On Thursday night, in the Union Church Hall, a well-attended meeting of the Photographic Society listened to a most interesting lecture by Mr. M. Slevogt, entitled "Notes on Fifteen Years of Photographic Work in Shanghai." At the close of his lecture Mr. Slevogt illustrated his remarks by a selection of lantern slides from the choicest of his own negatives.
In the course of his lecture Mr. Slevogt said that the conditions of light and climate in this part of the world are so vastly different from those ruling in England and on the Continent that a now-comer who is not a griffin in photography has much to unlearn and more to learn before he can hope to reduce his bill for spoilt plates. As to cameras, he himself started with a stand camera, which is best, and for ordinary landscape work, where straight lines do not predominate, the single, inexpensive landscape lens is
astigmat, as the latter greatly exagpeeterred £0. bore costly modern an-gerates the distance. He ould not too strongly deprecate beginners starting with the hand camera. He trusted none of the members of this Society were of the "press the button" category who snap at everything and are content to take their undeveloped plates to a Chinese photographer and "let him do the rest." The proper composition of a landscape is only to be learnt by a carefull study of the focussing screen. Happily, however, the amateur who has to study his purse can gat a stand and hand camera combined; the best, he thought, was the focal plane shutter folding camera, which he believed was first brought out by Goetz-Anschutz, improved by Stecemann, and which has recently been placed on the market by Watson and Son, London. The ordinary magazine ra. holding a dozen quarter-plates, damp climate was apt to have its machinery go wrong and fail at the most inopportune moment. At one of their Society's excursions it was sad to seo their President struggling to extricate a plate from the depths of the magazine.
Mr. Slevogt then showed what ho considered the best hand camera (as described), with roller-blind shutters varying from one-twentieth to one-four-hundredth of a second. As to hand cameras, it was best to have a stand, and a solid one, but if not, he did not advocate holding it up at the level of the eyes; in this country it had the effect of terrifying the natives. Aluminium stands were utterly useless. Some amateurs who spent large sums on their cameras were utterly careless as to their dark slides. A leaky dark slide was a horror. Really ood ones might be slightly expensive, but lasted a lifetime. As to plates, ho did not admire the 5 x 4 size. Tu landscapes it gave too much sky or too much foreground. Artistically, the best proportions for a picture were as one to one and one-third, or, as in the Continental size, 9 x 12 cen-timerres. As to exposure, racing horses could he photographed in one twelve-hundredth of a second on Rapid Tford Plates or Tumieres: the longest exposure that could be given with a hand camera was about. two-thirds of a second. For the majority of his subjects one-twentieth of a second was enough. Asa developer, nothing eanatled pyro-suda. As to nears for printing there were bromide naners, Velox, and a paner made by Tiesoneane of Diiseeldorf, and Fastman's Platino-Bromide. Velox was, however, rather hard, The Liesengang papers gave a large variety of beautiful tones, from olive green to terra-cotta.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.