Scientific American Supplement, No. 492, June 6, 1885 — John Shaqi
Scientific American Supplement, No. 492, June 6, 1885Various
Science
Scientific American Supplement, No. 492, June 6, 1885
Various
Science -- Periodicals
Attempts have been made to produce isochromatic gelatine dry plates
which, while many times more sensitive to white light than my chlorophyl
plates, shall also show the same relative color-sensitiveness. Such
plates would be very valuable but for one fact: it would be necessary to
prepare and develop them in almost total darkness. Gelatine bromide dry
plates extremely sensitive to yellow, but _comparatively insensitive to
red_, might be used to advantage in portrait and instantaneous
photography, because they could be safely prepared and developed in red
light; but when truly isochromatic photographs are required, the time of
exposure must be regulated to suit the degree of sensitiveness to red,
which cannot safely be made greater than I have realized with my
chlorophyl process.
* * * * *
DISTORTION FROM EXPANSION OF THE PAPER IN PHOTOGRAPHY.
The effect of the unequal expansion of paper, when wetted, in causing
distortion of the photographic image impressed upon it, has, in the case
of ordinary photographs upon albumenized paper, been well recognized; but
the extent to which such distortion may exist under different treatment
is worthy of some special consideration, particularly with reference to
the method of printing upon gelatinized paper, which has been thought by
some likely to supersede the method now usually employed with albumenized
paper.
When a print upon the ordinary photographic (albumen) paper is wetted,
the fiber expands more in one direction than in the other, so that the
print becomes unequally enlarged, very slightly in one and much more so
in the other way of the paper. When the paper is dried without any strain
being put upon it, the fibers regain very nearly their original
dimensions and position, so that the distortion which has existed in the
wet condition nearly disappears.
If the photograph is cemented, while in the expanded condition, upon a
rigid surface, the distortion then existing is fixed, and rendered
permanent. Such a cementation or method of mounting is that which has
been generally adopted, and the consequence has been that every now and
then complaints have justly been made of the untruthfulness--owing to
this particular distortion--of photographs; productions whose chief merit
has often been asserted to consist in their absolute truthfulness. This
distortion is very manifest when, in a set of portraits, some of the
prints happen to have been made in one direction of the paper, and others
with the long grain the other way. I have known a case where a proof
happened to increase the face in width, and all the other prints
increased it in length. Of course, neither was correct, but the proof had
been accepted and liked, and the remainder of the set had to be reprinted
with the grain of the paper running in the same direction as that in the
first one which had been supplied.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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