250 
AMATEUR PHOTOGRAPHY. 
“For sport the lens is better than the gun.” 
I wish to make this department of the utmost 
use to amateurs. I shall, therefore, be glad to 
answer any questions and to print any items sent 
me by practical amateurs relating to their experi- 
ence in photography. 

CLOUD PHOTOGRAPHY. 
Judging from the number of bald headed 
sky pictures in most collections of land- 
scape photographs, a few practical sugges- 
tions may not come amiss. I will confine 
myself to the subject of photographing the 
clouds on the same plate with the fore- 
ground at one exposure, and will not touch 
on the printing in methods, 
The chief difficulty lies in the fact that 
by the time the foreground has had ample 
exposure the sky and clouds are much over- 
timed and all detail in the sky is lost. To- 
gether with this there is always some hala- 
tion. Many clouds are so thin that the blue 
light of the sky shines through them and 
acts on the plate almost as strongly as the 
light from the unclouded portions of the 
sky, rendering the clouds faint in the nega- 
tive. 
To overcome the halation we can use 
the non-halation or double coated plates, 
or we can back our plates. Those who use 
films are not troubled with halation. Fairly 
good cloud pictures can be made on the 
ordinary plate by giving a short exposure, 
1-6 to 1-10 of the normal time, for the aver- 
age landscape, and then developing slowly 
in a much diluted developer; starting with 
about % normal strength and as the detail 
comes up adding more strong developer 
for densitv, being careful not to overde- 
velop. A color screen may be used with the 
ordinary plate, but as the plate is only 
slightly sensitive to yellow light the expo- 
sure must be much increased; from 60 to 
75 times for the Bausch & Lomb bichromate 
ray filter, for instance. 
For the best results we must use ortho- 
chromatic, or color sensitive, plates, with or 
without a color screen. Some of the color 
sensitive plates on the market do not re- 
quire a color screen. When using a color 
screen with an orthochromatic plate the ex- 
posure must be increased according to the 
screen used. With the Bausch & Lomb 
ray filter multiply the exposure by 3 to 5, 
When making negatives chiefly for cloud 
effects and in which the foreground is of 
little or no importance, using the color sen- 
sitive plate with or without the color screen, 
eut down the exposure as with the ordi- 
nary plate, though probably not so much. 
When detail is wanted in the foreground 
give sufficient exposure to get the fore- 
ground, and if the screen is suited to the 
RECREATION. 
plate the clouds can be taken care of in 
development. 
The secret of developing cloud negatives 
successfully is to develop slowly in weak 
solutions and not over develop. With short 
development in a solution of not over % 
normal strength, when the sky portion be- 
comes a little more dense than the fore- 
ground the white clouds will have full den- 
sity and the foreground should be suffi- 
ciently developed. That is the time to 
stop. However, if the foreground is still 
_~weak when the sky is dense enough, stop 
development anyway; as the resulting nega- 
tive will be better than if-development were 
carried on until the foreground had gained 
sufficient density. 
A weak foreground may often be coaxed 
up by local development. If the sky ap- 
pears to be gathering density much more 
quickly than the foreground, remove the 
negative from the developer before the sky 
is fully developed and rinse in water. Then 
soak a piece of cotton in full strength de- 
veloper, sponge out the excess so that it will 
not drip and carefully go over the fore- 
ground. It will gradually gather strength. 
Keep this up until the foreground is more 
dense than the sky. Then put the negative 
back in the original solution and continue 
development until the sky is sufficiently 
strong. Remove from the developer, rinse 
and fix. ~ ‘ 
R. L. Wadhams, M. D., Wilkes-Barre, Pa. 

IMPROVING NEGATIVES. 
II. 
I believe velox to have been the first 
gaslight printing to appear in the Ameri- 
can market, and it is probably the best 
known. The amateur is apt to make all his 
prints on one grade of paper, never stopping 
to consider whether he might not obtain a 
better result from a certain negative by a 
change of printing medium. We have all 
read, and I trust practiced, the time-worn 
advice to choose one plate, developer, etc., 
and stick to it until its manipulation is 
mastered. This is good advice, but there is 
such a thing as following a rule too closely. 
To judge what paper will be best to use, 
sort the negatives and make 3 classes. Put 
in one pile all those that are extremely 
dense and contrary; all those that are ap- 
proximately correct in exposure and de- 
velopment in a second pile; while the thin, 
flat printing ones will form the third group. 
In this last lot place also those negatives 
that are over exposed, but dense, over de- 
veloped; for these, though slow printers, 
will give poor, flat prints, like the others 
in this class. 
Having made these 3 groups, the ques- 
tion arises whether to use a grade of paper 
which will bring out the best there is in 

