;o: 



THE (HIDE TO NATURE 



exposures, over exposures, double ex- 

 posures, the movement or jarring <>! 

 the camera during the exposures, and 

 incorrect focusing, [f a hundred per 

 cent, worker is necessary for a lens to 

 make good, by what process of reason- 

 ing does the editor arrive al the con- 

 clusion that it is one hundred per cent. 

 lens? I it us gel together with our 

 proofs; not For controversy, but to 

 bring out all of the truth. 



Get down i" business. Cut out this 

 "kiddish," "Cheap John, decrepit old 

 plug of a lens" talk; for while it is not 

 argument, it is evidence of poverty of 

 argument. Let us prove, not by what 

 the maker says, but by our experiences, 

 what can be done with the good anas- 

 tigmat that other lenses will not do as 

 well. 



The Evil of the Snap. 



"Going to snap it on me?" 

 "How many snaps did you take?" 

 "Snapping much nowadays with the 

 kodak?' 



"Just snap it on me, will you?" 

 Thus it became common to speak of 

 the use of the camera, or rather the 

 kodak, as snapping it, but this snap- 

 ping is as promiscuous and undesirable 

 as the snapping of a vicious dog or of 

 irritable people. Both do only harm. 

 Monstrosities that call themselves pho- 

 tographs are made by snapping. 



Go into the developing room of any 

 developer who does a large amount of 

 work for amateurs and see in his drying 

 room the long rolls of transparencies 

 with here and there a faint shadow upon 

 a part of them, and inquire what those 

 things are. He will tell you that they 

 are amateurs' snap shots. He will, per- 

 haps, out of a row of films, get one 

 respectable or fairly respectable pic- 

 ture, content if a little of it is seen in 

 ihe blackness of the surroundings, and 

 will print that and put the others in an 

 envelope to be returned to the kodaker. 

 These transparent films with only a 

 suggestion ot a picture upon them are 

 the nerniciousness of the snap. 



Where is the user of a kodak who 

 would "take" a friend with an exposure 

 no longer than the snap? Where is the 

 one who would stand before a group 



and "take" it with only a snap expos- 

 ure? Where is the real photographer 

 that would "take" a scene with nothing 

 more than such a snap? 



1 recently saw about a yard of film. 

 perfectly clear, with not even the sug- 

 gestion of a shadow upon it, in the pos- 

 session of a young lady who informed 

 me that she wanted to have it developed 

 and printed because on it were a lot of 

 snap shots of her room. The pernicious- 

 ness of the snap was self-evident, and 

 you can imagine her surprise when I 

 told her that I had never taken the in- 

 terior of a room in less than three and 

 one-half minutes, although my lens is 

 far superior to hers. 



Some of the best photographs of still 

 objects published in this magazine have 

 been taken under an exposure, in a well- 

 lighted gallery, of from one and one- 

 half to two minutes. Stop your lens 

 down for great sharpness and give 

 plenty of time. Some of the photo- 

 micrographic work was done with an 

 exposure of from fifteen to twenty min- 

 utes. I know a photographer who took 

 the interior of a room with a tnree 

 hours' exposure. He set up the camera, 

 went away and left it for three hours, 

 the result being a perfectly ideal pho- 

 tograph that showed every detail of the 

 room. No instruction to the amateur 

 seems harder to fix in his mind than 

 this. Tf the object is still, take plenty 

 of time, the longer the better. vVith 

 the fastest lenses made, the Unar and 

 Celor, both of which I use, I seldom 

 make an exposure quicker than one-fifth 

 of a second. Most of my work on 

 houses, scenery or outdoor growths 

 takes one second even in sunlight, un- 

 less the object is moving like the leaves 

 of a tree. Photographs, therefore, are 

 not snap shots, but are the time impres- 

 sions of the object. Where is the skill- 

 ed photographer who ever uses as high 

 as one-hundredth except with focal 

 plane? Many of the photogranhic 

 magazines are guilty of misleading their 

 readers by stating that this photograph 

 was taken in one-eight-hundredth sec- 

 ond or one-thousandth of a second. In 

 bright sunlight with the fastest lens and 

 always with the focal plane shutter, 

 such small fractions of a second are 

 possible. 



