LESSONS, LENSES & LIGHTS (Pt. One)

By Alan Coldman (Area 22).

I was five years old when my father took me into a building on the harbour at Ramsgate. It was a very small room. lit only by a paraffin lamp. The man in charge of (I knew not what and who had charged us the grand sum of two pence) covered the lamp, pulled a string to uncover a hole in the roof and there to my astonishment appeared a picture on a white table top, a large picture IN COLOUR! that showed people walking about and boats moving in the water.

I could have stayed all afternoon. It was of course, a Camera Lucida, pretty rare today though there is one in Edinburgh. My father knew not how it worked but this marvellous vision set me on a lifelong trip.

My next memory is of the Ramsgate street photographers when I was about 6 years old. They had huge reflex cameras, possibly Adams Videx or Newman & Guaidia Reflex of about 1903 though there were certainly others such as Lancaster. How these people made money I cannot see as they used miles of film & paper and sold I believe, only a small proportion of pictures taken. Your pictures were displayed at a seafront kiosk and you bought or not.

After the 39-45 war these photographers were using 35mm cameras, often a Leitz. As you walked towards them they would ready the camera and make an exagerated movement with the trigger finger then if you showed interest would say something like "I think that would look better if you smiled more". Then they really took a picture. Ah well, they were learning to save film now. When even my mother knew she was being photographed she put on her `nace` face which was a cross between a porcelaine shepherdess and a chipmunk.

My next memory of cameras was pre-war at Ramsgate. No we didn`t live there, my parents went every year for twenty six years. Do any of you remember the train coming out of the cliff face and stopping within forty feet of the sand! To continue someone had left a Box Brownie Kodak on a window sill. My parents took the used film into a chemist for processing so they could return the camera to it`s owners if they should see them in the crowds. Hmm!

I recall attempting to develop a film while quite young. I had found in my parent`s bedroom drawer, a packet of waxy feeling tablets and on asking my mother what they were she got confused and said they were something to do with photography. I therefore attempted to dissolve one in hot water, in a rice pudding dish, under the stairs, in partial dark, develop the family holiday film, paper backing and all, its a wonder I didn`t put the wooden spool (remember those?) in as well. The results were not exactly encouraging. I`m not surprised since the "Photographic" tablets were in fact suppositories and for all the good they were going to do, I might as well ..........

I was learning though, since the next film I did for a friend I used a real chemical. Unfortunately it was Hypo and of course the film came out completely transparent.

At sometime, since I owned a fine antique brass microscope fromGamages costing œ5, Gosh don`t I wish I had it now, I wanted to attempt photomicrography so taking the found Brownie I prised out the lens, thereby ruining it as it wouldn`t go back, and attempted to fit it by means of a wooden collar to the microscope. Why I did this I don`t know since it was wartime and film was not available. About this time someone showed me a Watkins Bee Meter for determining exposures and I dearly wanted one. It has taken fifty five more years to get one, I love it.

When post war, film & printing paper again became available I could not afford to buy a camera so I made one from a small cardboard box with a pinhole lens & printing paper fastened in the lid, unfortunately exposures in summer were around fifteen minutes, and when processed in real developer & fixer (I`m learning) gave a paper negative which I hit upon the idea of oiling to make it semi transparent for contact printing and I later progressed to a simple lens, Now, I thought it was all coming together, I can do photography.

But I couldn`t quite. I had obtained the Ilford manual of photography, I still have it, and as I was now a technician in a laboratory with a wide range of chemicals, I was able to make varied developers & fixers at little cost. So I persuaded a lady to let me `do` her roll of film. I did for it all right. I had checked the developer & fixer carefully, also the temperature of these, the dark room was dark & away I went. The film was completely black when finished. It was the home made `safety lamp`. Something I made from a small cylindrical tin with a 15 watt bulb & a piece of reddish plastic in the end. It was the wrong red and passed plenty of active light.

I changed the plastic to real photographic red glass and convinced another lady I knew what I was doing. Developer, rinse, fixer, wash ------ black! It was panchromatic film. I was running out of people.

Things were moving on well by 1947. I was able to borrow a pleasing, small, very futuristic camera, An Ensign Fulvue with a very large reflex viewer, focusable from 2 feet to infinity & fixed speed of « sec. and about F8 aperture.

I finally bought a plastic bodied, wire frame viewfinder, taking 127 film, from Woolworths for one shilling & sixpence (7«p). I soon fitted a press photographers home made look alike flash gun to it. I never had this working but I thought it looked very impressive.

By now things were getting serious and someone gave me a daylight enlarger. This was a shoe box sized, black tin box with a lens set near one end, a gate shutter that pulled by rod to open & close. An aperture at the lens end at which the negative, between the two sheets of glass, was clipped and a lid at the furthest end in which was held the printing paper. The lens end was pointed at the north sky and after two or three minutes the shutter closed and paper developed. I soon started building enlargers, all horizontal types, sometimes destroying beautiful mahogany & brass plate cameras.

I could never afford an enlarging lens and condenser and so usedcamera lenses and an oval bottle of water for the condenser. It worked after a fashion.

later I bought a decent 120 size Zeiss IKon with a Tessar lens.

As I now really knew something about developing & printing I made up very many types of developer in the pursuit of ever finer grain and even wider gradation. These developers I stored in brown glass beer bottles. I once filled four of these too full and put them in the airing cupboard and, one fine, hot day they all shattered, turning most of the family washing dark brown, dark brown would describe my mother`s face well , I think.

I even bought `miracle` developers. One I heard of or rather miss-heard, I went into the local photographic suppliers and asked for a tin of "Flo Mc Roll", they had none of this but sold me a tin of Promicrol.

I was torn between getting a range finder or a photoelectric exposure meter. I settled for the meter as distance was not so critical. I experimented with burning magnesium powder in a tray held high up after lighting a paper fuse. I succeeded in setting fire to the dinning room lamp shade doing this and was forbidden to use it again indoors.

I took pictures by moonlight and lightening. I made floodlights with photoflood bulbs in large opened out paint tins as reflectors mounted tall, unstable wood stands. Guess what they did!

I learned from mistakes sometimes, such as a photograph of one of the last London Trams with queen Boadacaea sticking out of the roof and little boys appearing in the wrong place, more of that later. I also tried glazing prints squeegeed, when wet, onto window panes. They all stuck almost un-removabley to the window.

In my "Portrait for profit" days I photographed two young children of a doting mother. The subjects stared fixedly at the camera, showing not even a glimmer of expression. When printed they resembled two embryonic, bats but mummy liked the picture. It wasn`t much later I came across the trick with poor looking children, just before exposing the film, having paid attention to lighting, focusing etc, stick a piece of plaster to the child`s palm, they will spend some moments trying to remove this and you will almost certainly get one or two good pictures.

I now bought a prewar Weltini 11 35mm camera with F2 Schneider Xenon lens, speeds to 1:500 sec. & rangefinder, a superb little camera that is still a pleasure to use. The idea was to photograph weddings and make a little money and I did make a little money. To aid me in this I bought an electronic flash gun, a fairly new idea in those days. It was a Dure with a huge 15lbs power pack carried on the shoulder delivering 100 joules of energy to the flashhead, about the size of a dinner plate mounted on the camera.

Continued next time.....