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RECREATION 



taught — that the sky of a lantern slide should 

 be absolutely transparent glass. Transparent 

 glass does not adequately represent anything 

 in nature — least of all, a stretch of sky. If 

 any clouds exist in the negative, they should 

 be carefully coaxed out in the slide, either 

 by local development on the slide itself, or 

 by reducing the sky of the negative, or by 

 printing the sky more than the foreground, 

 by holding a card over the latter during ex- 

 posure. If none of these procedures are 

 feasible, the sky of the slide should be 

 "sunned down." That is, after exposure in 

 the printing-frame, the slide should be re- 

 moved therefrom, and before development its 

 sky part should be again exposed for a few 

 seconds. Meanwhile, the landscape part 

 should of course be covered with a piece of 

 card, which is moved up and down, in order 

 to vignette the sky and to leave no sharp- 

 edged marked at the edge of the sunning- 

 down. With a little practice, this is as easy 

 to do with a slide as with a piece of P.O. P.; 

 and enormously improves the picture's ap- 

 pearance on the screen. 



How do you make your gaslight prints? 

 Do you guess the distance of the printing- 

 frame from the light and do you use a dif- 

 ferent light every time? Many amateurs do 

 and consequently get all kinds of results. 

 Don't "guess" the distance from the gas- 

 burner when exposing your bromide prints. 

 If your burner is on a shelf, mark off a 

 measurement-scale along the edge of the 

 shelf; and always put the printing-frame the 

 same distance away from the source of light, 

 once you have found out, by experiment, the 

 right distance for a certain negative and a 

 certain exposure. If the burner is not on a 

 shelf, tie a piece of cord to it, and make knots 

 in the cord to mark the distances in feet or 

 half feet. When you are holding up the 

 frame in front of the burner to make an ex- 

 posure, hold one of the knots in the hand 

 which grasps the frame, and pull the string 

 taut. If you want to expose your negative 

 two feet, from the burner, take hold of the 

 two-foot knot, keep the string taut, and the 

 frame will, of course, be two feet exactly 

 from the source of light. Accuracy in this is 

 of vital importance in successful bromide or 

 gaslight printing. Once having ascertained 

 the correct distance from the flame, and the 

 correct exposure for that distance, all. chance 

 of failure is eliminated if you stick to that 

 distance exactly, and exactly that exposure. 

 Guessing the distance from the burner is al- 

 most a worse fault than guessing the ex- 

 posure — inasmuch as guessing the distance 

 means necessarily guessing the exposure as 

 well, because nothing affects the exposure so 

 Wtally as the distance from the source of 

 light. 



The picture post-card seems to be pushing 

 everything else out. But are all the cards 

 we see turned out by amateurs worth the 

 trouble? Not always, I am sorry to say. 



The average amateur, who would be ashamed 

 to show a crookedly mounted print, seems 

 to think that it is no sin to send his friends 

 a carelessly gotten up postal card. "It is 

 only a postal," he says, "and not worth both- 

 ering about." But like in all things, if the 

 card is worth making, it is worth making 

 well. No card should be made without some 

 kind of a border. If a larger negative than 

 the card is being used, a mask should be cut 

 for it. If the picture runs over the edge of 

 the card, it gives it an unfinished appearance. 

 Cut every mask to suit the picture and don't 

 be pinned down to the masks you buy in pack- 

 ages. It is a thousand to one against the 

 masks you buy being suitable for your sub- 

 jects. Never use a mask of an odd shape, 

 such as a heart, or a leaf or with ornamental 

 edges, and it is also safe to avoid using masks 

 with rounded corners. They give a cheap 

 appearance to the picture. Generally the mar- 

 gin is left white, but there are occasions 

 when a black border is effective. To pro- 

 duce this, cut a piece of black paper just the 

 size you want your picture to be, and after 

 the picture is printed put the card in a frame 

 with a piece of clear glass and the black paper 

 between the glass and the card. Put the 

 frame in a strong light, so that the edges un- 

 covered by the black paper are completely 

 fogged, and then tone as usual. This method 

 is all right with printing out cards, such as 

 the gold self-toning cards, but with platino- 

 type or bromide cards gives too much of a 

 mourning border appearance. A good way 

 to flatten out your cards when dry is as fol- 

 lows : Get a long pasteboard tube to which 

 fasten one end of a sheet of muslin. When 

 you take your cards out of the washing bath, 

 place them on this sheet, face down, and then 

 roll up so that cloth winds round the tube. 

 Let the cards dry this way and when you 

 take them out they will be straight instead of 

 all curled up. 



Are you ever troubled with blisters or air 

 bubbles in your gaslight or bromide prints? 

 They sometimes occur, most annoyingly, and 

 are usually the result of allowing the water 

 from the tap to splash on the face of the 

 prints while washing. But they also occur 

 from using too strong a hypo solution. Also 

 when your developing and fixing baths are 

 at different temperatures. Some brands of 

 paper blister more easily than others, but the 

 blistering can be prevented by rubbing over 

 the back of the paper before development 

 with a pad saturated with alcohol. Very 

 small blisters will usually dry up and not 

 show, but big ones can hardly be remedied. 

 They can be reduced a little by touching 

 them with alcohol. 



UNMOUNTED PRINTS 

 It is occasionally desired to remove a print 

 from its mount, or from the page of an al- 

 bum, usually for the purpose of remounting 



