The chloride of gold is sent in solution, as well as the soda, so that you have but to follow the printed directions accompanying them, putting a certain quantity of each in the water, and your toning bath is at once prepared.
After toning for a few minutes, remove the prints, and place in another dish containing an ounce of hyposulphite of soda dissolved in a pint of water; allow them to remain ten minutes, and then remove and wash an hour or more in water—running water if possible—constantly changing the water and moving the prints about. Then dry your prints and the completed picture is before you, ready for mounting on a card, or pasting in an album.[E] If you wish to obtain merely a “proof,” or a fair print, without the delicacy of shading and tone of the silver print, you can do this with “blue paper,” by simply exposing this prepared paper beneath the negative, and washing and drying without any further toning or fixing.
These, in brief, are the various processes necessary for procuring a photographic print; but, as I have already remarked, the negative being your main object, it would be much better to rest content with securing that, and depend upon some photographer to give you the paper impressions.
To recapitulate: For a short trip, fully equipped for taking photographs, we shall need the following:—
| A “tourograph,” for plates 4×5 inches, with alpenstock tripod and lens | $15.00 |
| One dozen 4×5 plates | 1.00 |
| One graduate (or measuring glass) | .50 |
| Two developing pans | .40 |
| One pound oxalate potash, in papers ready for use, 60 cents, half pound protosulphate of iron, in papers, 10 cents | .70 |
| One pound hypo’ soda, in papers, 10 cents, six ounces varnish, 50 cents | .60 |
| ——— | |
| Sum total for apparatus and chemicals sufficient for development of fifty negatives | $18.20 |
| If you will insist upon printing your own views, then you will need in addition—one printing frame | .60 |
| One bottle chloride gold sufficient for a certain number of prints as stated in directions with it, 50 cents, one bottle bicarb, soda, 10 cents | .60 |
| Sensitized paper for one dozen prints | .25 |
| ——— | |
| $1.45 |
In round numbers, for $20.00 you can be fully prepared to set up for yourself as an amateur photographer, and after many trials, with diligence and perseverance, can hope to secure photographs of scenery, interiors, and even portraits, that will compare favorably with the work of professional artists. The above is such an outfit—except that I had a larger camera and larger stock of plates—as I have carried to the West Indies and to Mexico.
Since my return, however, I find that my friend, the inventor, has produced yet another instrument, which he calls his “pocket camera,” which folds up into a small package but one inch and a half in thickness, and weighs but twenty-four ounces. This is so constructed that double plate-holders, each containing two dry plates, form the top, sides and back of the camera, and the entire outfit for the taking of eight negatives, sold for ten dollars.
It is only fair to state that other apparatus and outfits can be purchased at rates almost equally low, notably those of the Scovill Manufacturing Company, of New York, who furnish complete equipments from ten dollars up. While I recognize the excellence of these articles, I have selected the “tourograph,” as being something with which I have experimented, and likely, from its simplicity, to meet the wants of beginners.
Since the expense is reduced to so reasonable a sum, and the road is made so easy that any one can travel it, what boy or girl will be deterred from entering this fascinating domain of photography?
If you can secure some old room in the garret, or in some unused corner, cover the window with yellow or orange paper, excluding all other light, and take to it such simple chemicals and apparatus as I have indicated, then what a delightful world for experiment and research is opened to you!