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The Millbrook Lens

Bulletin of the Millbrook Photography Society · Founded January, Anno Domini 1888
Vol. I, No. 7 ✦     ✦     ✦ Millbrook, Indiana · Monday, the Second of July, 1888 ✦     ✦     ✦ Sixteen Pages, Printed at Greer & Sons

Sixty‑Three Members Strong — And Six Months Ago We Were Four

Roll film, ladies and gentlemen. Roll film. A small canister of paper-backed gelatine bromide that fits in a coat pocket changes everything we thought we understood about the practice of photography, and it has changed it within a single calendar year.

This Society convened for the first time on the evening of the eleventh of January at the back of Halloran's Hardware on Vine Street, with four men present and a borrowed kerosene lamp. We had between us one Kodak No. 1 (Mr. Halloran's, two weeks old and still smelling of the shipping straw), one home‑made box of cigar‑crate pine with a meniscus lens recovered from a pair of opera glasses (Mr. Sweeting's, and a finer instrument than its origin suggests), and the absolute certainty that we were standing at the front of something tremendous.

We were correct. We are still correct. Half a year on the rolls list runs to sixty‑three names, the back room is too small for us, and Mrs. Eliza Carmody — whose afternoon studies of the river willows in May took the breath out of a room of grown men — was photographing nothing whatsoever in December and is now the finest landscapist in three counties. Photography is no longer a thing one purchases. It is a thing one does. That distinction is the entire revolution.

In the pages that follow: Mr. Halloran on the calculation of exposure under the elm shade; Dr. Harlow on a refinement of frame spacing that has settled an argument three of us have been having since April; Miss Pruitt on hand-tinting with aniline dyes (and the warning attached); the minutes of the June meeting; classifieds; and the announcement of the August Exhibition at the Odd Fellows' Hall.

Calculating Exposure Beneath the Summer Elms

By F. M. Halloran, Hardware Merchant & Founding Member
A working rule for the dappled shade that defeats every printed exposure table I have ever owned, derived from forty‑two attempts in the lot behind the store.

The trouble with the printed tables is that they presume an honest light or an honest shade, and the elm in summer offers neither. Stand beneath one at three o'clock and the patch of grass at your feet is brighter than the open sidewalk on a cloudy morning; step a yard left and it is darker than the inside of a parlor. The tables snap.

My rule, derived through forty‑two exposures on No. 1 stock made between the eighteenth of May and the twenty‑first of June, is as follows. Walk seven paces from the trunk. Hold your hand flat at the height of the subject's face. If you can read newsprint held next to it without squinting, expose at one‑fifteenth of a second. If you must squint, one‑eighth. If newsprint is unreadable, one‑quarter and pray. The figure for the No. 1 (fixed stop) is meant for that camera; adjust by the standard ratio for any other.

I confess this is not science. It is, however, repeatable, which is the only quality of any rule of thumb I have ever respected. Mr. Sweeting has tested it twice in his own elm and reports it sound.

A Numbered Counter for Consistent Frame Spacing

By Dr. Theodore Harlow, Member · Practising Physician, North Millbrook
Several of us have noticed inconsistent overlap on the No. 1 roll when winding by feel. I have built a remedy from materials available at any hardware counter.

For some weeks I have been troubled by the tendency of the No. 1's winding key, turned by the small printed pointer alone, to produce frames of inconsistent spacing — sometimes overlapping at the edges, sometimes leaving an inch of unexposed paper between exposures. The wasted stock is one matter; the irregularity of one's series is another, and to my mind the worse.

The remedy: I have constructed what I call a calibrated roll‑film counter with numbered frame markings. A brass ring fitted to the winding key, scored at twelve equal stations and numbered 1 through 12, advances one full station for each complete revolution. A small leaf‑spring detent gives a positive click at each number. The result is that one knows, by touch and by hearing, precisely when each frame is in register.

I am aware that no such device is described in the Eastman documentation that came with my camera, and I cannot claim it as anything more than a workshop refinement worked out at my own kitchen table over three evenings in May. I offer it to the Society freely. Mr. Halloran has the dimensions sketched on the back of an envelope behind his counter; any member who wishes to copy it is welcome.

I expect that within a year or two the manufacturer will arrive at something similar from the factory floor. Until then, I commend the kitchen‑table version to your attention.

On Aniline Dyes & the Hand‑Tinted Portrait

By Miss Beatrice Pruitt, Schoolteacher & Corresponding Secretary
A practical method for the gentle tinting of albumen prints, with a strenuous warning attached at the end. Read both halves before you begin.

Begin with a print that pleases you in monochrome. If the print is dull as a print it will be dull as a tinted picture, and gaudier for it. Use only aniline dyes mixed to the strength of weak tea; anything stronger turns flesh to confectionery.

My method: a sable brush of size double‑aught, the smallest you can purchase. Wet the print evenly with clean water and let it stand until merely damp. Lay color in the lightest tones first — cheeks, lips, the warm part of the sky — and work outward. Iris of the eye last, with the merest touch. Do not, under any circumstances, attempt to color the whites of the eyes; you will produce a corpse.

A warning, plainly stated: aniline dyes are not friends to the lung. Open a window. Do this work in daylight, not at the safelight. If your throat is sore at the end of the afternoon you are working too closely. I have lost a Sunday to this lesson and will not lose another.

The Darkroom Need Not Be a Room

By Mr. J. Sweeting, Mill Supervisor
A practical wardrobe conversion that has served me through forty developments without a single ruined plate, total cost approximately one dollar forty cents.

I do not own a spare room. Few of us do. The wardrobe in the second bedroom, however, is mine to do with as I please, and I have made of it a darkroom that I would not trade for a brick outbuilding.

The trick is felt. Two strips along the door's inside edge, glued with hide glue, eliminate the last bright sliver. A small folding shelf carries three trays. The safelight is a tin can with a hole punched in the side and a candle within, covered by a rectangle of ruby glass purchased from Halloran's for sixteen cents. I have read the entire Photographic Times for May by its light and developed three dozen exposures with no fogging that I can attribute to leakage.

Ventilation is the difficulty. After half an hour the air grows close and the fumes of the hypo are unwelcome. I open the door for two minutes between batches and find this sufficient. I do not recommend the wardrobe to anyone who suffers headaches.

Albumen vs. Aristotype: A Side‑by‑Side Trial

By Mrs. Eliza Carmody, Landscapist · Member at Large
I printed the same negative on both papers, side by side, for one week. The verdict is not what I expected when I began the trial.

The negative was my study of the willows at the Sweeting pasture, taken in the last hour of an afternoon in late May — a subject of long mid‑tones and very little hard contrast. The albumen print is, as everyone says, warm; the aristotype is, as everyone says, cool. So far the conventional wisdom holds.

What surprised me: the aristotype rendered the willow bark at every stop better than the albumen. The albumen lost the bark to shadow. The aristotype held it through. I had expected the older paper to win on a landscape and it did not. For a portrait, certainly the albumen; for a tree in the late afternoon, I find I have changed my mind, and I have changed it in writing so I cannot pretend otherwise next month.

Constructing a Tripod from a Kitchen Chair

By Mr. Halloran (again; he apologises)
A salvage tripod that costs nothing, requires no hardware purchases, and is steadier than the Spinks & Co. unit at four dollars eighty.

Take a Windsor chair past its useful life — the legs sturdy, the seat split. Saw the back off flush with the seat. Drill a hole through the seat the diameter of your camera's tripod screw. Fit a stove bolt up from the underside, secure with a washer and a wing nut. The chair stands on three legs because Windsor chairs always have four and one of yours is loose anyway.

I have offered the resulting chair‑pod at the back of the store to anyone who wants a look. It is steadier on grass than the proper article. On a wood floor it walks an inch under the shutter; cure this with a rag under each leg.

“The camera in the hand of the merchant, the schoolteacher, the doctor, the millwright — this is the present age, and we are alive in it.” — from the opening address of the Founding Meeting, January 11th, 1888

A standing column. Each entry expands with the member's photographic interests, current equipment, three exhibited plates, and peer critique drawn from our standing review evenings. We add four members each month; sixty‑three are now on the rolls and twelve are presented here in turn.

Sixteen plates currently on the wall at the rear room, Halloran's Hardware, Vine Street. Open to members and their guests Tuesdays and Thursdays, six until nine in the evening. Filter the hanging by subject or by photographer at your pleasure; your selection is remembered between visits to this bulletin.

By Subject:
By Photographer:
FOR SALE. One Kodak No. 1, factory‑loaded, approximately forty exposures remaining on the roll, owner relocating to Springfield and unable to take advantage. Includes original morocco case. $18.50. Inquire of Mrs. H. Whitcomb, 14 Sycamore.
WANTED. Used Wratten ruby safelight glass, any size up to four inches square. Will pay reasonable. The candle‑and‑tin arrangement described in the column above is serving but my wife has expressed concerns. Offers to box 12, Society rolls.
TRADE. One half‑plate dry‑plate camera (Anthony, two years old, excellent bellows) for one Kodak No. 1 plus modest cash adjustment. The new is calling. See R. Phipps at the depot.
FOR SALE. Three pounds developing hypo, factory sealed, surplus to my needs. 22¢ per pound. Mr. Sweeting, the mill.
WANTED. A sound copy of The Amateur's Photographic Manual, Wilson, 1887 edition (the '86 has the error on plate XII regarding pyro temperatures and I will not own it). Trade or cash. Dr. T. Harlow.
FOR SALE. Cherry‑wood plate-drying rack, hand-built, takes twelve half‑plates or six whole, brass fittings. $3.40. J. Sweeting.
FOR SALE. Aniline dye set, twelve colors, scarcely used (one Sunday only; see Miss Pruitt's column on the reason). $1.10 the set.
WANTED. Borrow, not buy, a stereoscopic camera for one weekend in August. Will care for as my own and return Tuesday morning. Mrs. E. Carmody.
FOR SALE. Halloran's Hardware now stocks Eastman roll film No. 1 size in quantity, paper-backed, factory fresh, dated within ninety days of arrival. $2.00 the roll, members 10% off.
NOTICE. The Reverend Mr. Beach wishes the Society to know he is not interested in joining and would prefer his pulpit not be photographed without invitation. We have so noted and will respect the wish.

Tuesday, the 12th of June, 1888 · Back Room, Halloran's Hardware · 7:30 of the evening

Recorded by Miss B. Pruitt, Corresponding Secretary. Present: thirty‑one members; apologies from four. Mr. Halloran in the chair.

  1. Read & Accepted — Minutes of the May meeting, with one correction (the developing time noted by Dr. Harlow was six minutes, not six and one‑half).
  2. Treasurer's Report — Balance on hand: fourteen dollars and sixty‑two cents. Outgoing: one dollar to the printer for the May bulletin; thirty cents for candles; eighty cents for the ruby glass dispensed to four new members at cost.
  3. New Members — Mrs. P. Vance (still life, particular interest in cut flowers), Mr. K. Aldridge (the depot, interest in locomotive subjects), Miss L. Renfrew (architecture), and the Rev. C. Daws of Pleasant Grove (landscape, with reservations about Sunday work) admitted on the customary terms. Welcome read by the chair.
  4. Resolved — That the Society purchase, at expense not to exceed two dollars, a proper wooden ballot box for member admissions, the cigar box presently in service being insufficient to the dignity of the occasion. Carried, twenty‑four to seven.
  5. Discussed — Dr. Harlow's frame‑counter device (see his column, this issue). Three members requested copies of the sketch; Mr. Halloran agreed to host a build‑along on the last Saturday of the month, in the back yard, with refreshment.
  6. Resolved — That the August Exhibition be held at the Odd Fellows' Hall on Cedar Street, Saturday the 18th, hangings to be selected by a committee of three (Mrs. Carmody, Mr. Sweeting, Miss Pruitt). All members entitled to submit up to three plates; final hanging not guaranteed. Carried unanimously.
  7. Discussed — The proposal of Mr. Halloran that the Society undertake a corporate photographic survey of the Millbrook business district, one storefront per week, to be bound at year's end as a gift to the Town Hall. Enthusiastic. Committee of two to organise (Halloran, Renfrew).
  8. Adjourned — At twenty minutes past nine, with three plates passed around for general admiration (Carmody's willows, Sweeting's mill‑race in early light, Phipps's three o'clock train through the cut).