Fundamentalsofph00meesuoft PDF

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=iThe Fundamentals
of
Photography
^Q^
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'By C. E. K. Mees, D.Sc.
Eastman Kodak Company

Rochester, N. Y.
TR
145
.M44
1921
ROBARTS
Presented to the
LIBRARIES of the
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO
from
the Library of
Arthur Paulin
<i\
The Fundamentals
of
Photography
'By C. E. K. Mees, D.Sc.
Eastman Kodak Company

Rochester, N. Y.
1921
^ MAY 8 2002
PREFACE
WHILE a knowledge of the theory of photography is by
no means essential for success in the making of pic-
tures, most photographers must have felt a curiosity as to
the scientific foundations of the art and have wished to
know more of the materials which they use, and of the re-
actions which those materials undergo when exposed to light
and when treated with the chemical baths by which the
finished result is obtained. This book has been written
with the object of providing an elementary account of the
theoretical foundations of photography, in language which
can be followed by readers without any specialized scien-
tific training. It is hoped that it will interest photogra-
phers in the scientific side of their work and aid them

in getting, through attention to the technical manipulation
of their materials, the best results which can be obtained.
Rochester, N. Y. .
January, 1921
First Edition August 1920
Second Edition January 1921
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
Preface 3
I. The Beginnings of Photography . . 7
II. Light and Vision 14

III. About Lenses 20
IV. The Light Sensitive Materials Used in
Photography 34
V. Structure of the Developed Image . . 40
VI. Exposure 49
VII. Development 58
VIII. Reproduction of Light and Shade in
Photography 67
IX. Printing 78
X. The Finishing of the Negative ... 94
XL Halation 106
XII. Orthochromatic Photography . . .110
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THE FUNDAMENTALS OF
PHOTOGRAPHY
CHAPTER I.
THE BEGINNINGS OF PHOTOGRAPHY.
THE first
darkened
person to notice that chloride of silver was
by light may have been J. H. Schulze,
who made the discovery in 1732. It is probable, how-
ever, that this had been observed by others. In 1737 Hellot
in Paris, was trying to make sympathetic inks, that is, inks
that would be invisible when put on paper but which could
be made visible afterwârds. He found that if he wrote on
paper with a solution of silver nitrate, the writing would not
be visible until the paper was exposed to light, at which
time it would turn dark and could be read. However, no use^
was made of these discoveries for the purpose of making pic-
tures until 1802, when Wedgwood published a paper entitled
"An Account of a Method of Copying Paintings on Glass
and on Making Profiles bv the Agency of Light upon Nitrate
of Silver."
This reference to making profiles is a reference to one of
the forms of portraiture which preceded photography. Be-
fore portrait photography was discovered, there were people
who made what wêre called "silhouettes", which were pro-
file pictures cut out of black paper and stuck on to white
paper. Some of these silhouettists were very clever indeed.
Others who had not great ability arranged their sitter so
that they got sharp shadows thrown by a lamp onto a white
screen and this gave them the profile to copy. Wedgwood
thought that instead of cutting out the silhouette he might
print this profile on the screen by using paper treated with
silver nitrate, which would darken in the light. Wedgwood
not only used his new process to record these silhouettes,
but he tried to take photographs in what was then called
FUNDAMENTALS OF PHOTOGRAPHY
the "camera obscura", which was the forerunner of the
Kodak of to-day.
The camera obscura consisted of a box with a lens at one
end and a ground glass at the other, just like a modern
camera. It was used by artists to make a picture of anything
they wanted to draw, as by observing the picture on
Fig. 1
• Silhouette Picture from Old Print.
the ground glass they could draw it more easily. Wedgwood

tried to make pictures in his camera obscura by putting his
prepared paper in the place of the ground glass. His paper
however, was too insensitive to obtain any result; but Sir
Humphrey Davy, who continued Wedgwood's experiments,
using chloride of silver instead of nitrate, succeeded in mak-
ing photographs through a microscope by using sunlight.
These are apparently the first pictures made by means of a
lens on a photographic material.
But all these attempts of Wedgwood and Davy failed be-
cause no method could be found for making the pictures
permanent. The paper treated with silver chloride or silver
nitrate was still sensitive to light after part of it had dark-
ened, and if it were kept it soon went dark all over and the
picture was lost. Davy concluded his account of the ex-
periments by saying: "Nothing but a method of prevent-
ing the unshaded parts from being coloured by exposure to
8
—
THE BEGINNINGS OF PHOTOGRAPHY

the day is wanting to render this process as useful as it is
elegant."
H
This much needed method, however, remained wanting
from 1802 until 1839, when Sir John Herschel found that
^^^^^^
1
^-
^ ^1^1
>««^ '^^^M^^^^HI
-0^^
Ml^l- Fig. 2.
\V
Crystals of Thiosulphate of Soda or "Hypo".

IM
"hypo", which he had himself discovered in 1819, could dis-
solve awaythe unaltered chloride of silver and enable him to
"fix" the picture, as the process has been called ever since
Herschel made the discovery, and from that time to this
hypo has been the mainstay of the photographer, enabling
him to fix his pictures after he has obtained them.
In the meantime, Niepce in France had been working on
an entirely different process, depending on the fact that
such substances as resin or asphalt became insoluble when
exposed to light, and he had succeeded in producing results
by taking advantage of this property. In France also,
Daguerre was working on various methods by which he
hoped to make photographs, and entered into partnership
with Niepce, but in 1839 Daguerre published the method
of photography which was named for him Daguerreotype.
This was the first portrait process and became very popu-
lar. Itdepends upon the sensitiveness of plates of metallic
silver which have been fumed with iodine so that the sur-
face is converted into a thin layer of silver iodide. The
plates so treated are exposed to light, and after a very
long exposure, as we should consider it now, the plate in
the dark is exposed to the vapor of metallic mercury,
which deposits itself upon the image and produces a posi-
tive image of mercury upon silver.
Theresults were very beautiful, but these early processes
of photography required very great exposures so that at
first the unfortunate subject had to sit for as long as ten
minutes in the full sun without moving in order to impress
the plate sufficiently. Although many experiments were
made in an attempt to find substances more sensitive to
light so that the exposure could be reduced, the only real
solution was to find some method by which light had to
do only a little of the work and the production of the image
itself could be effected by chemical action instead of by the
action of the light.
A
great step in this direction was taken by Fox Talbot
in 184L He found that if he prepared a sheet of paper
with silver iodide and exposed it in the camera he got only
a very faint image, but if after exposure he washed over
the paper with a solution containing silver nitrate and gallic
acid, a solution from which metallic silver is very easily de-
posited, then this solution deposited the silver where the
light had acted and built up the faint image into a strong
picture. This building up of a faint image or, indeed, of an
image which is altogether
invisible, into a picture is
what is now called "de-
velopment". If we expose
a film in the Kodak and
then, after the shutter has
allowed the light to act for
a fraction of a second on
the film, look at the film in
red light, which will not
affect it, we shall not be
able to see any change in
the film. But if we put the
film into a developing solu-
tion, the invisible image
Fig. 3.
Negative Image.
which was produced by
light,and which in photo-
graphic books is called ''the latent image" will be developed
into a black negative representing the scene that was photo-
graphed.
Fox Talbot was not only the first to develop a faint or
invisible image; he was also the first man to make a nega-
tive and use it for printing. What is meant by a negative
is this: If we look at our film after we have exposed and
developed it, we shall find that the sky, which was bright in
lO
the picture, isshown in our film as very black,while any shad-
ows in the picture, which, of course, were dark, will be
transparent in the film, so that the light let through the
film is in the reverse order of the scene photographed,
all the bright parts in the scene being dark in the film and
the dark parts bright. For this reason the film is called a
"negative," and when it is printed on paper the same
reversal happens again and the clear parts in the negative
become dark in the print while the dark parts of the
negative protect the paper from the action of the light,
so that the print which we may call a "positive," represents
the scene as it appeared.
Fox Talbot, then, made two of the great steps in the ad-
vancement of photography when he found how to expose
hispaper for a time insufficient to darken it completely, and
then to develop a negative which he could print on paper
covered by silver chloride. Of course, the paper was not
transparent as our film is, but he made it more transparent
by treating it with oil or wax. In this he was followed many
years afterwards in the Eastman roll holder, which was the
forerunner of all the Kodaks.* In this roll holder at first a
paper film was used to make
the negative and then the
paper was made transpar-
ent for printing.
Fox Talbot's paper nega-
tiveswere succeeded by the
method known as the wet
collodion process, which has
survived to the present day.
This is the process chiefly
used by photo-engravers for
making the negatives from
which they make the en-
graved metal plates for
printing pictures.
.Fig- 4.
.
Collodion is made by dis- Positive or Print.

solving nitrated cotton,
such as is now used for the film base, in a mixture of ether
and alcohol. The worker of the wet collodion process had to
make his own plates at the time when he wanted to take a
picture. He would clean a piece of glass and coat it with
the collodion in which the chemicals were dissolved and
then put the plate in a bath of nitrate of silver, which
II
formed silver iodide in the collodion film and made it
sensitive to light. Then the glass had to be exposed in the
camera while wet, and immediately after exposure it was
developed by pouring the
developer over it. It was
then fixed and dried.
In order to carry out
these operations a photo-
grapher who wanted to
take landscapes had to car-
ry with him a folding tent
which he could set up in
the open air. The tent was
dark except for a yellow or
red window by which to
see to make the plates and
develop them.
All this difficulty in
working disappeared with
the coming of the gelatine
emulsion process, which is
the one now used. The
sensitive coating on films
and papers now consists of
a bromide or chloride of
silver held in a thin sheet
Fig. 5.
Early Photographer with His Equipment.
of gelatine, the gelatine
being dissolved in hot
water, the silver salt formed in the solution, and the warm
solution of gelatine containing silver then coated on the
film or paper.
The gelatine solution with the silver in it is called an
"emulsion" because of the way in which the silver remains
suspended in the gelatine. The first gelatine emulsions were
made in 1871 by Dr. Maddox. An emulsion made in much
the way that we use now was first sold in 1873 by Burgess.
At first the early experimenters made and sold the emul-
sion itself, drying it for sale so that photographers had to
take this dried emulsion, melt it up in hot water, and coat
it on their plates. After a time, however, people realized
that this was a great deal of trouble and that there was no
reason why the manufacturer of the emulsion should not coat
the glass plates with it, and sell the ready prepared plates.
In those days all negatives were made on glass plates.
These plates were coated with the emulsion by hand and
12
then when the emulsion was spread over them were put
on to cold level slabs for the jelly to set before drying.
Glass plates are cumbersome and heavy, and for this reason
George Eastman continually experimented to substitute
a light, flexible support for the brittle and heavy glass. As
already mentioned, he first used paper as a support for the
negative, waxing it to make it transparent for printing.
This was followed by a paper from which the film carrying
the image was stripped, the film being transferred to a glass
plate coated with gelatine so that this gelatine made a sup-
port for the film.
While experimenting to find a more satisfactory material
for coating the film than gelatine it was found that a solu-
tion of nitrated cotton would make a clear, transparent and
flexible support, and after a period of further experimenting
this material was adopted and a roll film was made, the
emulsion being carried on the clear, transparent sheet of
film support. The only remaining difficulty with this was
its tendency to curl owing to the gelatine coating on one
side, and this was overcome by coating the other side with
plain gelatine, thus producing the non-curling (NC) film.
13
CHAPTER II.
LIGHT AND VISION.
Light is the name which we give to the external agency

which enables us to see. In order to see things we must have
something which enters the eye and a brain to explain it to
us. That which enters the eye is what we call light.
The eye consists of two principal
parts and can best be understood
by analogy with the camera. In
front it has a lens which forms an
image on the sensitive surface,
which is called the retina, the
retina playing the same part in the
eye that the film does in the cam-
era. The retina, however, differs
from the film in that when light
falls upon the film it produces a
permanent change, which can be pj„ 5
developed into a picture, and if Diagram of Human Eye.
the light falls upon the film for too
long a time the film is spoiled, while the retina merely acts
as a medium to transmit to the brain the sensation of the
light that falls upon it, and when the light stops, the sensa-
tion stops and the retina is ready to make a new record. The
retina behaves, in fact, like a film in which the sensitive
material is continually renewed.
It is probable that this sensitive material in the eye is
really of a chemical nature because it is apparently produced
time, and when the eye is kept in the dark the sensi-
all the.
tive material accumulates for some time so that the eye be-
comes more sensitive, while when a strong light falls upon
the eye, the sensitive substance is destroyed more rapidly
than it is produced and the eye becomes less sensitive.
In this way, the eye has a very great range of sensitive-
ness. In bright sunlight it is as much as a million times less
sensitive than it is after it has been kept for an hour in the
dark, and it changes very rapidly, only a few minutes being
necessary for an eye that has been in almost complete dark-
ness to adapt itself to the glare of out-door lighting. In
order to lessen the shock of changing light intensity, the
lens of the eye is provided with an iris diaphragm just like
LIGHT AND VISION
that of a camera, but with the additional advantage that it
operates automatically, opening and closing according to
the intensity of the light. Measurements of the movements
of the iris of the eye have
been made by taking
motion pictures of the
eye when suddenly il-
luminated by a bright
light, and these show
what a wonderful instru-
ment the eye is in its
adaptation to changing
conditions in the world
around it.
The is connect-
retina
ed with the brain by a
great many nerve fibers,
each fiber coming from a
different part of the ret-
ina, so that when light
falls upon any part of
the retina, the intensity
of the light is communi-
cated by the tiny nerve
coming from that part of
the retina to the brain
and the brain forms an
idea of the image on the
retina by means of the
multitude of impressions
from different parts of
the retina.
The image on
the ret-
inverted like all
ina is
lens images, so that we
really see things stand-
Fig. 7.
Iris Opening and Closing. ing on their heads, but
the brain interprets an
inverted image on the retina as corresponding to an upright
external world, and although the eye sees things upside
down, the brain has no idea of it.
What we observe is the light which falls on the retina, but
this light comes originally from some external source which,
in the case of daylight, of course, is the sun. The light from
the sun is reflected by the objects in the world around us
15
THE FUNDAMENTALS OF PHOTOGRAPHY
according to their nature, and entering the eye it enables
us to see the objects. When we look at a landscape we see
that the sky is bright and the roads and fields are less bright,
and the shadows under the trees are dark, because much of
the light of the sun is reflected from the sky, less from the
fields and roads and still less from the shadows under the
trees. All these rays from the sun reflected from the natural
objects in the landscape enter the eye and make a picture on
the retina which is perceived by the brain by means of the
tiny nerve fibers coming from the retina to the brain.
But the eye not only perceives differences in the bright-
—
ness of the light it also observes differences in colour and —
in order to understand how this can be we must search
further into the nature of light itself.
The nature of light has long been a source of speculation,
and at one time it was generally held that the light which
entered the eye consisted of small particles shot off from the
source of light, just as at one time it was held that sound
consisted of small particles shot off from the source of a
sound which struck the drum of the ear. This theory of
light has the advantage that it immediately explains reflec-
tion; just as an india rubber
ball bounces from a smooth
wall, while it will be shot in
RED
almost any direction from a
heap of stones, so the small
particles of light would re-
bound from a polished sur-
face at a regular angle, while
a rough surface would mere- GREEN
ly scatter them.
This theory of the nature
of light was satisfactory un-
til it was found that it was
possible by dividing a beam

of light and slightly length-
ening the path of one of the BLUE
halves, and then reuniting
the two halves together
again, to produce alternate
Fig. 8.
periods of darkness and light Relative Wave Lengtti«» of Red, Green
similar to the nodes of rest and Blue.
produced in an organ pipe,
where the interference of the waves of sound is taking place.
It could not be imagined that a reinforcement of one stream
i6
LIGHT AND VISION
of particles by another stream of particles in the same
direction could produce an absence of particles, while the
analogy of sound suggested that just as sound was known to
consist of waves in the air, so light also consisted of waves.
BLUE VIOLET GRIIN RED
400 450 500 550 600 700

Fig. 9.
Simple Arrangement of Spectrum.
Light cannot consist of waves in the air, partly because

we know that it travels through interstellar space, where
we imagine that there is no air but through which we can
still see the light of the stars, and also because the ve-
locity of light — —
nearly 200,000 miles per second is so great
that it is impossible that it could consist of a wave in any
material substance with which we are acquainted. It is,
therefore, assumed that there exists, spread through all
space and all matter, something in which the waves of light
are formed, and this something is termed ether, so that it is
generally held that light consists of waves in the ether.
Just as in sound we have wave notes of high frequency,
that is, with many waves per second falling upon the ear,
which form the high pitched notes, and also notes of low
frequency where only a few waves a second fall upon the
ear forming the bass notes, so with light we may have dif-
ferent frequencies of vibration. Since the velocity of light
is the same for waves of different frequencies, it is clear that
the waves of high frequency will be of different wave length
from those of low frequency, the wave length being the dis-
tance from the crest of one wave to the crest of the next,
and if we obtain waves of different lengths separated out,
we shall find that the color depends upon the wave length.
Fig. 8 shows the average length of wave corresponding to
light of various colors, the diagram being drawn to scale.
White light consists of mixtures of waves of various
lengths, but if instead of letting the, mixture of waves, which
forms white light, fall directly on the eye we pass white
light through an instrument known as a spectroscope,
which changes the direction of the different waves by
amounts which differ according to their lengths, we get the
white light spread out into a band of colors which we call
I?
the spectrum, and we can scale this spectrum by means of
numbers representing the lengths of the waves.
Fig. 9 gives a simple arrangement of the spectrum, the
numbers representing the wave lengths in units which are
millionths of millimeters. It will be seen that the visi-
ble spectrum extends from 700 to 400 units, wave lengths
of 700 units corresponding to the extreme red and 400
to the darkest violet that can be seen, while the brightest
region of the spectrum stretches from 500 to 600 units
and includes the green and yellow colors. The spectrum
is equally divided into three regions which may be broadly
termed—red 700-600, green 600-500. and blue-violet
500-400.
If we get a piece of colored glass which lets through only
the portion of the spectrum between 600 and 700, then
we should have a piece of red glass; a glass which let through
from 500 to 600 would be a green glass, and one which
letthrough from 400 to 500 would be blue-violet in color,
so that from the spectrum we already derive the idea that
light can be conveniently divided into three colors, which
—
we may call the primary colors red, green and blue-violet.
It is probable that this is connected with the structure of
the retina, and one theory holds that there are three sets of
Fig. 10.
Portions of Spectrum Transmitted by Primaries.
LIGHT AND VISION
receiving nerves in all parts of the retina, corresponding to
—
the three primary colors red, green and blue- violet.
If we let upon anything, such as a piece of
white light fall
white paper, which reflects all the wave lengths to the same
extent, then the reflected light remains white and we should
say that the object on which it falls is uncolored, but if the
object absorbs some of the wave lengths of the spectrum
more than others, then it will appear colored. Thus, a
piece of red paper appears red because from the white light
falling upon it it absorbs some of the green and blue-violet
light, but reflects all the red light and, therefore, appears
red. In the same way a green object absorbs both red and
blue- violet more than it absorbs the green light and so looks
green, and a yellow object absorbs the blue, reflecting the
red and green of the spectrum and so appears yellow.
Light waves differ not only in their length but in their
amplitude, that is, in the height of the wave, and the ampli-
tude controls the intensity of the light just as the wave
length controls the color. The eye, therefore, can detect
differences in brightness which depend upon amplitude, and
also differences of color which depend upon wave length.
19
CHAPTER III.
ABOUT LENSES.
to take a photograph we use a lens which forms
INanorder
image of the object we want to photograph upon the
film. The simplest lens which we could use would be a
small hole. Suppose that we take a sheet of cardboard and
make a hole in it with a pin, and then, in a darkened room,
hold the cardboard between a sheet of white paper and an
electric lamp we shall see on the paper an image of the lamp
;
filament.
The diagram shows how
this image is produced. A
ray of light from each por-
tion of the filament passes
through the pinhole and forms
a spot of light on the paper,
and all these spots joining to-
gether form the image of the
filament.
If wetake the lens out of a Fig. 11.
camera and replace it by a How an Image is Produced.
thin piece of metal pierced
with a hole made by a needle (a No. 10 sewing needle is
about right, and the edges of the hole must be beveled off
so that they are sharp), then we can take excellent photo-
graphs by giving sufficient exposure.
If the pinhole is about six inches from the film then an
exposure of about one minute for an outdoor picture on
film will be required. It is necessary, of course, to make a
well fitting cap for the lens aperture so that no light will
get in except through the pinhole, and also to make a
cover for the pinhole to act as a shutter for exposing.
But if a pinhole were the only means of forming an image
it is very improbable that photography would ever have
been developed, since the exposures are so long in conse-
quence of the srnall amount of light which can pass through
the pinhole.
20
ABOUT LENSES
In order to get more light we could try making the pin-
hole larger, but the effect of this is to make the image very
indistinct, and even the smallest efficient pinhole can not
give as sharp an image as a
good lens.
Suppose we have a small
pinhole forming an image of
a star, as shown in Fig. 12.
If we make the hole larger,
we a round, spread-
shall get
ing beam of light and no long-
er get a sharp image. (Fig.
13.)
Fig. 12.
Pinhole Image of a Star. What we need, if we are to
use the large hole is, some
means of bending the light so that all the light reaching
the hole from the star is joined again in a sharp image of
the star on the screen, as
shown in Fig. 14.
If a ray of light falls on a
piece of glass so that it is not
perpendicular to it, it will be
bent. There is an interesting
experiment which shows this
very well. Take a thick block
of glassand place it so that it
touches a pin (which is mark-
ed B in Fig. 15) and stick an-
Fig. 13.
other pin (A) in the board. Eflfect of Large Pinhole.
Now look through the glass
and stick a pin (D) between your eye and the glass, and in
the same line of sight as A and B, and lastly another pin
(C) touching the glass and
in the same line of sight as
the other three.
Take away the glass and
join up the pinholes with pen-
cil lines. You
will find that
the line DC
parallel to the
is
line AB
but is not in the same
line; that is, the ray of light
Fig. 14.
marked by the line was AB
bent when it entered the glass
Need of Means to Bend Light.
and then bent back again
when it left it, so we can bend light by means of glass.
21
If we take a triangular piece of glass (called a prism) we
can bend a ray when it enters the glass and also more still
when it leaves the glass. (Fig. 17.)
And a lens is really two
prisms stuck together base
to base (Fig. 18). So that
if we put a lens in the hole
with which we want to

form an image, we can do
what we wish to and make
all the rays from the star
come together again in the
image of the star. And this
is the purpose of our cam-
era lenses, to form an image
Fig. 15.
sharper than that given by
Deflecting a Ray of Light.
the smallest pinhole and yet
much brighter than any pinhole would give.
Should we place a pinhole, instead of a lens, in the front-
board of our camera, we could use the same size of pinhole
formaking all sizes of pict-
ures,because the image 1
formed by a pinhole is al-

ways of the same sharpness,
whether the pinhole is far
from the film or close to it. 1
-^^
If we want a large picture /
/
we must, of course, use a
large camera with a long
bellows, so the pinhole will
be a long way from the
film, while if we want a
small picture we shall only Fig. 16.

need a small camera with Path of Deflected Ray.
a short bellows, so the pin-
hole will be near the film. But if, instead of a pinhole, we
use a lens, we shall find that the lens must be placed at a
certain distance from the film
(depending upon its focal
length and its distance from
the object photographed) in
order to obtain a sharp pic-
Fig. 17.
Prism Bending a Ray. ture. If it is placed at any
other distance from the film
the picture will be all blurred. The reason for this is that
22
ABOUT LENSES
a photographic lens bends the rays of Hght that pass through
it so that all the light rays from a star, for instance, will
meet again to form an image of the star. By placing a sheet
of cardboard at the position where the rays of light meet,
the image of the star will be sharp, but if we put the card
either nearer to or farther
from the lens, the image will
be blurred into a circle of
light. The distance at which
the lens must be placed from
the film to give a sharp image
Fig. IS.
represents the "focal length"
Rays Bent by Double Prism.
of the lens.
The longer the focal length of a lens the larger the image,
and the shorter the focal length the smaller the image.
Suppose we photograph a tree
and place the camera at such
a distance from the tree that
with a lens of three inches
focal length we obtain a pic-
ture in which the image of
the tree is one inch long.
Now, if with the camera at
the same distance from the
tree, we had used a six-inch
lens instead of the three-inch
lens, which means that in- Fig. 19.
stead of the lens being three Lens Forming a Sharp Image.
inches from the film it would
be six inches from it, then the image of the tree would be
two inches long instead of one inch long in the picture. If
we were using the same size
film with both lenses, of
course we should not be able
to include as much of the sub-
ject we were photographing
in the field of view of the pic-
-~J —
ture made with the six-inch
Fig. 20. lens as we should obtain with
Images formed by a pinhole at various
distances.
the three-inch lens, because

with the three-inch lens the
tree would be, say, a quarter
of the length of the picture,
Fig. 21.
while with the six-inch lens it A lens forms an image at only one point.
23
would be half the length of the picture. In other words, the
three-inch lens would give us a smaller image, while the
six-inch lens would give us a large image of the tree.
Fig. 22.
Short Focal Length Means Small Image.
The longer the focal length of a lens, the less subject we

include in our picture, and the larger the images of objects
are, while the shorter the focal length, the more subject
we include in the picture and the smaller the images are.
In actual practice we must compromise between a lens
which will include as large an area as possible in the field
of view, and a lens which will give images as large as pos-
sible; consequently, for general all-around purposes it is best
to use a lens whose focal length is somewhat longer than the
longest side of the film. For a 23^2 x 43^ film, for instance,
we should use a lens of about 5 inches focal length.
It is most important not to use a lens of too short a focal
length for the size of the film employed. There is a great
temptation to do this. While a lens of 4 J^ inch focus as com-
pared with a lens of three inch focus means a big lens in place
FOCAL LENGTh
Fig. 23.
Long Focal Length, Larger Image.
•of a and a larger shutter and a somewhat larger

little lens,
camera a smaller shutter and an extremely com-
in place of
pact camera, it also means (and this is vastly more impor-
tant than mere camera compactness) the making of pictures
having good perspective instead of pictures with bad per-
24
ABOUT LENSES
spective; in other words, it means pictures the drawing in
which looks right instead of pictures whose drawing looks
wrong. The reason for
this is that the per-
spective of a picture
is determined by the
point of view from
which the lens makes
the picture. If this
perspective is not
pleasing to the eye it
will not be pleasing
in the picture.
Fig. 24 shows a pic-
ture made with a very
short focus lens used
close to the subject.
This is a faithful ren-
dering of the perspec-
tive that the eye saw
from the viewpoint of
the lens, but it is far
Fig. 24. from pleasing.
Made With a Very Short Focus Lens. In Fig. 25 the same
subject is shown
photographed with a
long focus lens, and
in this picture the
perspective is satis-
factory. It likewise
represents the per-
spective that the eye
saw from the view-
point of the lens.
It is a good rule to
secure a lens which
has a focal length at
least equal to the
diagonal of the film.
A little more focal
length is still better.
Lenses differ in an-
other respect than
their focal length.
Fig. 25. Made With a Long Focus Lens. They differ in the
25
amount of light they admit, and this is very important,
because the more Hght admitted, the shorter the exposure
can be. The chief object in
using a lens instead of a pin-
hole is to transmit more light
to the film, and the amount
of light that is transmitted
depends upon the area of the
glass in the lens.
Suppose we place a piece
of cardboard, instead of a
Fig. 26, film, in the back of a camera,
Visible and have a pinhole in the
Area with Long Focus.
card through which we can
look at the lens then point the lens toward a window the
; ;
amount of light that reaches the eye through the hole in

the card depends upon how much of the light from the
window is passing through the lens; that is to say, it will
depend on the area of the window which we could see if
there was no glass in the lens. Of course, since the visible
area of the window is bounded by the edges of the lens
mount, we could see more
if the lens were of shorter _-,
focal length so that the eye
was closer to it. With a
lens of long focal length
only a small part of the
window area is visible.
With a lens of half the
focal length but of the
same diameter as that ^-^
Fig. 27.
shown in Fig. 26, four times Visible Area with Short Focus.
as much of the window area
is visible.
Thebrightness of the image projected by lenses of the
same diameter varies inversely as the square of the focal
length of the lens. It also varies as the area of the lens
surface (aperture) which admits the light. The greater
the lens aperture the more light it admits. Now the area of
the lens aperture, of course, is proportional to the square
of its diameter, so that all lenses in which the diameter
of the aperture bears the same ratio to the focal length
will give equally bright images. This means that the bright-
ness of the image is determined not solely by the focal
length, nor solely by the diameter of the lens aperture, but
26
ABOUT LENSES
by the relation that exists between the lens aperture and
the focal length of the lens, so that all lenses in which the
diameter of the opening is, say, one-sixth of the focal length,
will give equally bright images. Thus, in a lens of one-inch
aperture and a focal length of six inches, the opening is
one-sixth of the focal length, and in a lens of twelve inches
focal length and two inches aperture, the opening is like-
wise one-sixth of the focal length. Both lenses are of the
same / value. This means that both give an image of the
same brightness, and will require the same exposure. Lens
"apertures" are, therefore, rated according to the ratio be-
tween their diameter and their focal lengths; thus, one in
which the opening is one-sixth of the focal length is marked
/.6; one in which the opening is one-eighth, /.8, and so on,
and the larger the aperture, the more light the lens trans-
mits, and the more light it transmits the shorter the expos-
ure needed.
But while large lens apertures have the advantage of
permitting shorter exposures, they have some disadvant-
ages. In the first place, to get a large aperture we must
have a large lens, and this means an expensive lens; also,
the errors of definition, which are called the "aberrations"
of lenses, increase very much as the apertures increase, so
that only the very best types of lenses in which these aberra-
tions are removed to as great an extent as possible, can be
made of large aperture and still give good definition. Large
aperture lenses are therefore costly.
But even when we have a lens with a large aperture we
shall have to regard this as a reserve power for use in
special circumstances, and we shall not by any means be
able to use it at its largest aperture all the time.
From the construction of a lens it follows that only the
rays from a mathematical point can come together in a
point again, and that the rays from any point nearer or
farther than the point focused can not meet in a point
image on the film, but must produce a small disc of light
instead of a sharp point of light. (See Fig. 2L)
The disc is termed the circle of confusion. If the circle
of confusion is small enough we shall not be able to dis-
tinguish it from a point, and the picture will appear to be
sharp.
With what are known as "fixed focus" cameras, such as
the Vest Pocket Kodaks and the Box Brownies, no attempt
is made to secure a wholly sharp focus for objects at all
distances, but the cameras are sharply focused on the near-
ly
:
est point to the camera which will still enable distant ob-
jects to appear approximately sharp in the pictures, and in
this way objects in the middle distance are perfectly sharp,
and near objects are also sharp, provided they are not too
near.
The following table of these distances, beyond which
everything is sharp when the largest stop is used, may be
useful
Vest Pocket Kodak
No. Brownie
.... 9
9
feet
No. 2 Brownie 133^^

No. 2A, 2C and No. 3 Brownie . 15
If we are using a No. Brownie, for instance, as long as

everything is farther off than nine (9) feet we can rely on
getting a picture with everything focused sharply.
With the focusing Kodaks we must judge the distance
of the object on which we wish the focus to be sharpest
and set the scale to that; then we shall find that objects
somewhat nearer, and also objects a good deal farther from
Focus of Focus of the camera are also sharp,
Distant Nearby
Object Object and the distance from
the nearest to the far-
thest objects that ap-
pear sharp in the nega-
Fig. 28. tive is called the "depth
Depth of Focus with Full Aperture. of focus." This depth of
focus depends on the
focal length of the lens and on the size of stop used in the
lens; the greater the focal length the less the depth of focus,
and the bigger the stop the less the depth of focus. Thus in
Fig. 28, we have a lens
focusing near and far
points at full aperture
and producing large cir-
cles of confusion. In Fig.
Fig. 29.
29 a smaller stop is used Depth of Focus with Smaller Aperture.
in the same lens, and the
circles diminish in size in proportion to reduction in the
size of the stop.
Sometimes we have to focus near objects at the same
time as distant ones, so that it is necessary to "stop the
lens down" to some extent.
Stops are marked in two different systems, though both
are based on the fundamental ratio of the diameter to the
28
:
ABOUT LENSES
focal length of the lens. In the one system the stop is ex-
pressed simply as a fraction of the focal length; thus F./8
(commonly written /.8) means that the aperture is one-
eighth of the focal length of the lens;/.16, one-sixteenth,
and so on. The rectilinear lenses fitted to Kodaks are, how-
ever, marked in the "Uniform System" (U. S.) in which
the numbers are proportional to the exposure required, /.4
being taken as unity, so that the scale is as follows
F. fA f.5.6 f.6.3 f.S f.n /.16 f.22 f.32 /.45

U.S. 1 2 23^ 4 8 16 32 64 128
The U. S. numbers give the relative exposure that is re-

quired with the /. system stops, the exposure varying as
the square of the/, value, so that/. 11 requires twice the
exposure of /.8;/.16 twice that of/. 11 and so on.
Kodaks, Premo and Brownie cameras are listed with
several different kinds of lenses, the smaller cameras being
listed with either Meniscus, Meniscus Achromatic, Rapid
Rectilinear or Anastigmat Lenses. The larger cameras have
either Rapid Rectilinear or Anastigmat Lenses, while the
Special Kodaks and Graflex cameras have Anastigmats only.
The Box Brownies are equipped with Meniscus or Meniscus
Achromatic Lenses, while with the Folding Brownies there
is a choice between Meniscus Achromatic and Rapid Recti-
linear lenses.
Many people do not understand the meaning of these
terms, and while it is a safe rule to choose the best lens
which can be afforded, certain that the better lens is worth
the extra cost, it is still better to understand the properties
of the different kinds of lenses and what advantages can be
gained from the use of the higher grades.
The simplest lenses which can be used are made of a single
piece of glass, the form of the lens being of the type which
gives the best definition; that is, a Meniscus or crescent
shape, and the lenses are called Meniscus (not Meniscus
Achromatic) lenses. Such a Meniscus lens can only be
used in a fixed focus camera where the maker of the camera
has put it in the correct position for forming a sharp image
upon the film, but if such a lens were used in a focusing
camera we should find that however carefully we focused
the picture on the ground glass the negatives would not be
sharp, unless the difference between the focusing point
of the visual rays by which we focus, and the chemical rays
which affect the film, was provided for.
29
This is because a non-achromatic lens bends the rays of
light of different colors to different extents, so that the
yellow rays which we use for focusing do not come to a
focus in the same place as the blue rays which affect the
film, because the blue rays are bent more than the yellow.
In 1752, Dollond, an
English optician, showed
that by combining two dif-
Tbli/efoo/j ferent kinds of glass to
2"YELLow" make a lens he could get
^^^' the blue rays to focus at
T- r T^, ^!^kr „ T^
rocus of Blue and Yellow Rays. ^ ^-u^ ^^ pomt as û
•
the same *. i
the yel-
low rays, and lenses made in this way were called "achro-
matics," from the Greek words "a" meaning not, and
"chroma" meaning color. The best shape of achromatic
lens to use is shown in Fig. 31, and since this is also of a
"meniscus" or crescent shape the lenses are called meniscus
achromatics. If a single achromatic lens is used, it is neces-
sary to "stop it down" so that only a small
portion of the lens is used, because the rays
which come through the edges do not focus
together as well as those which come through
the center, and so the image is not quite sharp
if the whole lens area is used.
This stopped-down meniscus lens has the

effect of producing slight curvature of the Fig. 31.
edges of the picture, which does not matter Achromatic Lens.
in landscape work or portraiture; but if subjects containing
straight marginal lines are photographed with such a lens,
their outer lines appear slightly curved — so slightly, how-
ever, that the effect is negligible unless the image of the
subject so crowds the picture area that its outer lines are
very near the margins of the picture, as shown by figures
32 and 33, which represent a window sash photographed
with a meniscus lens at short range.
If the stop is in front of the lens the curvature is in one
direction, and if it is behind the lens the curvature is in the
opposite direction, so that if we put two lenses to-
gether with the stop between them, the curvature is neutra-
lized and we get a lens which gives no curvature at all.
Such a lens is called a "Rapid Rectilinear" — rectilinear
because it gives straight-line images, and rapid because
having a focal length half that of either of the component
lenses with a stop of the same diameter, it passes
four times as much light and only requires one-quarter of
30
ABOUT LENSES
the exposure. Rapid Rectilinears are sometimes called by
other names, such as "Rapid Aplanats," "Planatographs,"
and so on. Now, it so happens that the two kinds of glass
used in an achromat must fulfill certain conditions to bring
the blue and the yellow rays to the same focus, and must
Fig. 32. Fig. 33. Fig. 34.

Made with Stop in Front Made with Stop Behind Made with Rectilinear
of Meniscus Lens Meniscus Lens. Lens
fulfill certain other conditions to get a picture which is flat,

that is, a picture that is sharp on a flat plate or film; and
the ordinary glasses which are used for making achromats
will not fulfill all these conditions at once, so that the lenses
made with "old" achromats will not give flat field images,
the image being saucer-shaped. These lenses are, therefore,
said to be "astigmatic," which means that they do not give
sharp-point images of points.
About thirty years ago, Professor Abbe and Otto Schott,
working together at Jena, found out how to make new kinds
of optical glass from which lenses could be made which
would give flat field images with the blue and yellow rays
of the same focus.
By the use of these new glasses the opticians have been
able to make lenses that give sharp images on a flat field to
the very edge of the picture and, therefore, these lenses are
called "Anastigmats," meaning "not astigmatic," but this
better defining power can, however, only be obtained by
the most careful and skilled work in making the lens, this
work being of a far higher quality than that employed on
the older types of lenses, which accounts for the higher cost
of anastigmats.
Anastigmat lenses can be used with larger stops than
any of the older lenses, so that if an Achromatic working
31
:
at/. 16 requires a 1/5 second exposure, a Rapid Rectilinear
working at/.8 will require a 1/20 second exposure, and an
Anastigmat working at f.6.3 will require a 1/32 second ex-
posure.
To summarize the advantages and disadvantages of the
three types of lenses discussed in the preceding pages
The single lenses (meniscus and meniscus achromatic)
must be used with a relatively small stop, which means
that they are somewhat slow. They are fast enough for
snapshots in good light, the shutters they are fitted with
being adjusted for the making of moderately slow "snaps".
The very fact that they require a small stop gives them
great depth of focus, however, and for that reason errors in
focusing are largely compensated for, resulting in a high
percentage of successful pictures.
The Rapid Rectilinear Lenses have more speed than the
single lenses, and are also better for architectural work.
The Anastigmat, /.6.3, lenses are about sixty per cent
faster than the Rapid Rectilinear lenses and are corrected
for the finest definition (sharpness). When used at their
full speed— —
that is, with the largest opening they require
accurate focusing, although it should be borne in mind that
both the length of focus and the stop opening affect this
matter of depth of focus. That is why the 3A,the largest of
the Kodaks, requires more accurate focusing than the
smaller ones, and is why, when we get down to the Vest
Pocket size, it is possible to use an Anastigmat lens with a
fixed focus.
An Anastigmat lens does not require any more accurate
focusing than any other lens when used with the same stop.
Take, for instance, an average landscape with a prominent
object in the foreground. The correct stop would be /.16
and,' if the sun were shining, the correct exposure 1/25 of a
second. This same stop and exposure should be used
with a Single lens, a Rapid Rectilinear or an Anastigmat,
and the depth of focus with the same focal length of lens
—
would be the same in all cases no more accurate focusing
would be required with one lens than with another.
But when the light is weak and an Anastigmat is used
at its full opening, or nearly its full opening, in order
>
to get a well timed snapshot, there will be a gain in

speed but a loss in depth of focus. The object at the
focused distance may photograph even sharper than it
would with the Single or Rapid Rectilinear lenses, but
objects a little nearer the camera or a little farther away
32
ABOUT LENSES
will not be so sharp because depth of focus has been sacri-
ficed for speed. And, of course, this same thing is true in
using a large stop in order to arrest the motion of moving
objects. With a fixed-focus camera working at a fixed
shutter speed, all still objects at, say, fifty feet away,
would be sharp and, with a good light, fully timed, but
moving objects might show a blur. With an Anastigmat
lens opened to/.6.3 and a shutter speed of 1/200 of a second,
it is possible to arrest moderately fast motion and get a
fully timed negative (with good light), but in such case care
must be taken to focus accurately.
33
CHAPTER IV.
THE LIGHT SENSITIVE MATERIALS USED IN PHOTOGRAPHY.
AS wasand
films
explained in Chapter I, the sensitive coating on
papers consists of bromide or chloride of silver
held in a thin layer of gelatine, and thus, photography de-
pends upon the fact that the shiny, white metal silver when
combined with certain other substances forms compounds
which are sensitive to light and which are changed in their
nature when they are exposed to light.
Chemical compounds are formed by the combination in
definite proportions of a limited number of elements, of
which about eighty exist.
These elements may be divided into the two classes of
metals and non-metals, and the metals combining with the
non-metals form compounds called salts. These salts are
not usually formed by the direct combination of the metal
and the non-metal but by the agency of acids.
Fig. 35.
Crystals of Silver Nitrate.
Thus, the first step in making a light sensitive compound

of silver to dissolve the silver in nitric acid. After the
is
silver has been dissolved by the acid, and then dried up
we get flat, plate-like crystals of silver nitrate. These
34
LIGHT SENSITIVE MATERIALS IN PHOTOGRAPHY
crystals of silver nitrate dissolve in water quite easily,
but if some cooking salt solution is added to the silver
nitrate solution, the silver combines with one of the com-
ponents of the salt, called chlorine, and the silver chloride
that is produced is not soluble in water, so that it will be
visible as a sort of white mud in the solution.
Chlorine is one of a group of elements which, because
they occur in sea salt, are called halogens, from the Greek
name for the salt sea. Two others of these elements are
bromine and iodine, and the silver compounds with these
three elements are distinguished by their extreme insolu-
bility in water and their sensitiveness to light. Silver
bromide ismore insoluble than silver chloride and is pale
yellow in colour; silver iodide is still more insoluble and is
strongly yellow.
These silver compounds are formed by simply adding a
solution of a chloride (such as cooking salt), bromide or
iodide to a solution of silver nitrate. If this is done in a
water solution, the silver compound will settle down to the
Fig. 36.
Two Flasks Containing Precipitated Silver Bromide: Left, Without
Gelatine; Right, With Gelatine.
The flask on the left shows that silver bromide without gelatine settles to the bottom
of the solution. The one on the right shows the silver bromide held
evenly in suspension by gelatine.
35
bottom of the vessel, but this may be prevented by adding
to the water some gelatine, like that used for cooking.
The gelatine is soaked in water, and then when it is swol-
len it dissolved by putting it in warm water and gently
is
warming and shaking until it is all dissolved. Then there is
added to this the right quantity of bromide. The bromide
dissolves in the gelatine solution just as salt would, and is
stirred up to get it evenly distributed. Meanwhile, some
silver nitrate has been weighed out so that the right amount
is taken to act with the amount of bromide chosen and is
dissolved in water, in which it dissolves very easily. This
silver nitrate solution is then added slowly to the bromide
dissolved in the gelatine, and produces at once a precipitate
of silver bromide. This silver bromide is sensitive to light
so that before adding the silver nitrate to the bromide and
gelatine all the white lights are turned out and the silver is
added by the light of a photographic red lamp.
As the silver is added a little at a time, the solution
being stirred meanwhile, the gelatine becomes full of the
smoothly, evenly precipitated silver bromide distributed
through the solution.
If the emulsion of silver bromide in gelatine is coated on
the film and then cooled, the gelatine will set to a jelly, still
containing the silver bromide suspended in it, and then
when this layer is dried, we get the smooth yellowish coat-
ing, which is familiar to those of us who have looked at an
undeveloped film in the light.
If welook at the silver bromide film through a very high
power microscope, we shall find that the silver bromide is
distributed throughout it in the form of tiny crystals. These
crystals are in the form of flat triangular or hexagonal
plates, and careful investigation has shown that they be-
long to the regular system of crystals. When these crystals
are exposed to light, no visible change takes place, but there
must be some change because when a crystal of silver bro-
mide, which has been exposed to light, is put into a devel-
oper, the developer takes the bromine away from the silver
and leaves instead of the crystal what looks under a
microscope like a tiny mass of coke, which is, really, the
metallic silver itself freed from the presence of the bromine.
It may seem strange that silver, which we always think
of as a bright, shiny metal should look black, but when it
is divided up in this irregular way, it looks black, although
it is the same thing as the shiny metal we are familiar with,
36
just as a black lump of coke is the same thing as the bright
gleaming diamond.
If the silver bromide has not been exposed to light, then
the developer has no power to takie away the bromine from
Fig. 37.
Crystals of Silver Bromide before (left) and after (right)
Development.
The photographs above, taken through a very powerful microscope, show crystals of
silverbromide before development (on the left) and (on the right) some crystals after
they have been changed into metallic silver by development. The crystals before
development are transparent except where they are seen sideways or where their
edges appear darker. After development the clear yellow silver bromide is turned into
a black coke-like mass of silver in exactly the same position as the crystal from which
it was formed.
the silver and leave the black silver behind, so that we see
a developer is a chemical that has the power to take away
the bromine from the silver in a grain of silver bromide
which has been exposed to light but will not affect one which
has not been exposed to light.
Wherever, then, the light in the Kodak acts upon the
silver bromide crystals in the emulsion, the developer turns
them into black grains of silver and we get an image, and
where the light has not acted the developer has no action
and no image is produced. The chemical part played by a
developer, therefore, is the freeing of the metallic silver from
the bromine associated with it.
This liberation of metals from their compounds is the
most important chemical process in the history of the human
race.
The great thing which has distinguished man from the
other animals has been his ability to make and use tools
and weapons, and man has progressed step by step from the
earliest days when he used a flint fastened to a stick, to the
present time, when he employs the marvelous machinery
37
of modern civilization but the greatest step in all that pro-
;
gress came when men found out how to get metals to use in
the place of stone. All the earliest weapons were made of
stone, and then men found a way of getting tin from its
ores, and found that when this tin was combined with cop-
per, which they found in the ground, they could get bronze,
and for a long time all the weapons and tools were made of
bronze, and then came the greatest discovery of all —
they
found that by taking iron ore and heating it with charcoal
they could get the metal iron, which made such beautiful
tools and weapons; and from the time that men found out
how^ to get iron, they ceased to be savages and began to be
civilized.
Iron is got from the ore by heating it with charcoal or
coke, which takes away the other components of the ore
and leaves the metallic iron free. Metals can be got out of
their compounds in different ways. Quicksilver, for in-
stance, can be got by merely heating its oxide. If the red
oxide of quicksilver be heated the quicksilver will boil off,
and can be collected quite pure at once. Silver is rather
easy to get, and, indeed, if we take a solution of silver nitrate
and add some iron sulphate to it the metallic silver will be
thrown out as a black sludge.
The developers that we use in photography play the same
part for the silver that the charcoal does for the iron they
;
take away the bromine from the silver bromide and leave
the metallic silver behind.
The emulsion coated on films and used for making the
negative contains silver bromide with a small addition of
silver iodide. The difTerent degrees of sensitiveness are ob-
tained by the amount and duration of heat to which the
emulsions are subjected during manufacture, the most sen-
sitive emulsions being heated to higher temperatures and
for a longer time than the slower emulsions.
If a slow bromide emulsion is coated upon paper, the
material is known as bromide paper and is used for printing
and especially for making enlargements. The less sensitive
papers which are commonly used for contact printing by
artificial light, contain silver chloride in the place of silver
bromide.
Materials which are to be used with development must
not contain any excess of soluble silver, and the emulsion
must be made so that there is always an excess of bromide
or chloricle in the solution, since any excess of soluble silver
will produce a heavy deposit or fog, over the whole of the
38
surface as soon as the material is placed in the developer.
In the case of Solio paper, however, which is not used for
development but which is printed out, a chloride emulsion
is made with an excess of silver nitrate, this having the
property of darkening rapidly in the light, so that prints
can be made upon Solio paper without development, a visi-
ble image being printed which can be toned and fixed. Solio
paper can be developed with certain precautions, but only
by the use of acid developers or after treatment with
bromide to remove the excess of silver nitrate.
In the early days of photography prints were usually
made on printing-out papers, but at the present time most
prints are made on developing-out chloride and bromide
papers, which are chemically of the same nature as the nega-
tive making materials, and which are coated with emulsions
containing no free silver nitrate.
39
CHAPTER V.
THE STRUCTURE OF THE DEVELOPED IMAGE.
THE silver grains which form the developed image are

held in a layer of gelatine. This gelatine is used in
making the emulsion which is coated on the support to make
the sensitive film.
Gelatine is a very interesting substance, and its charac-
teristics are markedly different from those of most other
chemical substances. Most chemical substances form crys-
tals, and many of them are soluble in water. When they
are dissolved in water, the solution is quite homogeneous,
that is to say, alike in its
properties in all its parts.
Substances generally will
dissolve in water to a fixed
extent, dependent on the
temperature. Wesay of one
material, for instance, that
it is soluble to the extent of
30%, meaning that a hun-
dred parts of water will take
up 30 parts of the material.
If we heat the solution it will
usually dissolve more, but
then when it cools again
the material will crystallize
out so that whatever we do
we can only obtain the fixed
30 parts per hundred re-
maining in solution.
Gelatine behaves quite dif-
Fig. 38.
ferently to this. In cold
Swelling of Gelatine Cube.
water it does not dissolve
but it swells, as if, instead of the gelatine dissolving in the
water, the water dissolves in the gelatine. If the water is
heated, the gelatine will dissolve in it, and it will dissolve
to any extent. You cannot say that there is a definite solu-
bility of gelatine in water. The more gelatine is added, the
40
STRUCTURE OF THE DEVELOPED IMAGE
thicker the solution becomes, but there is no point at which
the gelatine will refuse to dissolve.
Fig. 39.
Reticulation.
If we heat a gelatine solution it will become thinner and

less viscous when hot, and will not recover completely when
cool; it will remain thinner than if it had not been heated,
so that the heating of the gelatine solution produces a per-
manent change in its properties. If we cool a gelatine solu-
tion, the gelatine will not separate from the solution in a
dry state, but the whole solution will set to a jelly, which
we might consider a solution of water in the gelatine. If we
heat the jelly it will melt again, and we can melt and reset
a jelly many times, but in doing so we shall produce a pro-
gressive change in the jelly, and if we continue the process
too long, sooner or later it will refuse to set and will remain
as a thick, gummy liquid.
Gelatine belongs to the class of substances which are
called colloids, the name being derived from a Greek word
meaning gummy.
When a gelatine jelly is dried, it shrinks down and forms
a horny or glassy layer of the gelatine itself, smooth and
rather brittle, and this dry gelatine when placed in water
will at once absorb the water and swell up again to form a
jelly.
41
An interesting and important property of the drying and
swelling of gelatine is that it swells almost entirely in one
direction, namely, that in which it was dried. This is illus-
trated in Fig. 38. In this, A represents a small cube cut out
of a sheet of gelatine which was originally dried in the
horizontal plane when it was
made. If this cube is placed
in water, it will not swell in
all directions, becoming a
bigger cube, but it will swell
almost entirely in the direc-
tion in which it dried down,
and will take the form B
and, finally, the form C,
The explanation of this
directional swelling of the
Fig. 40. gelatine jelly, and also of the
Spot on Gelatine fact that gelatine solutions
Caused by Moisture.
change permanently with
heating, the fact that gelatine is not a uniform sub-
lies in
stance but has an internal structure. Probably, gelatine has
a structure somewhat like that of a sponge, but the structure
is very small and has not the elasticity of the sponge.
When the gelatine is in the jelly state, it is as though the

sponge were full of water, and then it is fairly rigid, because
of the water contained in the pores. When the water is
dried out, the sponge structure shrinks down, and if it is
stretched out in one direction by being coated on film or
paper, for instance, it will shrink down vertically just as a
sponge without elasticity would fall into a flat mass if placed
on the table.
When the gelatine solution is heated and the gelatine
dissolves, it seems at first to retain a certain amount of its
structure, as if the sponge had disintegrated and was dis-
tributed through the solution but the sponge structure had
not entirely disappeared. Then, if the temperature is raised,
it behaves as if the structure were slowly breaking up and
dissolving, so that after a considerable heating at a high
temperature the whole solution becomes homogeneous.
When this solution is cooled and, finally, set to a jelly, it
has to re-establish a new sponge structure, and this will be
different to the original one and probably of less strength.
This explanation of the behavior of gelatine, that it has
an internal structure which can persist even in solution,
seems to account for most of its properties and behavior.
42
When a gelatine jelly contains only such an amount of
water that it still contains a considerable proportion of
gelatine, over 10% for instance, the jelly will be strong and
tough, but if the jelly contains much less gelatine than this,
it will be weak and likely to rupture on any kind of strain.
This is a very important matter in dealing with photo-
graphic films. When the film is first placed in the developer
the gelatine at once commences to swell. As long as it does
not swell too much it is easily handled, but if it swells too
far, then it becomes very tender and is likely to be damaged
by touch, and in extreme cases will swell so much that it
will loosen from its support or wrinkle up in what is called
"reticulation".
The swelling of a gelatine film is influenced by the tem-
perature of the solution in which it is placed and also by the
presence of other substances in the solution. A small
amount of either acid or alkali will produce a considerable
increase in the swel-
ling, and since the
developer is alkaline
and the fixing bath
is acid, both these so-
lutions have a great
tendency to swell
J^T21 the gelatine, especi-

ally when they are
warm. On the other
hand, sulphites tend
to prevent swelling,
' so that an increase
in the concentration
-r=r-^ ... of the sulphite in a
developer or fixing
bath will diminish it.
An even greater aid
in preventing swel-
ling is the hardener
in the fixing bath.
The hardening
Fig. 41. agents used in fixing
The Way a Waterspot Dries. baths are the alums,
which not only pre-
vent the swelling of the gelatine temporarily but which per-
manently harden the structure of the gelatine so that it will
not easily swell. The alum is introduced into the fixing
43
bath so that after fixing the film will not become soft and
disintegrate in washing.
Reticulation is due to local strains in the gelatine, and a
sudden change in the temperature of solutions will some-
times produce this effect. If a film is transferred for instance
from a cold fixing bath containing a hardener to very warm
wash water, the whole film will sometimes pucker into tiny
reticulations, a good example of which is shown in Fig. 39.
If one part of the film contains much more moisture than
another, the silver image itself is liable to become distorted
by the movement of the gelatine, and of the silver grains in
it. If a drop of water, for instance, falls on a film and this
is dried rapidly, it will often produce a curious ring-shaped
mark, the middle of the drop being lighter and the edge of
the drop darker than the surrounding negative, Fig. 40.
The explanation of this is shown in Fig. 41. The gelatine
swells up where the spot of water fell on it, and as it dries
again a strain is produced by the collapse of the center of the
swollen spot, and so the gelatine and silver grains are pulled
in to the edges of the spot and there produce the dark ring.
APPEARANCE
OF
DEVELOPED
EMULSION
WHEN
MAGNIFIED
20 diameters
400 diameters
100 diameters
900 diameters
Fig. 42.
Appearance of Emulsion After Development When Magnified.
The developed image consists of grains of silver, each

grain under sufficient magnification looking like a little mass
44
of coke, replacing one of the silver bromide crystals which
were originally formed in the emulsion and keeping the
same position. See Fig. 37. When we look at a negative it
appears perfectly smooth to the eye, but under a small
degree of magnification it begins to show an appearance of
graininess.
It must not be thought, however, that with a magnifying
glass we can see the silver grains themselves. The silver
grains are so small that to make them visible requires power-
ful magnification. What we see through the magnifying
glass are clumps of grains.
Suppose that an aviator is flying over country dotted with
occasional woods and clumps of bushes. If he is flying near
to the ground, he will be able to distinguish the separate
trees and bushes. If he goes higher, he will no longer be
able to see them separately but he will see them in little
clumps of two and three where they are close together with
the spaces where they are
farther apart showing be-
T^fm^ff^p<?ip^^ tween them, and then as he
goes higher still, he will no
longer be able to see these
small clumps, but will be
able to see only the large
masses of woodland or for-
Vertical Section Showing Grain est. In the same way when
Deposit.
we look at a negative under
a low magnification, we see
the larger masses of clumps
of grains, and then as we
increase the magnification
we see the smaller clumps
of grains, and then finally
at a very high magnifica-
tion we see the grains them-
selves. Fig. 42.
These clumps of grains
B which we can see under low
Horizontal Plan of Same
Grain Deposit. magnification are made up
Fig. 43. of grains which are not all
in the same layer. This can
be seen by first of all photographing an image from above
and then cutting a section down through it so as to see how
the grains lie one below the other. In Fig. 43 A it will be
seen that the image is as much as six grains deep so that
45
Exposed 1 Unit of Time Exposed 16 Units of Time.
Exposed 4 Units of Time. Exposed 64 Units of Time.

Fig. 44.
many of the clumps of grains seen in Fig. 43 B are not made

up of grains in the same layer but of grains in different
layers, some on the top and some below.
The distribution of the grains in the depth of the film is
interesting. It might be thought that with short exposures
the image would be on the top of the film and that as the
exposure was continued, the light would penetrate farther
and farther into the film, making the grains in the lower
layers more and more developable. This sometimes seems
to be the case, but with some emulsions it is not so, as is
proved by the photographs of sections shown in Fig. 44,
which are cut from an N. C. film. These are fully developed
so that the effect of development is eliminated, and they
show that the grains are exposed at all parts of the film to
!f«^:s-«>5:->^ -*T'->"''"?''^ r-^^v*^
Fig. 45.
Showing Progress of Development from Surface to Base of Emulsion.
46
an almost equal extent, though in the second and third
prints there is a slight tendency for the image to be more
on the top of the film. It looks as though the emulsion con-
tains grains of various degrees of sensitiveness and the more
sensitive grains are made developable first. Further, since
there is certainly more light at the surface of the film, it
,--^^«s Jf*-^'"-' 7r».
Strong or Concentrated Developer.
Weak or Diluted Developer.

Fig. 46.
must be a fact that the more sensitive grains are found in

the lower parts of the film.
During development, however, there is an appreciable
effect due to the penetration of the developer into the film.
This is shown in Fig. 45, where it is seen that at the be-
ginning of development only the surface of the emulsion is
developed, and then as development continues the develop-
er penetrates into the film and develops more and more
deeply in it. In the case of a strong developer this effect is
accentuated, because a strong developer will develop the
surface to good density before it has penetrated through
the emulsion, while a weak developer will penetrate at the
same rate as the strong developer and will not develop so
rapidly, so that with a strong developer there is a tendency
for the image to be confined to the surface of the emulsion,
and with a weaker developer for it to penetrate through the
whole emulsion. This effect is well shown in Fig. 46, w^here
two photographs are shown of the edge of an exposed image,
the image being shown as the dark part on the left, while on
the right we have the light deposit of grains due to fog.
The broad black line at the bottom of each illustration
represents the film on which the emulsion is coated. In
the upper picture, the image was developed with a very
strong developer, while in the lower picture it was devel-
oped with a much weaker developer, and it will be noted
that the weak developer has penetrated right through the
image to the back, while with the strong developer the image
has not developed through to the back of the film, although
47
care was taken to develop the images to the same apparent
density.
There is a curious effect shown in these photographs at
the point marked A, where it is seen that at the edge of the
developed image the fog grains are not developed in the
lower part of the film; it is as if they had been eaten away.
There is no doubt that the reason for this is that the bro-
mide liberated during development of the heavy image has
prevented the fog grains close to the edge of the image from
developing. In extreme cases this will sometimes surround
a dense image with a white line.
48
CHAPTER VI.
EXPOSURE.
order to get a satisfactory photograph of any scene it

IN isnecessary that the exposure should be correct. The time
of exposure required will, of course, depend upon the bright-
ness of the image formed by the lens on the film, and this
in turn will depend upon the aperture of the lens used and
on the brightness of the scene photographed. The bright-
ness of a lamp is measured in terms of its candle power;
that is, a lamp is stated to be equivalent to 1, 5, 10, or
100 candles, the original unit being an actual candle,
though nowadays the practical standards used are electric
lamps which have been carefully measured and which are
kept for use only as standards.
When the light of one candle falls upon an object at a
distance of one foot, the brightness falling on the object is
said to be one foot-candle. When we have 3 candles at a
A foot distance, the
A brightness would, of
course, be 3 foot-can-
/rooT CAfiOLZ dles,and if we use a 25
candle power lamp, the
brightness will be 25
foot-candles. (Fig. 47),
t, If we change the dis-
tance, the brightness
3 FOOT CAfiDLES
will vary inversely as
the square of the dis-
tance, because the
cone of light which
2S roOT CAtlOLlii covers one square at a
17- ^7 foot will embrace 4
squares of the same
size at 2 feet, 9 squares at 3 and so on; and
feet, since the
same light that falls on one square at one foot
is spread
over 4 squares, at 2 feet distance, it is naturally J^ of the
strength, so that a 25 candle power lamp at one foot dis-
49
tance gives a brightness of 25 foot-candles, and at 5 feet
distance it gives only one-foot-candle brightness (Fig. 48).
The
brightness of natural objects can be measured by
means of a photometer, in which the brightness is matched
with a lamp of known brightness. A
convenient form of
the instrument is shown in Fig. 49. In this, the scene is
viewed through a hole in a piece of white paper, and the
white paper, which must be backed on metal so that it is
opaque, is illuminated by a small movable lamp of which
the distance from the paper can be varied. In order to use
the instrument, it is
held up to the eye so
that the brightness to IhFOOT CANDLt
be measured can be
( FOOT CAUDLE,
seen through the hole
in the paper, and then
the lamp is moved un-
til the brightness on
the paper is the same
as that seen through
the hole. Now, the Fig. 48.
brightness which the
lamp throws on the paper can be calculated from the dis-
tance of the lamp, and consequently we can read on the
instrument the brightness of the object to be measured.
^ject
Fig. 49.
Photometer to Measure Relative Brightness.
In Figs. 50 and 51 are shown two landscapes which were
photographed and at the same time were measured with
the photometer, and it will be seen that the sky in these
has a brightness of about 1500 foot-candles, while the
deepest shadows in the foreground have a brightness of
about 60 foot-candles.
50
EXPOSURE
It is often believed by photographers that the range of
Hght intensities occurring in natural objects is very great,
and that in an ordinary landscape, for instance, the sky
will be enormously brighter than the shadows, but this idea
^1600 PC.
60 FX.
Fig. 50.
isquite incorrect. In a bright landscape with heavy shad-

ows, the sky is only about 30 times as bright as the deepest
shadows, while in the case of open landscapes in which
there are no close objects in the foreground, the range of
intensities will be much less than this, the sky often being
only 5 or 6 times as bright as the shadows. The range of
light intensities, therefore, with which it is necessary to
deal in ordinary photography will vary from, perhaps, 1 to
4 at the least up to 1 to 50 as a maximum, and the bright-
est part of a landscape— —
the sky will have a brightness of
from 1000 to 3000 foot-candles. This is the photometric
brightness of the sky itself; but when we take a photograph.,
we are concerned not with the brightness outside but with
that inside the camera; that is, with the brightness of the
image which falls upon the film. This brightness depends
upon the aperture of the lens, and we can calculate it from
the fact that at an aperture of /.8 the photometric bright-
51
ness of the image is about 1/lOOth of the brightness of the
object outside, so that the Hght from the sky falling upon
^1800 F.C
80 F.C.
Fig. 51.
the film will have a brightness of, at most, 30 foot-candles,

and the shadows will be represented by a brightness of
about one foot-candle in a photograph of a landscape having
a brightness range of 30 to 1.
Now, let us consider how much time of exposure will be

required for the film to reproduce the shadows, of which we
see that the image formed on the film has a brightness of
one foot-candle. In order to do this, we must know how
much exposure is required by a film to make it developable.
We can find this by exposing the film to a candle at a fixed
distance and giving it a series of difTerent times of exposures.
It is convenient to have each of these exposures double the
next one, so that one part is exposed for one second, the
next for 2 seconds, the next for 4, and so on. If, now, we
develop and fix the film, and then after it is dry find out
how much silver per square inch we have produced in each
exposed part we shall find that each time the exposure was
52
EXPOSURE
doubled we added almost the same amount of silver (Fig.
52.)
It is rather hard to measure the amount of silver by actual
analysis, but it can easily be done optically by measuring
/ ^^^
24 /-
/
/
13
/
/
/
U
/
/
/
/
3
/
1 2\ A\ \ 1 5 i2 S4 n8 d16
EXPOSURE
Fig. 52.
the blackness of the deposit, and this measurement of the

blackness, which is proportional to the amount of silver
per square inch, is called the ''density". A density of unity
is taken as the standard and represents the blackness of a
deposit which lets through only 1/lOth of the light; it
corresponds to a very small amount of silver only about —
1/lOOth of a grain per square inch.
The relation between the density and the exposure of
the plate can easily be represented as a curve, and for most
of this curve the density is increased proportionally as the
exposure is doubled (See Fig. 53). This condition is that
which produces a correct rendering of the original in the
print, and for that reason the parts of the curve for which
it is true is known as the region of correct exposure. But at
the beginning and the end, the curve is not straight; at the
beginning, the density increases more rapidly; this is known
53
as the region of under-exposure, and at the top of the curve
the density falls off and finally fails to increase at all when
the exposure is increased; this is the region of over-exposure.
We may note that in the example taken the under-exposure
region persists while the exposure increases from unity to
three and one-half units; then we have correct exposure
until the exposure becomes about one hundred and twenty-
eight units, and then the over-exposure region appears, dif-
ferences in exposure failing to grow in density after about
five hundred units of exposure. For a rapid film, the point
marked unity on this curve represents an exposure of about
l/50th of a candle-foot-second; that is, this film requires
an exposure of l/50th of a second to a candle at one foot
distance in order to give the first visible trace of deposit.
When photographing a landscape, we want to obtain in
our negative just a trace of deposit for the shadows, and we
have already seen that the image of the shadows on the
film will have a brightness of one foot-candle, so that the
correct exposure time to give for such a landscape will be
l/50th of a second with the lens working at an aperture of
/.8. The exposure given for such a landscape will therefore
vary from l/50th candle-foot-second in the shadows to
30/50th or 3/5th of a candle-foot-second for the sky.
This reasoning applies to an ordinary film, but photo-
graphic materials are of various speeds, and we can clearly
define the speed according to the exposure required to give
an impression upon it. The shorter the exposure required,
the ''faster" the film; and from the exposure which we find
to be required, we may calculate a number which will repre-
sent the "speed" of the film.
A film might be said to have a speed of unity which re-
quires the exposure of l/50th of a second to give a deposit
equal to that given by the light of an intensity of 1 foot-
candle, such as is reflected from the darkest shadows of a
landscape. But it would be inconvenient to choose unity
as the speed of our film, because the speeds of all slower
materials would have to be expressed in fractions, and in
practice such a film is said to have a speed of 250 in the
units generally used by photographic workers.
We see, therefore, that for a film of speed 250 at /.8
which reduces the light by about 100 times, we shall
require an exposure of l/50th of a second if the light
reflected from the darkest portion is about 100 foot-candles.
If the light reflected from the darkest shadow of the object
54
EXPOSURE
is one foot-candle, we shall require an exposure of 1 second
on a film of speed 500, or 500 seconds with a film of speed
one. Or, generally, if L is the light intensity from the dark-
est part of the subject, P is the speed of the film or plate,
and E is the exposure at/.8, then
500
E =
L X P
E being exposed in seconds, L in foot-candles, and P in
the usual speed units.
It will be seen that this method of calculating exposures
assumes that the exposure is made for the shadows, and in
practical photography this is almost always true; one ex-
poses to get shadow detail and trusts to the latitude of the
emulsion being sufficient to render the whole scale of grada-
tion of the subject.
If, instead of a landscape with foreground, we photo-

graph a quite open landscape with sea or open country in
the distance, then the darkest part of the picture will re-
flect perhaps 1/5 th of the sky light or about 500 foot-candles.
Using a film of speed 250, we should have to give an expos-
ure of only l/250th second at/.8 or about l/60th of a second
at/.16.
Using this line of reasoning, let us consider what the
shortest exposures practicable for figures in rapid motion
are likely to be. The range of contrast when taking a photo-
graph of an athlete jumping, for instance, will be much
smaller than in our typical landscape, and probably 1 to 10
would be a fair approximation; if the scene is in sunlight,
the shadow detail may be represented by 250 foot-candles.
Using the most rapid lenses available for such work, we may
reckon on having 3 times as much light as a lens at/.8 will
give, and we can use a Seed Graflex plate of speed 500 the ;
exposure required will therefore be 500/250 x 3 x 500 or

l/750th of a second. We
see, therefore, that unless the
light conditions are of the very best, the use of such high
shutter speeds will involve some degree of under-exposure,
and this fact illustrates the advantage well-known in prac-
tice of taking very rapidly moving objects as silhouettes
against the sky.
When photographing in the streets of cities, a consider-
ably greater exposure is permissible than in landscape work,
because there are always deep shadows outside the main
55
range of contrast, in which an increase of exposure will give
detail at the expense of the highlights, and an increase of
exposure therefore means a shifting of the center of the
scale of gradation from the highlights to the shadows. In
practice topographical views are usually made at the shorter
exposures, while the pictorial photographer prefers the
longer exposures which concentrate interest on the lower-
toned portions of the picture.
When using color filters, their factors must be allowed
for in considering exposure; thus, taking the speed of film
as 250, the use of the color filter requires an increase of
five times in the exposure, so that for our typical landscape
when using a color filter at/.8 we shall need an exposure of
1/1 0th of a second.
POSITIVE PRINTING.
When printing positives either on paper or on plates for
lantern slides, working conditions are somewhat different,
no camera being used and the object reproduced being a
negative instead of the original subject. The range of
contrast in negatives is frequently much greater than in
natural objects, but the exposure is governed by the same
conditions as those which apply in the negative making.
Such an exposure must be given that the greatest opacity
which it is desired to print through at all just produces a
visible deposit. Usually the highest light of all should be
printed free from any deposit, and the next tone to this
should be taken as the one to be printed through.
Turning to the curve shown in Fig. 53 and considering
a bromide paper,
this will have a
speed of about 5 on
the speed scale, so
that it is 50 times
slower than the film
which we considered
first and the point
marked 1 on the ex-
posure axis corre-
sponds to an expos-
ure of a candle-foot-
second. Now the
highlight which we
— shall want to print
LXPOSURT- through in an aver-
Fig. 53. age negative will let
56
EXPOSURE
through only about l/20th of the light, so that we shall
have to give such a bromide paper an exposure of 20 candle-
foot-seconds behind such a negative, and for a paper or
plate of any speed we may write
5x0
£ =
P
where P the speed of the paper and
is is the opacity of
the highlight in the negative which it is desired to print

through. If the highlight in a negative lets through l/20th
of the light, then the opacity of that negative is said to be
20. If it lets through 1/lOOth, it is 100, and so on.
57
CHAPTER VII.
DEVELOPMENT.
chapter IV we saw that the chemical process of devel-
INopment consists of the removal of the bromine from the
silver bromide in the emulsion so as to leave the grains of
silver behind.
There are many chemicals which will remove bromine
from silver bromide in this way, but in order to act as a
developer, it is necessary that a chemical should be chosen
which has the power of turning the exposed silver bromide
into metallic silver, but which will not act on unexposed
silver bromide, since, if the developer acted on the unexpos-
ed, as well as on the exposed grains, we should not get an
image at all, but the whole film would go dark when put in
the developer, just as if it had all been fogged by exposure
to light. Only a very limited number of chemicals have this
power of distinguishing between exposed and unexposed
grains of silver bromide and, consequently, there are only
a few substances which are suitable for use as developers.
The chief of these developing substances are pyrogallol,
or "pyro" as the photographer calls it, hydroquinone and
elon, all of which are chemically related to aniline, which is
used as the base of coal tar dyes. Hydroquinone and elon,
indeed, are made by the same methods as those used for
making dyes, but pyro is made by distilling gallic acid,
which is produced by fermenting gall nuts, so that, although
pyro is really a cousin of hydroquinone, it is made quite
differently, from a vegetable product, while hydroquinone
itself is made from aniline.
Now, if we take a solution
of one of these chemicals, let
us say pyro, and put an exposed film into it, we shall get no
development at all; the developing agent by itself having
no power to develop. In order to make it develop we must
add a little alkali to the solution. Any kind of alkali will
make it develop, but the most convenient one to use is
carbonate of soda which, in its crude form, is called sal-soda
58
DEVELOPMENT
and is used to make water alkaline for washing. If, then,
we take a solution of pyro and add some sodium carbonate
to it it will develop our exposed films; but a solution con-
taining only pyro, carbonate and water will not keep and,
if we leave it in the air, it will very soon darken and lose its
developing power.
In order to make it keep, there is added to the developer
some sulphite of soda because the developer is spoiled by
taking up oxygen, and sulphite is so greedy for oxygen that
it will take it away from the oxidized pyro or take it in
preference to the pyro, and thus protects the pyro from the
oxidizing action of the air and enables it to keep its develop-
ing power, although the sulphite itself has no developing
power at all.
The essential constituents of a developer therefore are:
Kodelon which is
—
The developing agent pyro or hydroquinone or elon or
a relative of elon— the alkali, which is
generally carbonate of soda, and the preservative, which
is sulphite of soda. Very often a developer which contains
only these constituents will prove difficult to handle. It
will tend to give fog, that is, to develop unexposed silver
bromide as well as exposed silver bromide, and so, in order
to regulate it, there is put in a little potassium bromide to
act as a restrainer.
The various developing agents behave somewhat differ-
ently. Suppose, for instance, that we make up two devel-
opers, one with hydroquinone and the other with elon, and
start to develop a film in each at the same time. In the
elon developer the image will appear very quickly on the
film and will appear all over the film at the same time, the
less exposed portions which, of course, were the shadows in
the picture, appearing at the same time as the highlights.
On the other hand, with the hydroquinone the image will
appear more slowly, and the most exposed portions, or the
highlights, will appear first, so that by the time the shadows
have appeared on the surface of the film the highlights will
have acquired considerable density. If development is stop-
ped as soon as the whole image is out, then the negative
developed in elon will be very thin and gray all over, while
that developed in hydroquinone will have a good deal of
density in the highlights. Thus, of these two developers
we may say that elon gives detail first and then slowly
builds up density, while with hydroquinone the detail comes
only after considerable density has been acquired. It is for
this reason that these two developing agents are used in
59
combination; the hydroquinone gives the density and the
elon the detail, and together they make a well balanced
developer.
These differences in the behavior of developing agents
are due to a property of the developer which can be ex-
plained very easily by an analogy. Suppose that we had
two automobiles of the same kind, one of 20 horse power
and the other of 100 horse power. What would be the dif-
ference between them? Naturally, the high horse power
automobile would be able to go faster than the other; but
in a city, at any rate, either of them would be able to go
as fast as was safe, and no one would wish to use the higher
horse power for increased speed; but the advantage of the
high horse power would be found whenever the auto-
mobiles were used against adverse circumstances, as, for in-
stance, against high winds, in snow or in climbing hills,
when the high-power machine would be able to keep up its
speed against the difficulties, and the lower power machine
would be slowed and might even be unable to get ahead.
The difficulties which affect development in a manner cor-
responding to the effect of hills or winds for an automobile
are cold and bromide. The addition of bromide has the
same effect on a developer that a hill has on an automobile
— it slows it down; but bromide has far more effect on
a low power developer like hydroquinone than it has on a
high-power developer like elon; the effect of bromide on
elon is very small, while on hydroquinone it is very great.
In the same way, hydroquinone develops very slowly when
it is cold, while elon is not nearly so much affected by tem-
perature.
The analogy between the horse power of the automobile
and the power of the developer is really very close. The
high horse power automobile will start from rest very much
more quickly than the machine of lower horse power, just
as the elon developer forces out the image all over the film
much more rapidly than the hydroquinone developer. Just
as the horse power of an automobile could be measured by
the effect of a hill on its speed so the power of a developer
can be measured by the reduction of density produced by
the addition of bromide, and just as one would not wish to
have an over-powered automobile, hard to handle and al-
ways picking up speed very rapidly, so it is difficult to use
the very high-power developers, and elon, for instance, is
rarely used alone, but is generally adjusted by admixture
with the slower hydroquinone.
60
DEVELOPMENT
Pyro is an almost ideal developer for negative making.
Owing to the fact that the pyro is changed during devel-
opment into a yellow colored substance, some of which re-
mains with the silver in the image, pyro tends to give a
slightly yellowish or brownish image. The yellowish stain
is prevented from forming by sulphite, so that the more
sulphite there is in a developer the less tendency to warmth
the deposit will show. Pyro is not used for papers, for
which the blue-black image obtained with elon and hy-
droquinone is preferred.
When a film is developed, it is only the grains of silver
bromide which have been changed by the action of light
that are affected by the developer. The grains that have
not been changed are not affected; at the beginning of
development there are a great many exposed grains ready
to be developed, and then as development proceeds, these
exposed grains are turned into grains of black silver, so that
the number of developable grains decreases during develop-
ment until at last there are no developable grains left; all
those which can be developed have been acted upon, and
development ceases.
The which the development proceeds can best be
rate at
understood by an analogy from fishing. Suppose one went
out fishing and found a pond where there were about four
hundred fish. In the first day's fishing one might catch half
the fish in the pond, or tvvo hundred fish, but the second
day one would not expect to catch the other half; all one
could expect to catch would be the same proportion of the
remaining fish, that is, half of what were left, or one hun-
dred fish, and the third day one might catch half of w^hat
were left again, or fifty fish, and the fourth day half of
what were left again, or twenty-five fish, and so on, the
catch growing smaller as the number left decreased, until
finally no fish were left to catch, or more probably until
one got tired of trying to get the few remaining fish.
This is what happens in development. The rate at which
the grains develop depends upon the number of undevelop-
ed grains left, and as the grains are developed up and the
number of undeveloped grains remaining become less, fewer
and fewer grains develop in each minute, until finally, it is
not worth while to prolong the development in order to
get any more density. (See Fig. 54.)
If the development is prolonged beyond the point at
which all the exposed grains are developed, then there is a
6i
danger of developing some of the unexposed grains, which
produces a veil over the whole negative exposed and un- —
—
exposed portions alike and this veil is known as fog.
Vz % % 'Vê %
-1
1
^
^^
^
'^
§
«o
*^
fc^
t ^
^
^^^^^^
It
^B^^H
^t^ L
I
HI
^^B^^^^l
^^H^^H
S-
^^K ^^^^^^H ^^BS^Î ^^^^^^1
^Hj^^H
^^^^^1
^^^v^^^H ^^^KsS^H
5^
"«
^
::3
^^^K>^^H ^^^^^3^^l
^^^^^^ ^^^^3^1 ^Ê^^l ^lE^^î

^^^^^^^^1 BM
^^K^^^H
:5 ^H^^H ^B^NÎ
^^^^^^1 ^^^^^^1
^^^^^^^H
^^Êl^l ^^^^j^^H
^^Bw^^l ^^^R]^^H
^^^^HH ^Ê^^l
^^^^^rA ^^^^^^1 ^^Ê^^^l ^^^^^^1
-Ki
:s
^^^^^^^1 ^^^^^^^^H
-Q ^Ê^SÎ ^^^^3^^l ^^^^L^>V^Î
BjB^^M ^Ê^^l
"«
^ ^KH^H^^9
ÊH ^K^l ^kI ^kH ^^^^^^^^H
,5-
^s^l ^kI ^^^H
kj
At Beginning After
HI After After After
^1 After
1 Minute 2 Minutes 3 Minutes 4 Minutes 5 Minutes
Development of exposed grains in a film which is half developed in one minute.
Fig. 54.
The growthof the image during development is referred

to as agrowth of density, that is to say, the density is a
measure of the number of grains of silver which are produced
at any given point because these grains of silver, after the
film has been cleared by the fixing bath, obstruct the passage
of light through the film. We
have seen that the density of
an image is measured units which are based on the
in
amount of silver which through 1/lOth of the light,
will let
so that if only 1/lOth of the light falling on the negative
gets through a certain part of it, that portion of the negative
62
DEVELOPMENT
issaid to have a density of 1. The blackest part of a nega-
tive may have a density of perhaps 2, the middle tones 1
or less, and the shadows, perhaps 1/lOth. (Fig. 55.)
The difference of density between the darkest portion
and the lightest portion of the negative is called its contrast.
In most negatives the shadows are nearly clear so that the
contrast depends chiefly on the density of the darkest por-
tion, but this is not necessarily so because an over-exposed
negative, or one taken of a very flat subject, may have no
clear portion in it and may be even very dense owing to
over-exposure, and yet not contrasty at all because there is
very little difference between the density of the most ex-
posed portion and that of the least exposed portion, the
negative being very dense all over. It is necessary to keep
clearly in mind this difference between the density and the
contrast.
Since the contrast depends chiefly
upon the density of the highlights, JD&TZ3lZy /I/
it grows during development j ust as
the density does. It grows rapidly
at first, when there are many grains i^X-ir.
to be devel-
oped, and then ^^^Hî^"*
^^
J-J&tl3ZU\/
'-y---*
more slowly
until, finallv.
Density 7^'^^
Shadows Half Tones Highlights
Fig. 55. Densities of Various Parts of a Negative.
when the grains are all developed, the negative will not
give any more contrast however long development may be
prolonged, and a continuation of development will only
result in the production of fog. (Fig. 56.)
After 1 Minute After 2 Minutes After 3 Minutes

Fig. 56. Growth of Contrast During Development.
63
The final contrast which can be obtained depends upon the
kind of emulsion used. The fast emulsions, such as the
film emulsions, give moderate contrast, but the slow emul-
sions, such as those used for copying purposes or for making
lantern slides, are specially made to give great con-
trast when development is prolonged. (Fig. 57.)
Highly Sensitive Film Medium Speed Plate Slow Lantern Plate

Fig. 57.
Greatest Contrasts With Different Emulsions.
Itwould be convenient if the manufacturer could make

the film so that it would be impossible to over-develop it,
but this is not practicable. It would be possible if a film
developed at an even rate and then stopped developing
when it was correctly developed as is shown in Fig. 58,
where development is supposed to go straight on for a
given time and then stop altogether, the film not changing
after that time. But the film does not develop like this;
the growth of the image gets slower as time goes on but it
takes a very long time indeed to stop completely, so that
the growth of the image occurs as shown in Fig. 59. If
TIME OF DEVELOPMENT TIME or DEVELOPMENT
Fig. 58. Fig. 59.

Growth of Image During Development Growth of Image During Development
(to be desired) (actual)
64
DEVELOPMENT
a film were made so that we had to develop it as far as we
could, it would take too long to develop, and therefore it is
necessary to make a film that is capable of giving more
density than is required in order that it may be developed
in a sufficiently short time; this means that we must be
able to stop development at the right time to get enough
density and contrast, the density being the blackness of
the image and the contrast.
Old-time photographers used to take pride in the accuracy
with which they could judge the progress of the develop-
ment of negatives, and it was regarded as quite wrong when,
in recent years, people insisted that negatives could be
developed just as well by timing the development as by
watching it, and that it was better for the negatives not to
be watched.
The customary way of judging the progress of develop-
ment in a negative is to hold it up to a lamp and look
through it, but unless one has had a lot of experience he is
very likely to be deceived because the apparent density of
a negative held up to a light is very difficult to judge. The
emulsion which has not been developed makes it appear
stronger than it really is, and beginners almost always
under-develop negatives if they try to judge when to stop
development. If for some reason it is necessary to judge
the progress of development by inspection (and this applies
particularly to lantern slides), the best way is to turn the
emulsion side to the light and look through from the back.
This is much less misleading than if they are examined from
the front.
There is no doubt, however, that the best method of
judging development is simply to develop for a fixed time.
Films are best developed in a film tank, and the time of
development, at a temperature of 65° for the tank developer,
is 20 minutes. This time depends on the temperature. If
the temperature is lower than 65° the time must be in-
creased, and if it is higher than 65° the time must be reduced.
Instructions for development are furnished with each
Kodak or Premo tank. It might be thought that if the
film were over-exposed and so gave density easily it should
be developed for a shorter time than if it had received less
exposure, but this idea is quite wrong, because what is
wanted in a negative is not correct density, which only
affects the time of printing, but correct contrast, and the
contrast is controlled by the time of development. An over-
65
exposed film will tend to have too little contrast, and if the
development is lessened the contrast will be still further re-
duced and the negative will be flat. On the other hand, an
under-exposed film tends to be too contrasty, and must not
be forced in development or it may be unprintable, and so
whatever the exposure, the best result will be obtained by
the use of the normal time of development. Of course, the
best negative can only be obtained by correct exposure as
well as by correct development, and it is a mistake to think
that we can correct errors in exposure by deviation from
the correct time of development.
66
CHAPTER VIII.
THE REPRODUCTION OF LIGHT AND SHADE IN
PHOTOGRAPHY.
PHOTOGRAPHY is the art of making representations of
natural objects by mechanical and chemical processes.
These representations deal with differences of brightness,
color being ignored, except in color photography, and the
object of the photographic process is to translate, as ac-
curately as possible, the degrees of brightness which occur
in natural objects into corresponding degrees of brightness
in a photographic print.
It is not possible to convey any impression in a photo-
graph of the brightness of an object of even brightness; a
piece of black velvet seen in bright sunlight is brighter than
a piece of white paper in a dark room, so that it is impos-
sible to speak of the brightness of paper or the blackness of
velvet unless there is some standard of comparison by which
it can be measured. If black marks are made on the white
paper and then photographed, the resulting print will re-
produce the relative intensity of the black marks and of
the white paper.
When a representation of a natural object is made on a
flat surface, the form can be represented only by differences
Fig. 60. Fig. 61.

Two Tones. Three Tones.
67
of brightness or color. Shape is only possible in sculpture.
The painter uses differences of brightness and of color,
while the black and white draftsman uses only the differ-
ences of brightness. Except in the special branch of color
photography, photographs deal only with the reproduction
of objects in their degrees of brightness.
The different degrees of brightness are spoken of by
on which black
artists as ''tones." If a piece of white paper
marks have been made is photographed the result will be
a picture in two tones (Fig. 60). Between these extremes
are other tones spoken of as halftones. Figs. 61, 62, and
63 show the effects of additional tones. In Fig. 64 the six
tones complete the repre-
sentation of a solid object,
from which it will be seen
that form and substance
are shown by degrees of
brightness. In the mind
the forms of natural objects
are comprehended by the
degrees of brightness that
occur in them. It is the
business of photography to
reproduce these different
degrees of brightness,which
may vary from white to
black.
Fig. 62. Differences in brightness
Four Tones. which occur in nature may
Fig. 63. Fig. 64.

Five Tones. Six Tones.
68
REPRODUCTION OF LIGHT AND SHADE
Fig. 65. Fig. 66.

Front Lighting (Flatness). Side and Top Lighting (Tone
Graduations).
be produced by differences in the illumination of the object.

If a plaster cast is lighted directly from the front the out-
lines will be visible but there will be no variation in tone. It
will have a flat, even appearance (Fig. 65). If the cast is
lighted from one side shadows will be formed, there will be
variations in illumination, and in this way tones will be pro-
duced by shadow (Fig. 66).
Thebrightness of an object depends not only upon the
illumination falling upon it, but also upon the reflecting
power of the object itself. Things differ very much in re-
flecting power. If a piece of white paper represents a re-
flecting power of 80%, a piece of gray paper may reflect
only 44% of the light falling upon it, and so on down the
scale, a piece of black paper reflecting only about 5%. The
brightest thing known is white chalk, which reflects 90% of
the light falling upon it; that is, of all the light falling on
the white chalk 90% is reflected back. Snow does not re-
flect quite as much light as chalk. The ordinary red brick
69
wall reflects only about 20%. Good black printers' ink
reflects about 10%, and the blackest thing, black velvet,
will reflect about 1% or 2% of the light falling upon it.
Since in natural scenes both the reflecting power and the
illumination vary, some parts of a landscape consisting of
clouds in sunlight, and others of dark rocks in the shade,
the range of contrast is often very considerable. For photo-
graphic purposes a scale, or contrast of 1 to 4, in which the
brightest thing is only four times as bright as the darkest,
is very low, and such a subject would be called flat; a con-
trast of 1 to 10 is a medium soft contrast; 1 to 20 a strong
contrast; 1 to 40 very strong and 1 to 100 an extreme de-
gree of contrast. All these degrees of contrast occur in
subjects such as landscapes, street and seashore scenes.
Since the more nearly we can reproduce in our picture
the range of brightnesses which were present when the pic-
ture was taken, the better the picture will represent the
original scene, our object in photography must be to get an
accurate reproduction of the various tones or brightnesses
which occur, keeping each tone in its same relative position
in the scale as it occupied in the subject which was photo-
graphed. This is, of course, easier to do if the range of
brightnesses is small than if it is very great.
When we make a photograph we do the operation in two
separate steps. We first make a negative upon a highly
sensitive material and obtain a result in which all the tones
of the original are inverted, the brightest part of the sub-
ject being represented by a deposit of silver in the negative
which lets through the least amount of light, while the dark-
er parts of the subject are represented by transparent areas
in the negative which let through the most light. This nega-
tive is then printed upon a sensitive paper, in which opera-
tion the scale of tones is again reversed so that the bright
parts of the subject which were represented by heavy de-
posits in the negative now appear as the light areas of the
print and the dark portions of the subject which were trans-
parent in the negative are represented by dark deposits in
the print.
In order to find out how closely the tones of the print
follow those of the original subject we must follow the
changes of these tones through both steps: we must study
first how far the negative reproduces in an inverted form
the tones of the subject and then how accurately the
printing paper inverts these again to give a representation
of the original.
70
Any silver deposit in the negative will let through a certain
proportion of the light which falls upon it. A very light
deposit may let through half the light, a dense deposit one-
tenth, a very dense
deposit one-hun-
dredth or even only
one- thousandth.
The amount of de-
posit through which
c one can see depends,
of course, upon the
brightness of the
D I scene at which one
is looking, but it is
interesting to note
that one can see the
sun through a de-
B posit which lets
through only about
one- twenty-billionth
of its light.
Fig. 67. These fractions of
Five Toned Block.
the light which are
let through are re-
ferred to as the "transparency" of the deposit, and the
inverse of the transparency is called the ''opacity", the
opacity, therefore,
being the light-stop-
ping power of the
deposit. A deposit
which lets through
half the light, for in-
stance, is said to
have a transparency
of 3ând an opacity
of 2. Similarly, one
which lets through
one-tenth of the light
has a transparency
of 1/10 and an opac-
ity of 10.
If the negative is
to be the exact in-
verse of the scale of Pi 53
tones of the subject. Negative of Five Toned Block.
71
then the opacities of the different areas must be in propor-
tion to the brightnesses of the parts of the subject which
produce them. In Fig. 67 we have a subject in which if we
take the black background as having a brightness of 1, the
brightest portion will have a brightness of 10, and the other
portion will be in proportion. Then when we make a nega-
tive of this we shall get the picture shown in Fig. 68, and
in this, ifwe measure the opacities of the negative, we ought
to find them exactly inverse to those of Fig. 67, so that the
transparency of the background, A, would be ten times that
of the table, B, or the opacity of the table, B, will be ten
Fig. 69.
Graded Strip of Exposures.
times that of the background, A. Not only this, but the

relative opacity of the deposits in the areas C, D and E
should also be the same as the brightnesses of C, D and E
in the original subject.
It will be seen by the foregoing, therefore, that a tech-
nically perfect negative will be one in which the opacities
of its different gradations are exactly proportional to the
light reflected by those portions of the original subject
which they represent.
Let us now consider how far we can fulfill this condition
and what must be done to obtain such a perfect negative
of any subject.
Suppose that a photographic plate or film is exposed to
a series of known brightnessess for instance, that we photo-
;
graph a scale made up of steps of different reflecting powers

so the brightness of each step is doubled with regard to the
next one.
The result that such a series of exposures will give has
already been discussed in Chapter VI but we must now look
,
into the matter somewhat more carefully. We shall get a

negative which will look like Fig. 69. Now if the rendering
is technically perfect, the opacities of this negative should
be the same as the brightnesses of the different steps of the
original that is to say, as each step is twice the brightness
;
of the next step, the light let through each step of the
negative should be half the amount of the step next to it.
72
This would be attained if each step in the negative added
the same amount of silver to the deposit, so that if we

could represent the silver for each step as altering the
thickness of the silver deposit (it does not do this really,
of course; it adds to the number of grains in the same
layer) and then could cut an imaginary section through
Fig. 70. Fig. 71.

Heights of Silver Deposits Heights of Silver Deposits
(diagram). (Line Diagram).
the negative so as to show the height of the deposit

of silver, it should look like Fig. 70 and if we draw a dia-
;
gram in which the amount of silver is represented by the

height of a vertical line, the diagram showing the amount
of silver for the different steps might look like Fig. 71.
If we actually try this experiment, however, we shall find
that the silver does not rise quite uniformly in this way as
the exposure is increased through the entire scale, but that
instead we get the diagram
shown in Fig. 72, and this dia-
gram, which represents the act- p- r-
ual relation between the silver
deposit in a photographic ma-
^ ^
terial and the increase of ex- y

posure, requires careful study. /
/
Starting at A and proceeding
to B we notice that at the be-
ginning, in the lower exposures,
the steps are marked by a grad-
ually increasing rise, and, there-
fore, in this part of the exposure
scale there will be too great a
Fig. 72.
gain in opacity for each given Diagram of Actual Increase and
increase of exposure. A nega- Graded Strip.
tive, the gradations of which
fall in this period, will yield prints in which an increasing
contrast is shown between tones of uniform increase of
brightness; that is to say, it will appear what we term
"under-exposed." From this period at B we pass imper-
73
ceptibly into the period where the densities show an equal
rise for each equal increase of exposure, and here we have
our technically perfect negative, that is, one in which the
opacities are exactly proportional to the light intensities
of the subject. This is termed the "period of correct ex-
posure," and only through this period of the curve where
the opacities are directly proportional to the exposures and
where the densities show an equal increase each time the
exposure is doubled shall we get a perfect rendering of the
original subject. From the point C onwards we have a
gradually decreasing rise in the steps with increase of expos-
ure until, finally, the increase of density with further expos-
ure becomes imperceptible. This period is the period of
"over-exposure," in which the opacities of the negative fail
to respond to increasing amounts of exposure and the
correctness of rendering is again lost. It will be seen at
once, then, from this curve that only through the period
of correct exposure where equal increases of exposure are
represented by equal rises in density can tones of the
original subject be correctly reproduced in the print.
If we join all these points to-
gether instead of representing
them as a staircase effect, as is
shown by dotted line in Fig. 72,
we get a smooth curve. Fig 73,
of which the straight line por-
tion (B to C) represents the
period of correct exposure,
while the more or less curved
portions at the beginning and
end of the curve correspond to Fig- 73.
the periods of under-exposure ^"^^^ Showing Under, Correct

^ ^ and Over-exposure.
andJ over-exposure.
It must be realized that no ordinary negative can show
the whole range of exposures from beginning to end of this
curve. This is because the range of brightnesses covered
by the whole curve is much greater than that which occurs
in ordinary subjects and consequently it is quite possible
to represent an ordinary subject entirely in the period of
correct exposure, avoiding both the period of under-expos-
ure and the period of over-exposure. If, therefore, we wish
to obtain a technically perfect negative, we must expose so
that the subject which we are photographing falls into this
period of correct exposure, when we shall obtain a negative
in which there will be no wholly transparent film, since this
74
would mean that we had entered the period of under-ex-
posure, and there will be no blocked up masses of silver
since this would mean that the negative was over-exposed.
The capacity of a photographic material to render the scale
of tone values correctly is, therefore, entirely a matter of
the length of the straight line portion of the curve, and it
is the length of this straight line portion in the case of Kodak
film which gives its well-known "quality" to the material.
By the use of a material of this kind which has a long
straight line portion to the curve, and of an exposure which
will place the scale of intensities on that straight line por-
tion we can correctly translate the tones of the subject into
corresponding opacities in the negative and obtain a tech-
nically perfect negative.
When we come to the second step of the process, however,
and make a print from this negative, we find that however
carefully we choose our exposure and development perfect
reproduction in the print is unobtainable. For a negative
material the relation between the silver deposit and the in-
crease of exposure is given by a curve similar to that shown
in Fig. 73, and in this curve the straight line portion (B to C)
represents the period of correct exposure, so that to obtain
perfect reproduction in the negative we must expose so that
the whole range of brightnesses in the subject falls within
this period of correct exposure, none of the tones being
represented by densities in the negative which fall on the
curved portions at the beginning and end of the curve cor-
responding to the periods of under and over-exposure.
When we make a print, however, we cannot do this be-
cause in a print we are forced to use the whole range of re-
flecting power of the printing paper; we must have high-
lights which are almost white paper, and shadows which
are as black as the silver deposit will give. This is necessary
because the total range of tones which can be obtained by
reflected light is none too great for the reproduction of
natural subjects, while in negatives, where the light is trans-
mitted instead of reflected, the available range is enormous
and we need make use of only a small portion of it. This
is also true in the case of transparent positives such as lan-
tern slides and motion picture films, which give the best
rendering of any printing material.
We can try the effect of an increasing series of exposures
upon a printing paper in exactly the same way as upon a.
film, that is, we can give a first exposure just sufficient to
get a barely perceptible image after development, then ex-
75
—
pose another portion for twice the time, another for four
times, and so on. Now instead of measuring the Hght
transmitted by the various densities, as we did in the case
of the film, we must measure the light reflected from them.
We get a series of ''reflection densities" on paper correspond-
to the transmission
densities of the
film and we can ex-
press the result in
the form of a curve
7—
just as we did in
/
the case of the film.
—*— Thus in Fig. 74
/
we see that the
~7 / densities increase
/
/
/ gradually at first,
/
as shown on the
/ lower portion of
/
the curve, then
**
grow in equal steps
! I I I I I II I
for equal increases

Fig. 74.
of exposure, as with
Curve of a Printing Paper.
the film, and then
the increase not only grows less, but very soon stops alto-
gether, as shown by the upper portion of the curve. This
result only occurs with a film with very great exposures
indeed, since after a film begins to be over-exposed there
is still a considerable range of exposures before the increase
of density with exposure actually ceases. Therefore, a paper
is seen to dififer from a film in that we rapidly reach a point
where we have obtained the maximum blackness of deposit
which the sensitive emulsion is capable of giving and where
no further increase of exposure will enable us to obtain a
more intense black.
The reason for this is that with the paper we are dealing
with reflected and not with transmitted light, as in
light,
the case of the film, and the light is reflected from three
—
surfaces from the surface of the gelatine, from the surface
of the silver deposit, and that which is not absorbed in
passing through the silver deposit is reflected from the paper
beneath.
The rule for correct rendering of tones on the paper is
the same as for the negative; that is, the tones which fall on
the straight line portion of the curve are rendered correctly,
and those which fall on the top and bottom portions of
76
the curve do not reproduce the tones of the negative in
their correct position. As has already been said, how-
ever, the difference is that in the negative we can gen-
erally confine the scale of the subject to the straight line
part of the curve, while in
printing we are forced to use
the whole curve, including
those portions which cannot
give a perfectly correct ren-
dering of the tones of the
negative.
Different papers some-
times show very different
curves; thus in Fig. 75 we
see the way in which two
different papers give their
scales of tones both give the
;
same range of tones, both

Fig. 75.
Curves Showing Good and Poor require the same range of
"Quality" in a Printing Paper. exposures to give the entire
range of tones, but in the
one the deposit grows evenly with the increase of exposure
while in the other the curve is scarcely straight at all. The
paper showing the even growth of deposit will give a correct
rendering of the tones of the negative throughout the
greater part of its curve (shown by dotted line in Fig. 75)
and it is generally said that such a paper has good "quality"
while the paper with the uneven growth (solid line Fig. 75)
has poor "quality". For papers, therefore, as well as for
negative-making materials, quality depends upon the pro-
portion of the curve which is a straight line, and the
straighter the curve the better the quality.
77
CHAPTER IX.
PRINTING.
AGREAT number of different processes have been used

at one time or another for printing negatives. The
earliest printing processes depended upon the fact that
silver compounds darken in light, and the first printing
paper to be used generally was made by soaking a sheet of
paper in a solution of table salt and washing this over with
a solution of silver nitrate so as to convert the salt into
silver chloride. Paper so prepared was known as "salted"
paper on which, after exposure to light behind a negative,
a print was obtained which could be toned by the deposition
of gold from a solution and then fixed with hypo. Abetter
paper was made by using albumen obtained from the white
of eggs. After adding salt to it the albumen was spread over
the surface of the paper and then sensitized by treatment
with a solution of silver nitrate.
After the gelatine process for negatives was discovered
gelatine emulsions were applied to printing papers. Gela-
tine paper was made by emulsifying silver chloride in gela-
tine with an excess of silver nitrate and then coating it on
paper just as films are coated with the sensitive negative
emulsion. The typical gelatino-chloride paper of this type
is Solio.
To
use Solio, the negative is put in a printing frame, and
the paper is put with its coated side in contact with the
emulsion side of the negative and pressed into contact by
closing the back of the printing frame. The frame is then
exposed to daylight and the image printed on the paper,
which darkens to a brownish-red colour. From time to time
the depth of the printing is observed by opening the back
of the frame. The image must be printed to a somewhat
darker colour than will be required in the finished picture.
When printed the paper is removed in subdued light and
the print is toned by immersing in a solution containing
gold so that the metallic gold is deposited on the print,
giving it a purple colour. After toning, the print is fixed in
a hypo solution and washed. A toning process is necessary
78
PRINTING
with all printing-out silver papers, such as Solio, albumen-
ized paper, or salted paper, because if the printed-out silver
image is fixed without toning, the fixing bath changes it to
an ugly yellow color and a very poor-looking print results.
The gold toning produces a rich-looking, permanent image
which varies in color from brown to purple; these colors,
indeed, used to be regarded as the only satisfactory colors
for photographs.
Thechief use for printing-out papers at the present time
is making of photographers' proofs. For this purpose
for the
the negatives are printed, but the prints are not toned or
fixed, and, while they are satisfactory for examination, they
cannot be kept, because they darken in the light, the
photographer supplying them only as samples to show the
pose and expression, and making permanent prints to order
later.
Quite early in the history of photography it was dis-
covered that many substances besides the salts of silver are
sensitive to light. One process of printing, the platinum
process, is founded upon the sensitiveness to light of iron
salts. If paper is coated with ferric oxalate, which is a
green soluble salt of iron, and this is exposed to light, the
ferric oxalate is changed into another oxalate of iron, ferrous
oxalate, which is insoluble, so that a sheet of paper thus
prepared and printed will, after washing, give a faint image
consisting of ferrous oxalate. If, to the ferric oxalate with
which the paper is prepared, a solution of a platinum com-
pound is added and then, after printing, the faintly visible
image is put into a solution of a soluble oxalate, the ferrous
oxalate is dissolved and attacks the platinum salt, which is
not affected by the ferric oxalate, precipitating metallic
platinum on the paper so that an image is obtained con-
sisting of black metallic platinum.
Another process depends upon the fact that gelatine con-
taining bichromate becomes insoluble in water on exposure
to light, and this process is known as the "pigment" process
or more commonly as the "carbon" process, the name being
derived from the fact that the gelatine used in the early
days of the process contained finely divided carbon or lamp
black to act as a pigment. The printing paper is made by
coating the paper stock with a thick gelatine solution con-
taining finely divided pigment suspended in it. The pigment
is chosen according to the color of the print required. For a
black image it may be lamp black, for a red image red ochre
or burnt sienna, and for images of other colors any perma-
79
nent and stable pigment of the color desired which can be
finely powdered. After the coated gelatine has been dried
the paper is immersed in a solution of bichromate of potash
or ammonia and again dried. This bichromated gelatine is
quite soluble in hot water, but if it is exposed to light it
becomes insoluble where the light has acted upon it. The
bichromated gelatine is, therefore, printed under the nega-
tive in the same way as a Solio print. No visible image is
produced, and to get the visible print it is necessary to wash
away the soft gelatine. The gelatine, which has been hard-
ened by the action of light, is on the surface of the print
and the soft gelatine is at the back, so in order to develop
the print it is put face down on to another sheet of paper
and placed in hot water. After a short time the soluble
gelatine begins to ooze out at the edges of the print and
the whole of the original paper can be pulled off, leaving the
image covered with a sticky mass of partly dissolved gela-
tine on the paper to which it has been transferred. This
image is then washed in hot water until all the soluble gela-
tine has been washed away, leaving a clear image of the
pigmented gelatine on the paper.
All these printing-out processes require a long exposure
to strong daylight, and they have become more or less ob-
solete owing to the trouble of working them and especially
the difficulty of judging the correct exposure with such a
variable illuminant as daylight. They have been displaced
by printing processes in which the paper used is coated
with an emulsion very similar to that used for making the
negative, but of considerably less sensitiveness. This paper,
known as development paper, is exposed behind the negative
and is then developed, in the same way as a negative, to
give a visible image.
The oldest of these development papers is bromide paper.
This paper is coated with an emulsion very similar to the
ordinary negative emulsions but of somewhat less sensi-
tiveness. The paper is very sensitive to light and must be
worked by red or orange light only. The exposure for print-
ing is, of course, very short and the paper is, in fact, mostly
used for enlarging, the image of the negative being thrown
upon the sensitive bromide paper by a projection lantern so
as to obtain an enlarged picture from the negative.
About 1894 Velox paper was introduced and was an en-
tire novelty, since while it was similar to bromide paper in
that it is exposed to an artificial light and then developed
and fixed, it is so much less sensitive than bromide paper
80
PRINTING
that can be worked in a room lighted by a weak artificial
it
light and does not require a special darkroom, from which
fact it is known as "gaslight" paper. Since the introduction
of Velox other gaslight papers have been made and at
present almost all prints made by contact from negatives
are made on gaslight papers, though Velox is still the best
known of all. Velox is about a thousand times slower than
bromide paper so that it can be handled safely in any sub-
dued light. It requires an exposure that ranges from about
2 seconds to about a minute and a half, depending on the
density of the negative and the grade of Velox used, at one
foot from a 25-watt Mazda lamp, and it is characterized
especially by the extreme rapidity and ease of its develop-
ment, from which its name is derived, Contrast and Regular
developing fully in 15 to 20 seconds and Special Velox
in about 30 seconds. It is consequently possible by using
Velox to make prints in comfort and with great rapidity,
the old troubles of judging the extent of the printing, and
the difficulties with toning baths being entirely absent
with this simple and convenient printing medium.
Fig. 76.
Degrees of Light Intensities.
Velox paper is made in three grades of contrast to fit dif-

ferent types of negatives. The paper was originally made
in the Regular grade only, but it was found that many
negatives were too contrasty to print well on this paper and
Special Velox was manufactured for use with such negatives,
while recently Contrast Velox has been put on the market
for use with negatives so lacking in contrast that they will
not give good prints even on the Regular grade.
If we make three negatives of the same subject in succes-
sion, giving each exactly the same exposure, and then dev-
elop these for different lengths of time so that the first will
be underdeveloped the second correctly developed, and the
third over developed, the first negative will have a short
range of contrast, the second a medium range, and the third
a long range. If we then print the first negative on Contrast
Velox, the second on Regular Velox, and the third on Special
Velox, we shall get almost identical prints on all three papers
8i
Soft Negative of Little Contrast. Print from Opposite Negative

on Contrast Velox.
'W^
Average Negative of Medium Contrast. Print from Opposite Negative
i
on Regular Velox.
Hard Negative of Strong Contrast. Print from Opposite Negative

Fig. 77. on Special Velox.
provided that the contrasts of the negatives just fit the

various grades of the paper. This is shown in Fig. 77.
We might think that Contrast Velox would always give
more contrasty prints than Regular Velox; it will if both
papers are printed from the same negative, but if the Contrast
Velox is printed from a flat negative and the Regular Velox
from a normal negative, then the Contrast Velox will com-
pensate for the flat negative and give a normal print, just as
82
PRINTING
the Regular Velox gives a normal print from a normal neg-
ative, and the Special Velox a normal print from a con-
trasty negative.
Fig. 78. Range of 44 Distinct Tones.
All the grades of Velox give the same range of reflecting

powers in the print provided that they are used with nega-
tives which will enable this range to develop. Suppose we^
take a black wedge which contains all the degrees of light
intensities, from absolute opacity at one end to absolute
transparency at the other end and make a print of it. We
should get the result shown in Fig. 76. This shows the
entire range of reflecting power of which the paper is
capable, the range varying from white paper at one end to
the blackest silver deposit which the paper can give, at
the other.
With any 'Velvet" surface paper, such as Velvet Velox,
we shall find that the white paper will reflect about twenty-
five times as much light as the deepest silver deposit. The
number of distinct tones
which are included in this
range from white to black
depends, of course, on the
ability of the eye to dis-
tinguish them. The eye
can actually see about one
hundred distinct tones in
such a range.
In Fig. 78 is shown a
range of tones made up,
not as a continuous wedge,
but of forty-four distinct
tones. The number which
can be seen in the illustra-
tion is less than the num-
ber which the eye can dis-
tinguish in a print because
Contrast Regular Special
Velox Velox Velox
of the limitations imposed
Fig. 79. by the process of half-tone
83
Fig. 80.
Print Showing Empty Highlights.
^
Fig. 81.
Print Showing Blocked Shadows.
84
PRINTING
re-production. the full one hundred tones which the eye
If
can distinguish a print were reproduced by the half-tone
in
process the halftone illustration would look like a con-
tinuous wedge.
In Fig. 79 the same wedge has been printed on all three
papers, and it will be seen that Contrast Velox has reached
its full blackness only a short distance up the wedge,
Regular Velox
has gone further,
and Special Velox
has gone the far-
thest of all, so
that wh ile all
three papers will
give the same
range of tones,
this range is im-
pressed on Con-
trast Velox with
only a short range
of densities in the
negative ; for
Regular Velox a
longer range is
needed, and for
Special Velox a
still longer range.
Fig. 82.
Gray, Flat Print. The range of
densities required
in a negative to just print out the full range of tones on a
*
paper is called the 'scale" of the paper and this is measured

by trying an increasing series of exposures until the range
of exposures which will just give the whole range of tones
on the paper is found that is, if an exposure of one second
;
to the bare paper with no negative will just give the first
perceptible difference from white paper, so as to show the
first trace of tint on the paper, and an exposure of twenty
seconds will give the deepest black the paper is capable of
rendering, so that no increase of exposure will produce any
denser black, then we should call the scale of the printing
paper 1 to 20.
Thus the word "scale" applied to a printing paper does
not refer at all to the range of tones in the print. It indi-
cates the range of contrast in the negative which should be
printed on that paper. A paper with a scale of 1 to 20 will
85
require a negative in which the densest part lets through
1/20 of the light transmitted by the clearest part, because
if this negative is printed on that paper the print will just
have the whole range of tones from white to black com-

pletely printed out, each tone in the print corresponding
to a density in the negative, and there will be no differ-
ences of density in the negative unrepresented by differ-
ences of tone in the print.
Special Velox has a scale of about 1 to 20 and is suitable
for printing from contrasty negatives. Regular Velox has
a scale of about 1 to 10 and is suitable for printing from
negatives of moderate contrast, while the very flattest and
least contrasty negatives, which are the result either of ex-
cessive over-exposure or underdevelopment should be
printed on Contrast Velox, which has a scale of about 1 to 5.
It is important to choose the grade of paper correctly for
the negative. If the paper is too contrasty for the negative;
if, for instance, we print a hard negative (one that has
strong contrast) on Contrast Velox, then we shall have to
sacrifice a part of the scale of the negative; either we shall
get the highlights empty and white, as shown in Fig. 80, or
we shall get the shadows blocked up, as shown in Fig. 81.
On the other hand, if the scale of the paper is too long for
the negative and we print a soft negative (one that has
little contrast) on Special Velox, for instance, when we
should have used Regular Velox, then we shall get a gray,
flat print, as is shown in Fig. 82.
With paper, as with film, the density of the picture is
controlled by the duration of the exposure and the develop-
ment, but whereas with films the contrast is dependent upon
the time of development, the contrast increasing as the
development is continued, with paper the contrast is fixed
by the maker, and after a few seconds the development
does not change the contrast of the print at all but only
affects the density of the deposit. This is illustrated in
Figs. 83 and 84.
In Fig. 83 we see that with increasing time of develop-
ment, a film shows an increase in contrast, while in Fig. 84
that by prolonging development it is clear after reaching a
certain stage in the development of a print there is only
an increase in total density and no increase in contrast.
If a print is over-exposed, it can be taken out of the dev-
eloper before it is fully developed, and if under-exposed, it
can similarly be forced in development, though there is
some risk of yellow stain if development is continued too
86
PRINTING
long. The best results can, of course, only be obtained by
getting the exposure right and giving the normal time of
development, which is from 15 to 20 seconds for Contrast
and Regular Velox, and about 30 seconds for Special Velox.
Fig. 83. Fig. 84.

Growth of Contrast with Devel- Increase of Density with Devel-
opment, Eastman N. C. Film. opment, Velox Paper.
The matter of greatest importance for getting really first-

class prints, therefore, is" to give them the right time of
exposure.
Before starting to print a number of negatives they
should be classified for contrast so as to choose a suitable
grade of paper for printing them; that is to say, put the
negatives in three envelopes according to whether they are
to be printed on Special, Regular or Contrast Velox. Now
take the negatives in each of these envelopes and divide
—
them again into three more classes normal negatives hav-
ing average density, thin negatives, and dense negatives.
When printing, if we take the exposure for the normal
negative as standard, then the thin negatives will require
half this standard exposure and the dense negatives will
require twice, while sometimes we may possibly meet an
—
exceptional negative very thin or very dense which may —
require one-fourth or four times the standard exposure.
Having classified our negatives in this way, in order to get
our exposures right we need know only the exposure on each
grade of Velox paper for our standard negatives, and if we
print with a 25-watt tungsten lamp at a distance of one
foot, we shall find that the exposure for a standard negative
will be about 20 seconds for Special Velox, about one
87
minute for Regular, and one and a half minutes for Contrast.
These figures are to be taken only as a guide, and when a
new light or a new package of paper is used for the first
time, trial exposures should be made with the standard
negative, giving, say, 15, 20 and 30 seconds exposure, so
as to select the exposure which develops to the right density
with the correct time of development.
It is best always to use the same standard negative for
testing a new paper or a new lamp and any other
printing
new conditions that may arise in printing, as more useful
information will be gained by making tests with one nega-
tive only than if a different negative is selected each time
a test is to be made.
If the subject of exposure is dealt with in this way, if the
negatives are classified for density before printing, and a
test is made on a standard negative, it will be found easy
to print a large number of negatives on several grades of
Velox paper and get a very high percentage of first-class
prints with normal development.
With regard to development and after-treatment of the
print, there is very little to say, since the matter is fully ex-
plained in the instruction sheet that accompanies each pack-
age of Velox paper. It is best to buy the ready prepared
developers such as Velox Liquid Developer or Nepera Solu-
tion and to follow the directions given.
When
fixing prints, take care that they do not lie on top
of one another in the fixing bath without change so that
each print will get its supply of fresh acid hypo.
ENLARGING.
While contact prints are satisfactory to show one's
friends, a time comes when we want to attempt something
more ambitious and to make photographs which we can
hang on our walls or submit for exhibition, and then we feel
that we want something more than an ordinary print and
something more than an enlarged print; we want to make
a picture. The difference between a picture and a print is
of course, not a matter of size; it is a matter of composition
and balance, of judgment in the choice of subject and of
the moment of exposure, and of finish and quality in the
result.
The possibility of using a very great degree of enlarge-
ment is shown in Fig. 85, where the small image in the cor-
ner represents a contact print from the original negative.
88
PRINTING
Fig. 85.
Extreme Enlargement.
Original in lower right hand corner.
In this case the negative was a portion of a motion picture

film which was taken to get the utmost sharpness of defini-
tion and was then enlarged to about a thousand times its
original size, the definition in the finished enlargement
being still quite good. Such work as this is rarely wanted,
but the great value of enlarging is that parts can be chosen
from a negative and enlarged to make very pleasing pic-
tures, where the whole negative if printed as a contact print
would be by no means satisfactory. The print shown in
Fig. 86, for instance, is an enlargement of a film negative.
This negative was taken at the seashore as a snapshot ex-
posure, the figures being very small and in the corner of
the negative so that if the negative were printed as a whole
itwould be very unsatisfactory. While a contact print
trimmed as is shown in the enlargement was not much
larger than a postage stamp, an enlargement of the figures
in it, however, made a pleasing picture.
Another illustration ofwhat can be done in enlarging is
shown in Fig. 87, where two negatives have been enlarged
together to make a combined picture. The lower half of
the original scene, of which the church and trees form the
upper half, consisted of a plowed field, so that the fore-
ground in the original negative was very unsatisfactory.
By taking another foreground, however, taking care, of
course, that the light-
ing was the same, and
shading the fore-
ground of the first
negative so that it
did not print in en-
larging, then chang-
ing the negative in
enlarging and substi-
tuting the foreground
negative, the two have
been printed into one
another with the re-
sult shown. Some
photoghraphers are
very clever at making
these combined en-
largements.
There are two prac-
ticalmethods of mak-
ing enlargements;
those involving work-
ing in a dark-room,
and those in which no
dark-room is employ-
ed for the enlarging
Fig. 86. For the latter
itself.
Enlargement, of Part of a Snapshot. purpose the Brownie
Enlarging Camera is
suitable, this being simply a cone-shaped box with a holder
for the paper at the large end and a negative holder at the
small end. The lens is fitted inside the cone, at just the
right distance to insure a sharp focus so that the camera is
always focused, and sharp enlargements are certain if the
negatives are sharp. This enlarger is exposed to daylight.
The disadvantage with this camera is that the degree of
enlargement is fixed and that consequently it is not easy
to select a small portion of a negative and enlarge it to a
considerable extent.
Another good arrangement is that shown in Fig. 88, where
the film or glass negative is put into the negative holder
of the Kodak Enlarging Outfit. With this arrangement the
90
—
PRINTING
negative is projected on to an easel or wall on which the
bromide paper can be pinned, and since the distance of the
enlarger from the easel or wall can be regulated, any degree
of enlargement can be obtained and a small part of the
negative can be selected and enlarged to any required size.
TONING.
In the earlier printing processes used by photographers
those in which the image was obtained by the continued
action of light and which were toned by the deposition
of gold from a toning bath —
the prints obtained were
in various shades of
purple and brown,
and these shades be-
came so associated
with photographs in
the minds of the pub-
lic that when the
black and white
prints made on Velox
and bromide papers
began to displace the
earlier Solio and Aris-
totype prints, the gen-
eral public would
scarcely recognize
them "photo-
as
graphs" at all, and a
demand soon arose for
some method of ton-
ing the black images
of bromide and Velox
prints to a brown or
sepia similar to that
Fig. 87. of the gold toned
Combined Enlargement from
printing-out papers.
Two Negatives.
seems to be char-
It
acteristic of mankind to want what they have not got, and
it is interesting to note that with the earlier printing-out
processes which easily gave warm tones, chemists were
anxiously working to get methods of obtaining black and
white prints, while with the developing-out processes, which
naturally give good black and white prints, photographers
desire to obtain warm sepia and brown tones.
The processes for obtaining sepia prints from the black
developed-out images all depend on one chemical reaction;
91
namely, that by which silver bromide is converted into
silver sulphide. Silver sulphide is a dark coloured, almost
black, substance well known to the housekeeper —
if not by
—
name as the tarnish which appears on silverware after it
has been some time in the air, the surface of metallic silver
being attacked by sulphur compounds in the air, which
generally come from the products of combustion of gas in
the cooking range.
Now, when any chemical substances can be produced by
the interaction of two other chemical substances in solution
the question as to whether it will be produced depends upon
whether it is more or less soluble than the substances which
Fig. 88.
Brownie Enlarging Camera.
can form it. Silver sulphide is less soluble than silver bro-
mide so that when silverbromide is treated with a solution
containing sulphur in a free form it is changed into silver
sulphide and the silver sulphide is deposited in its place.
On the other hand, metallic silver, such as that which
forms the image in a developed print, is less soluble than
silver sulphide and consequently we cannot change it into
silver sulphide by simply treating it with a solution con-
taining free sulphur, but if in this solution we have some
substance which will dissolve metallic silver, then we can
change the metallic silver itself into silver sulphide. It is on
these principles that the sulphur toning processes are based.
One toning process depends upon changing the silver
image of the print back into silver bromide. Now, we know
that silver is obtained from silver bromide by reduction,
just as iron is got out of iron ore, and therefore we can get
back silver bromide from silver by oxidation, which is the
reverse process to reduction. If we use any solution which
will oxidize silver and have potassium bromide present in the
92
PRINTING
image will be turned into silver bromide.
solution, the silver
The usual way do this is to treat the black print after
to
fixing and washing with a solution containing potassium
ferricyanide, which is an oxidizing agent, and potassium
bromide, and this turns the black silver image into a yellow-
ish-white image of silver bromide which is scarcely visible,
so that the process is called "bleaching" since the black
silver turns into white silver bromide, and then after wash-
ing, this silver bromide is treated with a solution of sodium
sulphide, which turns it into the brown silver sulphide
which gives us our sepia toned print. So, to make a sepia
Velox print by this method, we treat it with the "bleaching
solution," which turns the silver into silver bromide, and
then "redevelop" this, as it is called, in a solution of sul-
phide, which converts the silver bromide into silver sulphide
and gives us our sepia print.
There isanother method of obtaining sulphide toned
prints which is somewhat simpler. We have seen that we
cannot turn silver directly into silver sulphide by a solution
containing free sulphur unless we have a solvent of silver
present in the solution. Now, it so happens that hypo is to
some extent a solvent of silver, and also that with a weak
acid, hypo gives free sulphur. Alum behaves chemically like
a weak acid and it also has the valuable property of harden-
ing the print, so if we put the print which we wish to tone
into a solution containing hypo and alum, the silver will
slowly be changed into silver sulphide and the print will be
toned brown. This change goes on very slowly at ordinary
temperatures, but by heating the solution it goes much more
rapidly, so that if we heat a bromide or Velox print in a solu-
tion containing hypo and alum, we shall get a good sepia tone
at the end of ten or twenty minutes without any further
difficulty, theonly objection being that the bath, like all
baths containing free sulphur, and like the sodium sulphide
used for redeveloping in the other toning process, smells
rather unpleasantly.
Equally good results in sepia toning cannot be got with
all papers, but a great deal depends on the development of*
the print. To get good sepias, development should be full;
an underdeveloped print will always give weak, yellowish
tones when compared with one in which development has
been carried out thoroughly, which will give a strong, pure
sepia. It is important to remember this, as two prints
which may look alike as black and white prints will tone dif-
ferently if they have not been developed to the same extent.
93
CHAPTER X.
THE FINISHING OF THE NEGATIVE.
AFTER development, the undeveloped silver bromide is

removed by immersion of the negative or print in what
is called the "fixing bath". There are only a few substances
which will dissolve silver bromide, and the one which is
universally used in modern photography is sodium thio-
sulphate, which is known to photographers as hyposulphite
of soda, or more usually as hypo, though the name hypo-
sulphite of soda is used by chemists for another substance.
In the process of fixation the silver bromide is dissolved
in the hypo by combining with it to form a compound
sodium silver thiosulphate. Two of these compound thio-
sulphates exist, one of them being almost insoluble in water,
while the other is very soluble. As long as the fixing bath
has any appreciable fixing power, the soluble compound only
is formed.
Fixing is accomplished by means of hypo only, but
materials are usually transferred from the developer to the
fixing bath with very little rinsing so that a good deal of
developer is carried over into the fixing bath, and this soon
oxidizes in the bath, turning it brown, and staining nega-
tives or prints. In order to avoid this the bath has sulphite
of soda added to it as a preservative against oxidation, and
the preservative action is, of course, greater if the bath is
kept in a slightly acid state. In order to prevent the gela-
tine from swelling and softening it is also usual to add some
hardening agent to the fixing bath so that a fixing bath in-
stead of containing only hypo will contain in addition sul-
phite, acid and hardener.
Now, if a few drops of acid, such as sulphuric or hydro-
chloric acid, are added to a weak solution of hypo, the hypo
will be decomposed and the solution will become milky,
owing to the precipitation of sulphur. The change of thio-
sulphate into sulphite and sulphur is reversible, since, if we
boil together sulphite and sulphur we shall get thiosulphate
formed, so that while acids free sulphur from the hypo,
94
THE FINISHING OF THE NEGATIVE
sulphite combines with the sulphur to form hypo again.
Consequently, we can prevent acid decomposing the hypo
if we have enough sulphite present, since the sulphite works
in the opposite direction to the acid. An acid fixing bath,

therefore, is preserved from decomposition by the sulphite,
which also serves to prevent the oxidation of developer
carried over into it.
Since in fixing baths what we require is a large amount
of a weak acid, the best acid for the purpose is acetic acid.
Citric or tartaric acids can also be used.
In order to make sure that the films are properly fixed
they should be left in the fixing bath twice as long as is
necessary to clear them from the visible, white silver bro-
mide. If considerable work is being done, the best course is
to use two fixing baths, transferring the films or prints to
the second clean bath after they have been fixed in the first.
Then, when the first bath begins to work slowly, it can be
discarded and replaced by the second bath, a fresh solution
being used for the second bath. These precautions are
necessary because, as has already been said, silver forms
two compound thiosulphates, the first of which is almost
insoluble in water but is transformed into the second, which
is soluble, by longer treatment with hypo. Consequently
when a film first clears, it still contains the first insoluble
thiosulphate of silver, and if it is taken out of the fixing
bath and washed some of the silver will be left behind and
not washed out. Then, on keeping, this silver thiosulphate
left in the negative will decompose and produce stains. If
a negative or print is properly fixed and washed it will be
permanent.
The actual rate of washing may be understood by remem-
bering that the amount of hypo remaining in the gelatine
is continually halved in the same period of time as the wash-
ing proceeds. An average negative, for instance, w^ll give
up half its hypo in two minutes, so that at the end of two
minutes half the hypo will be remaining in it, after four
minutes one-quarter, after six minutes one-eighth, after
eight minutes one-sixteenth, ten minutes one-thirty-second,
and so on. It will be seen that in a short time the amount
of hypo remaining will be infinitesimal. This, however, as-
sumes that the negative is continually exposed to fresh
water, which is the most important matter in arranging
the washing of either negatives or prints.
If a lot of prints are put in a tray and water allowed to
splash on the top of the tray, it is very easy for the wâter on
95
the top to run off again, and for the prints at the bottom to
lie soaking in a pool of fairly strong hypo solution, which
is much heavier than water and which will fall to the bottom
of the tray. If the object is to get the quickest washing,
washing tanks should be arranged so that the water is con-
tinuously and completely changed and the prints or nega-
tives are subjected to a continuous current of fresh water.
If water is of value, and it is desired to economize in its use,
then by far the most effective way of washing is to use suc-
cessive changes of small quantities of water, putting the
prints first in one tray, leaving them there for from two min-
utes to five minutes, and then transferring them to an en-
tirely fresh lot of water, repeating this until they are washed.
The progress of the washing can be followed by adding

a permanganate solution to the wash water after the
little
prints are taken out of it in order to see how much hypo is
left in it, the presence of hypo being seen by decoloration
of the permanganate. An even simpler test is to taste the
prints. Six changes of five minutes each should be sufficient
to eliminate the hypo effectively from any ordinary material.
REDUCTION.
Sometimes negatives are obtained which are so dense that
they are difficult to print. Other negatives are so contrasty
that they give harsh prints. In order to improve these
negatives recourse may be had to the process called "re-
duction," that is, to the removal of some of the silver by
treatment with a chemical which dissolves the metallic
silver of the image.
It is unfortunate that the word "reduction" is used in
English for this purpose. In other languages the word
"weakening" is used and it is undoubtedly a better word
because the chemical action involved in the removal of
silver from a negative is oxidation, and the use of the word
reduction leads to confusion with true chemical reduction
such as occurs in development.
In order to produce the best results it is necessary that
the reduction should be suitable for the negative which is
to be treated. Thus, in the case of a negative which is too
dense all over it is necessary to remove the density uni-
formly, while in the case of one which is too contrasty what
is required is not the removal of the silver from highlights
and shadows alike, but the lessening of the deposit on the
highlights without affecting the shadows.
96
In Fig. 89 we see a diagram which represents a negative
originally dense from which by the removal of an equal
amount of silver from shadows, halftones and highlights,
WKM^Kl
^^^^^ÎIIJJJJI
^^llll Diagram Showing
Fig. 89.
How Cutting Reducer Acts.
there can be obtained a negative of proper gradation. A

reducer which effects this uniform removal of density is
generally called a "cutting reducer". The typical "cutting
reducer" is that known as Farmer's reducer, which is made
by preparing a strong solution of potassium ferricyanide,
otherwise known as Red Prussiate of Potash, and adding a
few drops of this to a solution of plain hypo until the latter
is yellow. This reducer will not keep when mixed so that
the ferricyanide must be added to the hypo only when re-
quired for use. It is especially useful for clearing negatives
or lantern slides and is often used for local reduction, the
solution being applied with a wad of absorbent cotton to
the part which is to be lightened. Another cutting reducer
is permanganate, which is supplied under the name of the
"Eastman Reducer." Permanganate, however, tends to
act more proportionally on the highlights and shadows than
is the case with ferricyanide.
Proportional reducers are those which act on all parts of

the negative in proportion to the amount of silver present
there. They thus exactly undo the action of development
since during development the density of all parts of a
negative increase proportionately. A correctly exposed, but
over-developed negative should, therefore, be reduced with
a proportional reducer. This effect is shown in Fig. 90
where it is seen that the contrast of the negative is far too
great owing to over-development, and that by removing
the same proportion of the silver from the shadows, half-
tones and highlights, a negative of correct contrast can be
obtained.
97
f////////////////iiA
w/mm/mmm/m
Fig. 90.
Diagram Showing How Proportional Reducer Acts.
Unfortunately there are no single reducers which are ex-

actly proportional in their action but by mixing perman-
ganate, which is a slightly cutting reducer, with persulphate,
which is a flattening reducer, a proportional reducer may be
obtained.
Flattening reducers are required for negatives which have
been under-exposed and then over-developed. In these cases
the negative is much too contrasty but it is important not to
remove any of the deposit from the shadows, since owing to
the under-exposure, there is already insufhcient deposit in
the shadows.
What is required in this case is shown in Fig. 91, where
a large amount of deposit is removed from the highlights,
a smaller amount from the halftones, and very little or
none from the shadows. This can be accomplished by the
use of ammonium persulphate. Ammonium persulphate at-
tacks silver deposit with the formation of silver sulphate and
this attack is increased by the silver salt which is produced,
the rate of attack increasing as the attack goes on. Such
chemical actions are called "auto-catalytic," a "catalyst"
ÎB
being a substance which increases the rate of a chemical
WMMa
/////////////////////////////
Fig. 91.
Diagram Showing How Flattening Reducer Acts.
98
Fig. 92.
Negative too dense all over.
Result of using Farmer's Reducer.
action without actually taking part in it, and an auto-

catalytic action being one in which the rate of action in-
creases of its own accord. Since the action of ammonium
persulphate is auto-catalytic it acts most rapidly where the
greatest amount of silver is present, and consequently it
attacks the highlights far more energetically than it attacks
the shadows of the negative and is, therefore, suitable for
the reduction of under-exposed, over-developed negatives.
(Whether any silver will be removed from the shadows will
depend on how long the reducer is allowed to act.) Because
it is auto-catalytic in its action, however, it is very likely
to go too far and get out of control so that it is not by any
means an easy reducer to handle, and it is not recommended
that it be used upon a valuable negative unless the user
has had considerable experience of its action.
For some time after ammonium persulphate was intro-
duced as a reducer for negatives its action was very
99
mm ^gpHF^.i .tea
:«Jft ..
1
J
iw _^0:^._-;^_ ^-
.,.-- --^ .J
Fig. 93.
Correctly exposed but over-developed negative.
Result of reducing with a Proportional reducer.
lOO
Fig. 94.
a. Too dense in highlights, deep shadows not clear.
h. Effect of the Eastman Reducer on such a negative.
uncertain; some samples would reduce silver while others

would not. When this peculiarity in its behavior was inves-
tigated by the Research Laboratory of the Eastman Kodak
Company the reason was found to be a chemical difference
in some of the samples tested.
INTENSIFICATION.
Sometimes we get negatives which are too thin and weak
to print even on Contrast Velox; if we developed them
in the tray perhaps we were deceived in judging the density
lOI
Fig. 95.
a. Negative with dense, blocked up highlights.
b. Shows that a Flattening Reducer removes much silver from the
Highlights, less from the Halftones and little or none from the
Shadows.
and we under-developed them, or possibly the subject itself

was very flatly lighted, as often happens when the subject
isan extremely distant landscape or a view across a large
body of water, and from such negatives we cannot get a
bright print, even on Contrast Velox.
Sometimes, also, we may not have Contrast Velox on
hand and may wish to use Special or Regular Velox. In
I02
Original. Strongly Intensified. Less Intensified.

Fig. 96.
Showing Effect of Intensification.
all these cases it is convenient to have a means of increas-

ing the contrast of the negative, and the method by which
this is done is the chemical process commonly called "in-
tensification."
In order to increase the contrast we must, of course, in-
crease all the separate steps of density occurring in the nega-
tive, and not only must we increase them but the increase
must be proportional to the steps already existing; that is
to say, we must multiply them all by the same amount if we
are to retain correct gradation. Fig. 97 shows a number of
different steps of density before and after intensification,
all the densities having been multitiplied by the same
amount or increased in the same proportion.
In order to produce this increase of density we must
either deposit some other material on the silver, so as to
add something to the image or we must change the color of
the image so as to make it more non-actinic and capable of
stopping more of the light which affects the printing paper.
103
There are many different substances which can be de-
posited upon the image. If, for instance, a negative is
treated with a silvering solution suitably adjusted,
the silver will be deposited on the image and will increase
its density, but this is very difficult to do, and it is more
practical to intensify negatives by depositing, not silver,
but mercury upon them.
The Eastman Intensifier
isa solution containing mer-
cury which will be deposited
Original Jenîtie^
Denntteci added y>y intenîftcafion
Fig. 97.
Densities Added By Intensification.
Upon the negative immersed in it, and since the deposition

is regular, it can be watched and the gain of density ob-
served so that the intensification can be stopped at the
right time.
While the mercury method is still the most popular for
intensifying negatives it has never been wholly satisfactory,
because mercury intensified negatives are apt to undergo
changes that affect their quality after a time.
Another method of intensifying a negative is to bleach
it in. the Velox re-developer and then re-develop the
bleached image with the sulphide solution used for obtain-
ing sepia-toned prints. By this method the image is changed
from silver to silver sulphide, which has a brownish-yellow
color and is much more opaque to actinic light than the
original silver image, so that a negative treated in this
way show much more contrast than before treatment.
will
This method has proved very satisfactory and it is believed
that re-developed negatives will prove as permanent as re-
developed Velox prints. /
It must be understood that intensification is only suitable

for the increase of contrast, it cannot improve a negative
which is seriously under-exposed; no amount of intensi-
104
fication can introduce detail which is not present before the
intensification is commenced; but occasionally intensifica-
tion will enable us to adjust the scale of contrast of a nega-
tive so that better prints can be obtained than are possible
without the intensifying treatment.
io<
CHAPTER XI.
HALATION.
Sometimes in a photograph there appears to be a blur-
ring of the bright parts over the dark parts of the picture,
and if lamps or other very bright lights are included they
may appear in the print
as bright spots sur-
rounded by a dark ring
beyond which is an-
other bright ring. This
curious effect, which is
called "halation" is well
illustrated in the photo-
graph shown in Fig.
98.
Halation is caused
by which passes
light
Fig. 98. completely through the
Halation in Print. emulsion and also
through the glass on
which the emulsion is coated and is then reflected back
into the emulsion from the back of the glass. The sim-
plest form of such reflection is shown by the diagram,
Fig. 99, where we see a ray of light falling on the
emulsion at A. Most of this light is absorbed by the emul-
sion but some of it passes through to the glass and is reflect-
ed from the back of the glass, so that it reaches the
emulsion again at B.
But this simple dia-
gram does not account
for the appearance of
the lights in Fig. 98,
because if a ray of light
had fallen on the plate

squarely at right angles
and had passed through Fig. 99.
the emulsion at right Simplest Form of Reflection.
angles it would be re-
flected straight back and the halation would not be spread
beyond the image, whereas, the halation is just as bad in
the center of the picture where the light fell squarely on the
io6
HALATION
emulsion as at the edges. Also, it does not account for the
ring which is shown around the lights.
As a matter of fact, light falling on a photographic plate
does not go straight through in this simple way. When
a narrow ray of light
falls on the grains of
silver bromide it is re-
flected from them and
scattered about.
Silver Bromide
So we must imagine
Craws that if we could ex-
m amine a magnified sec-
Emulsion tion through the plate,
we should see the light
falling on the emulsion
scattered in all direc-
tions, so that a narrow
beam of light is spread
out into a kind of blur,
Glass the size of the blurring
Fig. 100. being very minute but
Scattered Reflections. appreciable, Fig.
still
101; this effect of the
light spreading in the film is called irradiation.
We see then that the light which passes through the
emulsion of the photographic plate is traveling in all
directions, whatever may have been its direction before
it reached the emul-
sion, and if we follow
the light into the glass,
we shall find that most
of the rays pass out of
the glass again into the
air but that some of
them are reflected back
into the emulsion.
In order to under-
stand this we must look
at the way in which
different rays of light
travel through glass. Emulsion
(See chapter III.)
When a ray of light Glass
passes from air into a Fig. 101.
block of glass, it is bent Irradiation.
107
by the glasswhich is a
medium of different
density, and when it
leaves the glass again
it is bent back so as to
travel along a path
parallel to that along
p- 2Q2 which it entered the
Rays in a Block of Glass. gâss, but if a ray leav-
ing the glass meets the
surface at too big an angle, it cannot go out and it will
be totally reflected back again. See Fig. 102. It is these
totally reflected rays
which produce the ring
of halation.
When the image of

the lamp falls on the
emulsion and enters it,
the rays are spread out
by irradiation, so that
we get a small spot at
the center of the lamp,
then this scattered light
passes into the glass of Fig. 103.
the plate, and the rays Rays In Photographic Plate.
which are near the cen-
ter pass out into the air from the glass and we get a dark
ring, but when suddenly the angle of the rays to the surface
of the glass gets too big to get out they are reflected back
and produce a sharp ring of halation around the center of
the image, and then as they go farther and farther from
the image the light gets
weaker and the hala-
tion fades away again.
Thus we can account
completely for the rings
of light shown in the
picture.
If we coat the back

of the glass with some
substance into which
the rays would pass di-
Pig^ 104. rectly from the glass
Complete Diagram of Halation. and which would com-
io8
HALATION
pletely absorb them, we should wholly prevent the hala-
tion and if we choose this "backing", as it is called, so that
it is of the right kind and almost completely absorbs the
light, allowing very lit-
tle of it to be reflected,
then it will be quite
effective in reducing
halation, but in prac-
tice it is not altogether
easy to get a satisfac-
tory backing and to
apply it correctly. The
photographer tried a
"backed" plate, but al-
though he got rid of the
Fig. 105.
Print from Backed Plate Negative. sharp rings of halation
his lights are still ob-
scured by irregular blotches of light reflected from the
back of the glass. (Fig. 105).
The best way of avoiding halation is not to have any
glass at all. If we take the photograph on film, the sup-
port is sothin that the light has very little room to spread
and we get only a very small spreading of the light rays.
This spreading in fact is no greater than that necessary
to give a correct representation of the effect of the
light on the eye since
there really is a spread-
ing of the light in the
eye and we do not ac-
tually see a bright light
on a dark night as per-
fectly sharp, but as
having a small amount
of blur around it. So
that in Fig. 106, which
was taken on Kodak
film, we get a result
Fig. 106.
which gives a very good
Print From Negative Taken on Film.
idea of the scene as it
appeared.
109
CHAPTER XII.
ORTHOCHROMATIC PHOTOGRAPHY.
we take a piece of blue cloth and put an orange on it
IFand then photograph the combination we shall find that
instead of the orange being lighter than the cloth, as it looks
to the eye, the photograph (Fig. 107) shows it as being dark-
er. This difficulty in photographing colored objects so that
they appear in the print in their correct tone values, as they
are seen by the eye, has been well known to photographers
from the earliest days of the art.
In order to understand the cause of it we must consider
the nature of color itself. When we speak of a colored object
Fig. 107.
Picture of an Orange on Blue Cloth.
IIO
ORTHOCHROMATIC PHOTOGRAPHY
we mean one which produces a distinct sensation, which we
call the sensation of color. This, of course, is due to a
change in the nature of the light which enters the eye and
causes the sensation of sight, and this change is produced
in the light by the colored object so that the light after
reflection from the colored object is different in composition
from the beam of light before reflection.
In Chapter II we have seen that light consists of waves,
and that these waves are of various lengths, the color of
the light depending upon the wavelength.
BLUE VIOLET gri:en RED
400 450 500 550 600 700

Fig. 108.
Divisions of Spectrum.
In white light there are waves of all lengths and if white

light ispassed through a spectroscope it is spread out into
a band of various colors which is called a spectrum. The
various colors of the spectrum correspond to definite
lengths of light waves and if we measure their length in
the very small units which are used for measuring weaves
of light we shall find that the red waves are 700 millionths
of a millimeter, the yellow ones are 600, the green 550, the
blue-green 500, the blue 450, and the violet waves, the
shortest which we can see, are 400 millionths of a milli-
meter long (Fig. 108). Thus, we can scale the spectrum
by the length of the light waves of which it is composed
(Fig. 109).
Fig. 109.
Pink filter passing violet, blue, yellow, orange and red rays but
absorbing green.
If we take a
piece of colored glass or gelatine, say pink
gelatine, it in front of the spectrum, we shall find
and hold
that the pink gelatine will not let some of the waves of
III
light through; it will stop them completely, while it will
let the other waves through without any difficulty. The
pink gelatine, in fact, cuts out or absorbs the green light
(Fig. 109). This is because of its pinkness; that is, it has
the property of absorbing green light from the white light
and of letting through the other light which is not green,
that is to say, to a less degree this pink film sorts out the
light just as the spectroscope does, but instead of separating
the waves of different lengths it stops some of them and
lets the others go on, and the eye, missing those which are
stopped, records the absence as a sensation of colour.
If, instead of having a transparent substance like film,
we have an opaque colored object, like a sheet of orange
paper, and let the spectrum fall on it, we shall find that the
Fig. 110.
Purple filter passing violet and red, but absorbing the blue, green,
yellow and orange.
orange paper will reflect the red and yellow and green light
but will refuse to reflect the blue light; it absorbs it, and its
orangeness is due to the fact that it absorbs the blue light
and refuses to reflect it. All objects which are colored
are colored because they have some selective absorption for
some of the waves of light; they do not treat them all alike
but reflect some and absorb others, and the modified light
which reaches the eye we call "color." Any object which
treats all the waves of light alike, which absorbs them all
or absorbs them equally or reflects them all in equal pro-
portion, is not colored. If it absorbs them all it will be
Invisible Limit of Violet Blue Blue- Green Yellow- Orange Red Deep- Limit oj
Ultra-Vtolet Visibility Green Green Red Visibility
Fig. 111.
112
ORTHOCHROiMATIC PHOTOGRAPHY
dead black since it will reflect no light. If it absorbs them
to a small extent, but equally, it willbe gray; if it reflects
them all it will be white, but if it absorbs some of the wave
lengths and not others, it will be colored.
If we try a series of experiments in our spectrum we shall
find that things which absorb red light are colored blue,
and those which absorb green light are colored pink or
magenta, or if they absorb a great deal of the light, purple
(Fig. 110). Those that absorb blue-green light are orange,
and those that absorb blue-violet light are yellow. see, We
then, that to each color there corresponds a region of the
spectrum which is absorbed.
If we look at a spectrum we shall see that the brightest
part of it is the yellow-green and yellow (the position of
the yellow in the spectrum being between the yellow-green
and the orange) so that the eye is most sensitive to the
yellow, yellow-green and red rays and least sensitive to the
blue and violet rays. (Fig. 111.) But if, instead of looking
at the spectrum, we use a piece of bromide paper so that the
Invisible Limit of Violet Blue Blue- Green Yellow- Orange Red Deep- Limit of
Ultra-Violet Visibility Green Green Red Visibility
Fig. 112.
light of the spectrum may fall on it, and then make a posi-
tive print from this negative image, we shall find that the
photographic action on the print is not produced in the
region that is bright to the eye, but in the region which the
eye can scarcely see, and, indeed, there is a strong action
in the part of the spectrum beyond the visible spectrum,
showing that there are waves which are shorter than the
violet waves, which were discovered when the spectrum
was first photographed and are called the ultra-violet waves.
(Fig. 112.) This explains at once why when we photograph-
ed an orange on a blue cloth the orange was dark in the
photograph and the blue cloth was bright, which is the op-
posite to the way they appear to the eye. The bright orange
absorbs the blue light to which the film is sensitive and the
"3
blue cloth reflects it, so that although the cloth looks dark
to the eye, it is bright in the photograph, and the orange
which reflects very little blue and violet light is dark in the
photograph. Fortunately, this defect, for defect it is, of
photographic materials can be remedied to a considerable
extent.
Ifdyes are incorporated with the emulsion the dyes sensi-
tize the emulsion for the part of the spectrum which they
absorb, so that if we put a pink dye of the right kind in the
Invisible Limit of Violet Blue Blue- Green Yellow- Orange Red Deep- Limit of
UUra-Violet Visibility Green Green Red Visibility
Fig. 113.
emulsion the film will not only be sensitive to the blue light,
to which it is naturally sensitive, but will also become
sensitive to the yellow-green light, which the pink dye
absorbs, and if we take a photograph of the spectrum on
this sensitized film we shall get a photograph which appears
as is shown in Fig. 113. Film made sensitive in this way is
called or tho chromatic, and in photographing colored objects
the use of an orthochromatic film is a great advantage.
The orthochromatic film is still not sensitive to red, which
to the eye is a bright color, and so red objects are still ren-
dered too dark in a photograph, but this is not a great dis-
advantage for most work, and we have the very great
advantage that the film can be developed in a red light.
Emulsions can be treated in such a way as to make them
panchromatic, that is, sensitive to all colors, but such pan-
chromatic materials cannot be handled by the light of an
ordinary dark room lamp; they have to be used either in
total darkness or by means of a very faint green light. For
amateur photography it is therefore better to be content
with orthochromatic film unless special subjects are to be
photographed. A full account of photography with pan-
chromatic plates and of the use of light filters in general
is given in "The Photography of Colored Objects," pub-
lished by the Company.
114
Fig. 114.
Made Through a Yellow Light Filter.
Great care is taken to make Kodak NC film as ortho-

chromatic as will confer satisfactory color sensitiveness upon
it without sensitizing it so far that it will be difficult for the
user to handle or that there will be danger of fog when
developing it.
While the sensitizing with dye makes the film sensitive
to the yellow and green light, it is still much more sensitive
to the blue and violet waves, as is shown in Fig. 113, and
consequently it will still photograph blue objects much
lighter than they appear to the eye. This is a disadvantage
in some photography, and especially in landscape photo-
graphy where we have blue sky with white clouds. White
clouds are much brighter to the eye than the blue sky, but
if they are photographed on the film in the ordinary way
the blue sky appears too light and the clouds are lost against
it. In order to overcome this and to enable orthochromatic
film to represent most of the colors in their correct tone
values light filters are used which absorb the excess of blue
light and prevent it from reaching the film.
These light filters are, of course, yellow in color, since
yellow absorbs blue light and thus, by the use of yellow
light filters, which are sometimes called color screens, the
excess of blue light can be absorbed and a much improved
rendering of sky and clouds can be obtained. (Fig. 114.)
When light filters were first introduced it was thought
that any yellow glass would be satisfactory, and light filters
were made of brownish yellow glass, which really are of no
advantage at all. The reason for this is that they transmit
the ultra-violet light, which lies out in the spectrum beyond
the violet. This ultra-violet light is quite invisible, but pro-
duces a strong impression upon the photographic plate, and
in order to get satisfactory action from a filter it is very im-
portant to remove the ultra-violet light as completely as
possible. The ultra-violet light is far more easily scattered
by traces of mist in the atmosphere than visible light, and
since it is this mist which so often makes objects in the dis-
tance invisible in photographs that are taken without a
filter (Fig. 117a) it is necessary to use a filter that will cut
out this ultra-violet light in order to show the distance
well. (Fig. 117b.)
Modern light filters are made by dyeing gelatine with
carefully chosen dyes and then cementing the dyed gelatine
between optically prepared glasses.
Some yellow dyes, while removing violet light quite sat-
isfactorily, transmit a great deal of the ultra-violet light
and only a few dyes cut out the invisible ultra-violet satis-
factorily. One of the best of these dyes is the dye used in
INVISIBLE ULTRA-VIOLET /^ BLUE GREEN RED

LIMIT OF
VISIBILITY
Fig. 115
Photograph of the spectrum, through two yellow Filters, which are of almost
the same color to the eye, showing (A) that the K Filter cuts out
the ultra-violet, while (B) the other Filter does not.
the Wratten K filters and the Kodak Color Filters. In

Fig. 115 are shown two photographs of the spectrum the —
one taken through a filter made with a dye of a type often
used for filters, but not cutting out the ultra-violet, and the
other the same spectrum taken through a K filter.
The K filters were made with a dye produced in Germany,

and during the war the requirements of the aerial photo-
graphers in the army made it necessary to prepare a new
dye which could be made in America and which would cut
the mist even more sharply than the K
filters. This pre-
sented a problem which was solved in the Kodak Research
ii6
Laboratory by the discovery of an entirely new dye which
was named "Eastman Yellow," with which special filters
are prepared for aerial photography.
Since a yellow light filter removes the ultra-violet and
much of the blue-violet light, it necessarily increases the
exposure, because if we remove those rays to which the
film is most sensitive, we must compensate for it by expos-
ing the film for a longer time to the action of the remaining
rays, and the amount of this increased exposure will be de-
pendent both on the proportion of the violet and the blue
rays which are removed by the filter and also on the sensi-
tiveness of the film for the remaining rays (green, orange
and red) which are not removed by the filter.
The number of times by which the exposure must be in-
creased for a given filter with a given film is called the
"multiplying factor" of the filter, and since the factor de-
pends both upon the depth of the filter and upon the color
sensitiveness of the film, it is meaningless to refer to filters
as "three times" or "six times" filters without specifying
with what material they are to be used.
It is always desirable that we should be able to give as
short an exposure as possible; what is required in a filter is
that it should produce the greatest possible effect with the
least possible increase of exposure, so that a filter will be
considered most efficient when it produces the maximum
result with the minimum multiplying factor. To a certain
extent the multiplying factor depends upon the result that
is wanted thus in order to get exactly the same proportional
;
exposure when using a Kodak Color Filter with Kodak

NC Film, as that obtained without it the necessary in-
crease of exposure is ten times,
but in fact the Color Filter is
generally used for distant land-
scapes where haze is to be cut
out, and for clouds against the
sky, and under such conditions
an increase of three times the
normal exposure that would be
correct for an ordinary land-
scape will give the most satis-
factory results.
For many purposes, however,
Fig. 116. the Kodak Color Filter is too
Kodak Sky Filter. strong; the exposure when using
it is so prolonged that it is not
117
b
Fig. 117.
a. Made without a filter.
b. Made with a Wratten G filter.
practical to use the Kodak without a tripod, and to meet

these difficulties the Kodak Sky Filter has been intro-
duced. (Fig. 116.)
In this filter only half the gelatine, which is cemented
between the glasses, is stained with the yellow dye, the
ii8
other half being clear, and the filter is placed on the lens
with its stained half on top so that the light from the sky
will pass through the stained half and the light from the
landscape through the clear half of the filter. In this way
the yellow dye reduces the density of the sky in the nega-
tive without greatly affecting the exposure of the fore-
ground and enables us to get a rendering of clouds in a
blue sky by cutting out a part of the very strong light that
comes from the sky, while the exposure necessary is in-
creased only to a small extent.
The sky filter is not suitable for the cutting of haze since
its colored half does not cover the landcsape, which is the
part of the field where the haze occurs. Its use is confined
to that suggested by its name.
When it is desired to make blue photograph somewhat
darker than can be done with the Kodak Color Filter the
Wratten K2 should be used, and for recording still more
contrast, which is sometimes wanted in pictures of extremely
distant landscapes that are under haze, the Wratten G
filter is very valuable. Thus, distant mountains and all
other distant landscape scenes (Figs. 117a and 117b) may
be photographed through a strong yellow filter by giving
the necessary increase of exposure, with a Kodak mounted
on a tripod. The K2 will require an increase of exposure of
about twenty times and the G of one hundred times on the
Kodak Film.
a b
Fig. 118.
a. Original Definition.
b. Definition after screwing up tightly in cell.
In order that filters may not spoil the definition it is im-

portant that the glasses between which they are cemented
119
should be of good optical quality. This is very carefully
controlled in the case of the Kodak and Wratten filters,
which are all measured by an instrument specially built for
the detection of optical errors introduced by filters. The
filters have to be mounted in the cells so that they cannot be
strained by pressure being put upon them, since if they are
squeezed the balsam with which they are cemented to-
gether will be displaced and the definition will be spoiled.
(Fig. 118.)
Filters should be treated with care equal to that accorded
to lenses. When not in use they should be kept in their
cases and on no account allowed to get damp or dirty.
With reasonable care in handling they should never become
so dirty as to require other cleaning than can be given by
breathing upon them and polishing with a clean, soft piece
of linen or cotton cloth. A
filter should never be allowed to
become wet under any circumstances, because if water
comes into contact with the gelatine at the edges of the
filters it will cause the gelatine to swell and so separate the
glasses, causing air to run in between it and the glass.
The dyes used for the Kodak and Wratten filters are
quite stable to light, and no fear of fading need be felt.
The filters, however, should be kept in their cases when not
in use in order to protect them.
FINIS
1 20
^^Xd»^

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k

'By C. E. K. Mees, D.Sc.

Eastman Kodak Company

'By C. E. K. Mees, D.Sc.

Eastman Kodak Company

phers in the scientific side of their work and aid them

II. Light and Vision 14

THE BEGINNINGS OF PHOTOGRAPHY.

• Silhouette Picture from Old Print.

the ground glass they could draw it more easily. Wedgwood

THE BEGINNINGS OF PHOTOGRAPHY

Crystals of Thiosulphate of Soda or "Hypo".

Collodion is made by dis- Positive or Print.

LIGHT AND VISION.

Light is the name which we give to the external agency

possible by dividing a beam

BLUE VIOLET GRIIN RED

400 450 500 550 600 700

Light cannot consist of waves in the air, partly because

with which we want to

formed by a pinhole is al-

small picture we shall only Fig. 16.

the three-inch lens, because

The longer the focal length of a lens, the less subject we

•of a and a larger shutter and a somewhat larger

amount of light that reaches the eye through the hole in

No. 2 Brownie 133^^

If we are using a No. Brownie, for instance, as long as

F. fA f.5.6 f.6.3 f.S f.n /.16 f.22 f.32 /.45

The U. S. numbers give the relative exposure that is re-

This stopped-down meniscus lens has the

Fig. 32. Fig. 33. Fig. 34.

fulfill certain other conditions to get a picture which is flat,

to get a well timed snapshot, there will be a gain in

THE LIGHT SENSITIVE MATERIALS USED IN PHOTOGRAPHY.

Thus, the first step in making a light sensitive compound

THE silver grains which form the developed image are

If we heat a gelatine solution it will become thinner and

When the gelatine is in the jelly state, it is as though the

J^T21 the gelatine, especi-

The developed image consists of grains of silver, each

Exposed 1 Unit of Time Exposed 16 Units of Time.

Exposed 4 Units of Time. Exposed 64 Units of Time.

many of the clumps of grains seen in Fig. 43 B are not made

!f«^:s-«>5:->^ -*T'->"''"?''^ r-^^v*^

,--^^«s Jf*-^'"-' 7r».

Strong or Concentrated Developer.

Weak or Diluted Developer.

must be a fact that the more sensitive grains are found in

order to get a satisfactory photograph of any scene it

isquite incorrect. In a bright landscape with heavy shad-

the film will have a brightness of, at most, 30 foot-candles,

Now, let us consider how much time of exposure will be

the blackness of the deposit, and this measurement of the

If, instead of a landscape with foreground, we photo-

exposure required will therefore be 500/250 x 3 x 500 or

the highlight in the negative which it is desired to print

The essential constituents of a developer therefore are:

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