substances in a glass stoppered bottle for $1.00 or the set of four for $3.50.[63]

While the radioactivity of these substances is low it is sufficient to make a shadow-picture—and this is all that an X-ray picture is—of a coin or other small object if it is laid on top of a dry plate sealed in a black paper envelope, which is opaque to the light.

That is, the coin is laid on the envelope containing the dry plate, and the bottle with the radioactive substance in it is laid on top of the coin. Let them remain undisturbed in this way for a couple of days and you will find on developing the plate a very good radiograph, or shadow picture of the coin as shown in Fig. 61.

Trick Photography

Spirit Photographs.

—When photography was young Sir John Herschel, the great astronomer, got up what he called magic photographs and these have been worked under the name of spirit photographs by half of the mediums in the business.

The idea is to show the victim of superstition his future wife or her future husband. To this end the medium shows a piece of perfectly blank paper about an inch square. She—sometimes it’s a he—then dips the bit of paper into a saucer of what seems to be ordinary, common every day water and with much dignity and mysticism presses it to the forehead of the aforesaid ninny who would fain know what the partner of his, or her joys and sorrows will look like. (What’s the use when they will know so well afterward?)

Be that as it may, when the medium removes the bit of paper from the simpleton’s forehead a photograph has really and truly appeared on it and—there you are! (Fifty cents, please.)

Now the trick is done like this and you can have some fun repeating it. Print some photos postage-stamp size of boys and girls on ordinary silver paper and fix them in hypo dissolved in water but don’t tone them; wash them well and then soak them in a saturated solution[64] of bichloride of mercury which will bleach out the picture and leave the paper perfectly white again; this done dry the paper and put it away until you want to use it.

When you do, make a strong solution of hypo, soak the picture in it for a minute or two, press it to your subject’s forehead and the picture will appear.

One Way to Catch Big Fish.

—Of course you know that when an object very near the camera is photographed it will look proportionately larger than when it is photographed a little way off from it. It is simply a case of exaggerated perspective.

Hence the camera is an apparatus very well adapted for camouflage as the French call faking. You can easily try it out by having a friend lean back in a chair and put his feet on the table. (If the table is of highly polished mahogany request him kindly to take off his spurs first.)

Stand your camera in front of him so that his feet will be nearest the lens and then take his picture. The result is that he will be about all boots and very little head.

Another and deeper dyed trick is to photograph a fellow—choose one who is noted for his whaling yarns—with a fish dangling at the end of a pole and line as shown at A in Fig. 62. This will make the fish loom up as big as the cod in a Scott’s Emulsion ad., and the boy will be the size of the lone fisherman as shown at B. It will be some time before the scales will drop from the eyes of the person who is sizing up the picture.

You want to use a small stop in your lens when you make a picture of this kind so that the definition will be as sharp in the foreground as it is in the background.