THE REFLECTING CAMERA 205 



begins to look as though the long-focus reflecting 

 camera were at last coming within the reach of the 

 many. 



It might be feared that the very rapid exposures 

 of which the curtain shutter is capable would not 

 have been sufficient to allow of successful develop- 

 ment. Such fear is groundless, for, though the ex- 

 posure is indeed brief, while it lasts it is at full 

 opening throughout, instead of for a small fraction 

 of the exposure as with the shutters used at the lens, 

 which must gradually open and close. In exposures 

 in open sunshine, over water, or alongshore, the light 

 is so bright that with a slit in the curtain one-eighth 

 of an inch wide and the spring wound to full ten- 

 sion, representing one one-thousandth of a second 

 exposure, by using strong metol-hydro, or edinol- 

 hydro developer, I secure full-timed negatives. Un- 

 der ordinary conditions of sunshine, if the picture is 

 to be of a bird flying with moderate rapidity, I sug- 

 gest an opening in the curtain of a quarter of an inch. 

 If the bird is a slow flier, like the gull, the tension 

 of the spring may be relaxed somewhat. The lens, 

 of course, is always to be used wide open for all this 

 snapshot work. 



At this aperture, in the case of birds flying against 

 the sky or over the water the single lens may often 

 be used effectually, thus securing twice as large an 

 image of the game as with the doublet. Flight pic- 

 tures of birds against dark backgrounds should only 

 be tried with the doublet. When the bird is at rest, 



