Wednesday 10 July 2013

Sepia Saturday 185: Ready with the Bulls-Eye, come rain or shine


Sepia Saturday by Alan Burnett

A couple of weeks ago I used scans of a couple of amateur lantern slides to illustrate an article on Dovedale. This week's Sepia Saturday prompt of a rainy street scene gives me an opportunity to use a couple more from the same set, as well as featuring another recent purchase, a popular box camera which preceded the ubiquitous Brownie by almost a decade.

Image © and collection of Brett Payne
Unidentified couple seated on bench, c.1900-1905
Lantern slide (83 x 83mm) by unknown photographer
Image © and collection of Brett Payne

The delightful image depicts a couple enjoying what might have been a quiet glass of beer, seated on a bench outside a pub, if it hadn't started to rain. At least I think the white, nearly vertical streaks must be rain drops; after some deliberation I've decided that if they were merely scratches made during processing, they wouldn't all be roughly the same length (about 10cm). Since rain drops fall between 7 and 18 miles per hour (Source: Yahoo Answers), I estimate that this corresponds with a shutter speed of between 1/30 and 1/60 second. What has made this photograph possible is the bright, albeit slightly dappled, sunlight which accompanies the light shower of rain. The lack of self-consciousness in this candid snapshot is unusual, considering it was probably taken around 1900-1905.

Image © and collection of Brett Payne
Unidentified group seated on lawn, c.1900-1905
Lantern slide (83 x 83mm) by unknown photographer
Image © and collection of Brett Payne

From what I've been able to tell, the very wide-brimmed and low-crowned straw hats in this second lantern slide were popular shortly after the turn of the century, which correlates well time-wise with the high-collared, wide-sleeved white blouses and long dark skirts. Here a group of three women and a young girl, the last facing away from the camera, are seated on and around a picnic blanket, placed in the middle of a well-clipped lawn surrounded by shrubs and trees. They are boiling a small kettle on a primus stove and a teapot waits patiently on the corner of the blanket. Presumably they're in a private garden, as two chickens can be seen making an appearance from the left hand edge of the picture.

Image © and collection of Brett Payne
No 2 Bulls-Eye Kodak
Image © and collection of Brett Payne

The image would probably have been produced by contact printing from the original negative onto a thin glass plate, thus producing a positive transparency. Unless a portion of it was masked off - an unlikely scenario, given the composition of the shots - the original negative would therefore have been roughly the same size as the slide. The 83 x 83mm measurements of the square slides equate to the 3½" x 3½" format of 101 roll film and the short-lived 106 cartridge roll holder. The No 2 Bulls-Eye Kodak, originally manufactured by the Boston Camera Manufacturing Company in 1892, but later taken over by Kodak from 1895, was the first camera to use numbered paper-backed roll film. Both this and the No 2 Bullet Kodak, introduced in March 1895 in competition with the Bulls-Eye, used 101 format film, as did a number of other box cameras:

CameraFilm FormatDates of Manufacture
Boston Bull's-Eye3½" x 3½"1892-1895
No 2 Bullet Kodak101Mar 1895-1902
No 2 Bulls-Eye Kodak101Aug 1895-1913
No 2 Eureka106Jun 1897-1899
No 2 Falcon Kodak101Sep 1897-Dec 1899
No 2 Bullet Special Kodak101May 1898-Apr 1904
No 2 Bulls-Eye Special Kodak1011898-Apr 1904
No 2 Flexo Kodak101Dec 1899-Apr 1913
No 2 Plico Kodak101Mar 1901-1913

Image © and collection of Brett Payne
Rotary shutter, No 2 Bulls-Eye Kodak
Image © and collection of Brett Payne

Of all these models, the No 2 Bulls-Eye was the most successful, Coe (1988) estimating a total of roughly 257,000 to have been manufactured, and rivalled in sales during the 1890s only by its diminutive cousin the Pocket Kodak, which used the smaller 102 format film. Although I haven't found anything definitive about the rotary shutter used in the Bulls-Eye, other Kodak box cameras were manufactured with shutter speeds of 1/35 to 1/50 seconds, which corresponds well with my calculations of the exposure time using rain drop tracks.

Image courtesy of Royal RussiaImage courtesy of Jos Erdkamp
Bulls-Eye held by Grand Duchesses Olga (left) and Anastasia (right)
Taken by unknown photographer, Imperial Yacht Standart, c. 1911
Images courtesy of Royal Russia & Jos Erdkamp

Jos Erdkamp has a wonderful example of a No. 2 Bull's-Eye Kodak, complete with its original carrying case, a film cartridge, an instruction booklet, and a portrait lens attachment. He has also written an account - unfortunately in Dutch, of his detective work (Erdkamp, 1995) unearthing an intriguing fact, that the Romanov family were amongst the many enthusiastic users of the Bulls-Eye camera.

References

No. 2 Bull's-Eye Kodak (1896), on Antique Kodak Cameras from the Collection of Kodaksefke.

f/Stops and Shutter Speeds, on The Brownie Camera Page.

RUSSIAN IMPERIAL YACHTS: On Board the Imperial Yacht Standart, on Royal Russia.

Coe, Brian (1978) Cameras: From Daguerreotypes to Instant Pictures, United States: Crown Publishers.

Coe, Brian (1988) Kodak Cameras: the First Hundred Years, East Sussex, United Kingdom: Hove Foto Books, 298p.

Erdkamp, Jos (1995) De Romanov Kodaks, in Photohistorisch Tijdschrift, Issue 3 of 1995.

36 comments:

  1. That first picture is begging for a caption; one for the Sepia Saturday Facebook group fun page? It may not be a pub; it could just be one of the quaint old vilage shops with a bench outside, and that's probaby lemonade or ginger beer. Otherwise I can't think why a pub would have an OXO sign in the window ) if that's what it is).

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    1. Great suggestion, so OK you're on. And yes, you're probably right about OXO and the corner shop. It's probably ginger beer.

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    2. Well thanks for posting it Brett, now let's see if anybody takes up the challenge.

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  2. I don't know, maybe there is an overhang to the roof because they don't look like they're getting rained on. What does OXO stand for?

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    1. You may well be right Kristin. OXO is very British, I suppose, although I grew up with it in southern Africa, and note that it's also available in Canada - all former British colonies.

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    2. Sorry, I forgot to add the link to OXO.

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  3. Wonderful - who else would calculate shutter speed from rain-drop speed. It can't have been taken outside a pub, no serious drinker would risk rain diluting his/her beer.

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    1. Haha Alan, of course you and Marilyn are both right - it must be ginger beer or something similarly harmless.

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  4. Forensic photography -- not just for crime scenes anymore. I'm amazed you can actually identify the camera by analyzing rainfall.

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    1. Well, it's a bit of a long draw of the bow, and there were a few other factors involved. If you want to see more forensic photography, check this site out.

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  5. Charming photos and fascinating camera history, Brett. Looking at the closeup video on the Kodak Bulls-eye showed a remarkable mechanism that needed a lot of careful handwork to build one. It's amazing that such a marvel of new technology sold for only $8. Maybe like today's inkjet printers and expensive ink cartridges, the profit was in the film and processing.

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    1. This camera is a very recent purchase, and I have marvelled at the relatively simple, but ingenious, design of the shutter mechanism and aperture settings. I wish I could find some film to try it out - that would be amazing. They were cheap because Kodak manufactured them in large numbers, but of course the Brownies, being made of cardboard, were even cheaper and eventually superseded the Bulls-Eye.

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  6. I like and appreciate the research you put into your posts, Brett. Your comment on the lack of self-consciousness on the first photo also crossed my mind. I remember reading some explanation of people's faces and why they don't smile in the photos in those times.

    Hazel

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    1. Thank you Hazel, your comments are always thoughtful and very much appreciated.

      It's often said that people looked severe in Victorian portraits because of the length of time they had to sit still for the lengthy exposures, but that's actually a fallacy. Exposure times were already much reduced by the 1880s due to advances in photo emulsion technology. The expressionless faces were due to conventions of the time - nobody smiled for portraits because that wasn't regarded as proper, a hangover from painted portraits. It's a whole lengthy topic to be discussed another time, perhaps.

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  7. I checked your OXO link, and I found the packages rather startling. The design looks like an owl is staring out

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    1. I'd not thought of it like that, but your right, they are very different from the usual. I grew up with OXO in the house and still do use it often, so it looks pretty ordinary to me.

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  8. I love these old photographs, especially the ladies in their straw boaters envying a picnic. The one of the Russian royal family is so poignant given their terrible death.

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    1. The flat straw hats seem to be balanced most precariously. I imagine they must have used a few hatpins on a substantially coiffured head of hear to keep them in place.

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  9. Just adding a little more "happiness" to her mug.

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  10. I also noticed the smiling faces in the first two photos, so different from the serious studio portraits. But I didn't notice any smiling faces in the Romanov's photos. I think you're right about conventions of the time and not the shutter speed.
    Nancy

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    1. There are a lot of photos of the Russian royal family on the Royal Russia, and not a smile to be seen.

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  11. Sad to think that the Kodak company is failing so terribly what with their contribution to shaping global culture.

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    1. It seems strange that a company which was so good at marketing for so long failed to cope with the changes to digital imaging.

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  12. That chap is up to no good he is trying to get the lady tiddly.
    You've hit the bull's-eye with this post, Brett

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    1. I think all the plantes must have been aligned, Bob.

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  13. You sure do a lot of research into photos and cameras. Working out the shutter speed from raindrops that is clever. I see this topic is a passion with you. I love old photos but I am more into the social side. Like who are they and where are they and what is their story etc.

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    1. You're right about the passion, but the social side is just as important to me. The difficulty is that when one is dealing with found photos, they have generally lost their context, and it's hard to delve into the social side without just making things up.

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  14. I think I've figured out how the whole flying saucer mystery began. Those three ladies were walking behind a tall hedge and only their hats could be seen. The rest was history and a lot of wonderfully bad movies from the 1950s.

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    1. Yep I think you got it, but hang on ... where did the conspiracy part come into it?

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  15. Interesting journey, as usual, though...
    still not convinced about those raindrops.
    The wood bench, their clothes, everything appears rather dry. But I am intrigued by the "oxo" in the window...
    :D~
    HUGZ

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    1. Yes, they do rather, but Kristin suggested there's an overhang to the roof. Perhaps there's a flaw in my reasoning ... What a pity we can't make out anything else in the window to go with the OXO.

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  16. Yes,The Top Photo is very informal & relaxed..And The Lady looks So Happy!!!!!!(must have been good beer:)!

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    1. Yes good beer, or a very funny joke perhaps?

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  17. I love that first photo. It's so candid. I feel like I was there with them. Although they're probably glad I wasn't!
    Barbara

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    1. I feel the same way. It feels a very warm moment, and pretty unusual in an amateur photo of that period, which I presume it is.

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