Taking first-rate snapshots requires good eyes. One is your "eye for pictures," your ability to recognize a picture when you see it. The other is your camera's "eye"—its lens.
You can train your for pictures." The more snapshots you take, the better you learn to see a picture chance when it confronts you. But, once you have chosen a subject, it is up to your camera's "eye" to record it clearly and sharply.
Lenses on most box type or fixed-locus cameras are remarkably good, at the price. But the finest camera lenses are known as anastigmats.
They are fast—let in a greater amount of light than the ordinary lens—enabling you to take pictures under adverse conditions, on dull days and at night. And they produce negatives with needle-sharp detail over the entire picture area. Negatives made with anastigmat lenses yield splendid enlargements.
The word anastigmat is usually stamped on the mounting of these lenses, It is something like the Sterling mark on silver. Actually it means free from astigmatism. The speed of the lens is also indicated, in ihe form of an f-number, such as 163, 145 or 12.
This speed is important. An £63 anastigmat lens is four or five times as fast as the average box-camera lens. This extra speed makes snapshots possible in dull weather, and with small photo bulbs at night Again, an {4.5 anastigmat lens is twice as fast as the 1.63. And on the better-grade miniature cameras, one finds fast lenses rated at 13.5 or £2— so fast that they take snapshots at 09 He must take, or lose a P.
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The smaller the f-number, the faster the lens. Always remember this, when you examine a camera. And when you get a finer camera, with fast lens, treat the lens as carefully as you would a jewel. Don't smear it with fingerprints; clean it occasionally with a soft lintless cloth. If you treat your camera's lens well, it will repay you with many better pictures.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.