LANTERN SLIDES 



It is pretty hard to talk about making 

 snow scenes just now, for at the time of 

 writing these notes we, in the East here, 

 have not as yet been favored. The air is as 

 bright and crisp as you could want, but the 

 winter landscape has yet to come. Just the 

 same, the snow is bound to be here, and it 

 is as well, to prepare to make a few good 

 pictures of it to adorn your den when the 

 grilling summer days come around. Mean- 

 while your evenings will not be ill-spent, if 

 you take up the matter of making lantern- 

 slides from your negatives. You may not 

 have a projecting lantern yourself, but you 

 will probably find a friend who has, or sev- 

 eral of you can club together and buy one. 

 A projecting lantern, or stereopticon, is not 

 expensive. You can get them from $20.00 

 up complete with lighting apparatus and they 

 give all kinds of pleasure as well as profit. 

 Nothing draws the womenfolk, and the men- 

 folk, too, as a lantern-slide exhibition, and 

 you can easily make the lantern pay for it- 

 self in the course of a winter. Don't buy 

 your slides. You will amuse yourself and 

 your neighbors very much more by taking 

 pictures of local views and using these for 

 your slides. A few pointers on slide-making 

 may be useful to you. 



The developer recommended by the maker 

 is usually the best for a lantern plate, but for 

 simplicity, cleanliness, and economy there are 

 none to beat hydroquinone. The following is 

 the writer's pet formula for black tones, it 

 will suit most, if not all plates : — 



A. 



Hydroquinone 80 gr. 



Citric acid 30 gr. 



Potassium bromide 40 gr. 



Sodium sulphite 1 oz. 



Water 10 oz. 



B. 



Sodium hydrate (caustic soda) . . 80 gr. 

 Water 10 oz. 



Mix in a clean measure equal parts of these 

 solutions (half an ounce of each is sufficient), 

 then add to it half an ounce of water. 

 To remove yellow stains from glides, take : — 



Alum y 2 oz. 



Sulphate of iron ^2 oz. 



Citric acid V 2 oz. 



Water 12 oz. 



lj 



and allow the side to soak in the solution for 

 about twenty minutes. The solution will keep 

 for a long time, and may be used for nega- 

 tives. 



A good eikonogen developer for lantern 

 slides is the following:— 



Sulphite of soda 60 gr. 



Carbonate of soda (not bicarbo- 

 nate) , 45 gr- 



Eikonogen 15 gr- 



Water 5 l / 2 oz. 



It is advisable to add about two drops of a 

 ten per cent, solution of bromide of potas- 

 sium to each ounce of developer. 



Some readers may perhaps want to make 

 colored* diagrams on lantern slides for lec- 

 ture purposes. Colored inks, suitable for 

 writing on clean glass with a pen, can be 

 made by adding 10 per cent, of dextrine to 

 solutions of aniline; a good color for the 

 purpose being eosin and iodine green. A 

 good black color can be made from writing 

 ink, made slightly alkaline with ammonia, 

 and thickened with 10 per cent, of dextrine. 



If warm tones are required on a plate made 

 for black tones, the following pyrogallic acid 

 developer can be used : — 

 No. 1. 



Pyrogallic acid ^2 oz. 



Sulphite of soda 2 oz. 



Citric acid 1 dr. 



Water 5 oz. 



No. 2. 



Ammonia (.880) , l / 2 oz. 



Water 4 l A oz. 



"No. 3. 

 Bromide of ammonia Y> oz. 



Water 5 oz. 



No. 4. 



Carbonate of ammonia ^ oz. 



Water 5 oz. 



To obtain warm tones with this developer, 

 the exposure must be considerably longer 

 than when hydroquinone is used. A devel- 

 oper composed of 30 drops each of Nos. 1 

 and 2 and 60 drops each of Nos. 3 and 4 

 should give a rich, warm brown, _ inclining 

 to purple, with a plate that has received suffi- 

 cient exposure. When very warm tones are 

 desired, as little of No. 2 as possible should 

 be used, No. 4 being increased. 



In printing lantern slides it is just as fatal 

 a fault to have a ''bald-headed" (that is, 

 cloudless) sky as it would be in a print. It 

 is quite a fallacy to suppose — as used to be 



