All of the Comforts of Home. 



remember that all pictures must have been 

 taken since January i, 1905. 



SOME HINTS ON THE CHOICE OF A CAMERA 



First of all, thoroughly figure out to 

 what uses you are going to put your in- 

 strument before deciding what to buy. The 

 naturalist-photographer will certainly need 

 a very different kind of camera to the man 

 who only wishes to have records of his 

 day's shooting. The landscape photog- 

 rapher can use almost any kind of a cam- 

 era or kodak, but the man who is going to 

 take pictures of animals or birds in their 

 native haunts will require a camera just 

 suited to such purposes. And so on. My 

 space is too limited here to go into the va- 

 rious kinds of instruments and their spe- 

 cial uses. Later on I will devote more at- 

 tention to that. At present let it suffice to 

 say that, once you have chosen your cam- 

 era, you should study it ; study the con- 

 struction and purpose of every part and 

 movement until it is thoroughly under- 

 stood. Then you begin to test it, making 

 careful observations, under all sorts of con- 

 ditions. Go through the various motions 

 until the handling of the shutter, the put- 

 ting in of the plate-holder, and the with- 

 drawing of the dark-slide or the winding 

 up of the film become mechanical motions 



By H. S. Fay. 



performed almost unthinkingly. Practice 

 the gauging of distances, so that you can 

 set your lens to the focusing scale correct- 

 ly each time, without looking through a 

 ground-glass or first measuring out the 

 distance. There is nothing so important 

 in snapshot work as this correct gauging 

 of distance ; it means all the difference be- 

 tween sharp and blurred images. See that 

 your focusing scale marks correctly. This 

 you can do yourself by placing the camera 

 at a fixed position and then focusing on ob- 

 jects at set distances, 10 feet, 25 feet, and 

 so on up to 100 feet. Having secured a 

 good camera, it should be taken care of. 

 Damp is a deadly foe, therefore keep the 

 camera in its case when not in use, and 

 protect it if possible in a rubber cloth cov- 

 ering. Keep the inside well dusted. Dust 

 plays all kinds of mischief with your plates 

 or film. The shutter is a delicate piece 

 of mechanism, and must be treated as such. 

 The lens must be kept clean. Amateurs 

 are apt to think that their lenses will look 

 after themselves and leave them to accumu- 

 late dust and dirt and moisture, which se- 

 riously interferes with their capacity to 

 take good sharp pictures. Clean them with 

 soft Japan tissue paper, or an old soft silk 

 handkerchief. With proper precautions 

 your camera will last indefinitely, will al- 



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