BIRDS OF OUR BUSH 



our plates a little longer than is usually considered neces- 

 sary. 



Nature photographers, particularly, will accumulate 

 many negatives, portraying desirable subjects in excellent 

 positions, which are apparently hopeless through some 

 defect. We have discarded a great number of such in our 

 time, and have only recently realised the possibility of 

 improving some of them. As our knowledge of photo- 

 graphy has grown, new ways of dealing with failures have 

 suggested themselves. Unless negatives are absolutely 

 hopeless, we advise beginners to put them away just 

 as carefully as they do the good ones. Intensification 

 and reduction we have practised for many years, but avoid 

 it where possible, on account of the danger of damaging 

 the negatives. Nowadays we prefer to experiment upon 

 an enlargement, or upon a duplicate negative obtained from 

 an enlargement, and would advise little in the way' of 

 experiment until such time as the photographer possesses 

 an enlarging apparatus of his own. 



By far the greatest number of our failures are of that 

 class which show a shadowy image and very little contrast. 

 Direct intensification of the negatives in bad cases has been 

 found of little benefit, but recently we have found that many 

 toners used for prints, notably brown and green, act upon 

 them in exactly the same way as the intensifier acts upon 

 the negative. After toning a weak enlargement alternately 

 in brown and green several times, we have found it to be 

 quite respectably "contrasty," and to produce a good nega- 

 tive when photographed. Of course, such methods are 

 suitable only for persons a little advanced in the art, but our 

 remarks will serve to show the necessity for keeping the 

 apparent failures. 



The photograph of the White-plumed Honeyeater repro- 

 duced here was taken with the old ten shilling camera 

 away back in 1909. After the negative had been inten- 

 sified it still showed so little contrast that it was consigned 

 to the "scrap-heap" as soon as we had obtained a few really 

 good pictures. There it remained for several years, and 

 was resurrected only when the experiments above men- 

 tioned gave us hope of using it. We were extremely for- 

 tunate to be able to improve it, by the way, as several years 

 in an old box subject to periodical drippings from washing 

 troughs left us little hope that we would find it intact. 



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