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Thread: camera

  1. #1

    Join Date
    Jan 2004
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    camera

    Hello, I'm looking for some info and pics on the old wooden box cameras that ususally in India and in Bangladsh the street photographers use ,developing the small pictures in less than 5 minutes.
    I would to build up one by myself...
    Thanks

  2. #2

    Join Date
    Feb 2004
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    Scottsdale, AZ
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    489

    camera

    Hi Luca, they are called Street Cameras and were the equivalent of today's Polaroid cameras. The photographer would typically wait at a street corner for customers, position them, tell them to keep real quiet and then take the picture. It was taken on special paper, which was directly exposed in the camera (no film!). There were different formats - round buttons, postcard size or paper on a roll that would be cut with a special knife in the camera. Then the paper would fall into a development tank built into the bottom of the camera and after a few minutes the customer could walk away with his/her portrait.
    These cameras show up on eBay under the "Vintage Camera" section quite frequently - I would try to get one of those for cheap instead of building my own. I do not have any pictures, but just look on eBay and you should fine a few examples.
    Good Luck and have fun!
    Juergen

  3. #3

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    camera

    Quite a few of them are adapted onto the back of old folding plate cameras.

  4. #4
    multiplex
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    camera

    hi luca

    there is a street photographer in this picture . it looks like he is using something similar to a manalette post card camera. these cameras used a specialty paper tthat was a direct positive. the photographer sticks his arm in the 'sleeve" to both put the paper up and get it ready to expose, and remove it to develop in the developing tank under the camera. once the exposure was made the paper was dropped into the tank, and then removed afterwards. it wouldn't be hard to construct a camera like this ( i have a 8x20 pinhole camera kind of like this), the direct positive paper and developer(monobath?) would be the tough part. from time to time these cameras come onto FEEbay, but usually the tank is missing

    seems that it was the pre-curser to the polaroid (hint!)

    good luck

  5. #5

    camera

    So, jnanian, how were the negative positive prints made with these cameras? This is interesting. You mention the direct positive paper was low contrast and usually dark. When they made better prints (like one in your example) did they use negative paper and let light go thru the paper for a contact print? Or was there film that was sometimes used in these cameras?

  6. #6
    multiplex
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    camera

    hi terence

    to be totally honest, i have no idea

    from conversations i have had with folks that have & collect this sort of camera it was a direct positive paper. the photographer would make the exposure and the paper in the camera became the final print, no negative, just a positve ... no idea what the chemicals were ... i am guessing it was some sort of monobath because it was just one tank since they had to take the print out of the camera-tank "fixed" ...

    maybe it was like the stuff kodak used to make "negative duplicating film" ( photowarehouse used to sell it too, maybe they still do ?) ...
    i have used the dupe-film, it is very slow - photowarehouse's used to say "asa 4" on the package, but i used to expose it the same way i expose azo, with a flood light --- you can contact print a negative and get a negative.
    i am thinking maybe it is a similar emulsion because from what i have been told you expose it in a camera, you can get a postive .. ( never done it myself).

    - -john

  7. #7
    Donald Qualls's Avatar
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    camera

    The paper was "direct positive" the same way an ambrotype or ferrotype (aka tintype) is "direct positive." The same process is used -- a silver image emulsion on a black background, with exposure and processing selected to give a positive image via scatter from the silver grains against the darker black ground. In a very strong light (like sunshine), such an image can look quite good; in dim light, it's just about like looking at an India ink drawing on black paper -- you'd swear there was *something* there, but you can't be sure quite what.

    The "instant" aspect of these photographs is due to using a monobath process -- likely a perfectly ordinary tintype developer with the addition of sodium thiosulfate. Something similar could be accomplished with modern film (with some experimentation to get the correct combination of exposure and development) if it were housed after processing in a case with black velvet behind, or coated on the base side with a black layer (black enamel, black tape, etc.). I keep thinking it would be interesting to recreate this process with some of the equipment I have around (1920s vintage plate cameras, just need a dark bag attached to the back of the camera with the monobath tank in the bottom, really).

    Give it time, not quite ripe yet...
    If a contact print at arm's length is too small to see, you need a bigger camera. :D

  8. #8

    camera

    Hi

    I used direct positive paper made by both kodak and agfa. Both companies made both slow camera speed and slow contact speed materials. The contact materials were exposed through a yellow filter using a high intensity light source. As I remember a 5000w light source would require about a minute exposure at a distance of about 5 feet. the image was very high contrast and was used for reproducing engineering drawings. I experimented with the faster materials and could reduce contrast close to the level you see in a normal print by using low contrast developer and a secondary overall exposure. Using this for street portraiture would give one quite an acceptable print. Agfa also produced a direct positive diffusion transfer material similar to polaroid where you exposed a negative sheet in the camera then passed it with a receiver sheet through a processor which after passing through a chemical bath were laminated together and then separated after one minute. results were excellent and they also had a developer solution which gave a sepia image without toning.

  9. #9

    camera

    Thank you guys,
    The camera I'm thinking to reproduce has these features (from http://wwwmcc.murdoch.edu.au/~mchoul/photo/text.html#5):

    "........The camera he uses probably stems from the turn of the century or even earlier and operates in an intriguing way. It remains a fixed distance from the object (about 6ft). Kishan loads the camera with negative paper (Kodak commercial photographic paper). He exposes the paper by taking off the lens cap (there's no shutter) and counts to guess the exposure time – 2 to 3 seconds in daylight and 15 to 20 seconds in subdued light. During the exposure of the paper, the client must stay utterly still and not blink or change facial expression or else a blur will result. To end the exposure, Kishan replaces the lens cap. To develop the print, he uses the back of the camera itself as a kind of darkroom. Inside there is a tray containing homemade developing fluid. He pulls the paper out from behind the lens and dips it in the developer while looking at it through a red glass panel (which prevents white light from reaching the negative paper). Once it's sufficiently developed, Kishan removes it from the camera and dips it in a fixative tray (held underneath the camera) for a few seconds; then he washes the paper negative in a bucket of clean fresh water. He dries this as much as he can and then mounts the negative print on the frame visible in front of the camera lens and re-exposes the print for 10 to 15 seconds, again depending on the light conditions. Because he's re-photographing the original negative on to a further sheet of negative paper, he ends up with a positive print which he develops in the same way (back through the two solutions in the rear of the camera, washed in water and dried). It's then ready for the customer to take away. The whole process is while-you-wait – about 20 minutes from start to finish, no film, no plate.3

    Clearly then, Kishan's method is a form of calotype, the process first announced by William Henry Fox Talbot to the Royal Society on 31st January 1839 (six months prior to the publication of Daguerre's plate method), therefore one of the earliest photographic processes known, and the only known method of using light-sensitive paper in the camera itself. There are however several differences between Fox Talbot's original procedure and those of the traditional Indian street photographers, though the differences are minimal. Fox Talbot prepared his own paper, while the street photographers use modern Kodak photographic paper. In the original calotype process, the negative image was taken from the camera, developed, pressed against photo-sensitive paper and exposed to sunlight to achieve the positive image.4 By contrast, the street photographers actually re-photograph the negative to get a positive. This suggests that the Indian street situation is probably unique. It's a variation on the calotype and identical with it until the point of negative-positive conversion. The calotype involved a darkroom process, outside the camera – whereas the Indian process involves developing the negative inside the camera, re-photographing, and then re-developing the new positive (also inside the camera itself)..."

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