The camera.
The camera should work with a shutter—the Cadett pneumatic shutter for portraiture being as good as any we know—and the pneumatic apparatus should have a very long india-rubber tube attached, for reasons to be explained later on.
Artificial light portraits.
Means may be arranged for taking pictures by artificial light, if necessary, though personally we do not care for them. The tonality, though true to the light, has a false, artificial appearance by day. There are many methods of making artificially lighted pictures; the best, in our opinion, are those taken by the electric light. Others are done by gas, and by magnesium flashes; a method quite recently revived as something new, whereas it is very old. The best of those we have seen were done by the American “blitz-pulver;” but the results appeared to us somewhat artificial. We think artists will always avoid these artificial lights.
Studio effects.
You must remember that in a studio you are taking a person in a room, and that is the impression you must try to get in your picture. |A lighting rule.| It is a false idea and an inartistic one to endeavour to represent outdoor effects in a studio. Studio lighting and outdoor lighting are radically different, and in a studio you have only to try and give an indoor effect. This has been the principle of all great artists. None but an amateur could fail to notice the falsity of lighting as seen in outdoor subjects taken in the studio. |Studio lighting.| On the other hand, in a studio you may get any effect of lighting you can for indoor subjects, for all such effects are to be seen in a room by a careful observer. |Adam Salomon.| Adam Salomon took many of his portraits in front of a red-glass window. This is quite legitimate, as is also the arrangement of fabrics for the background, and the dictating what coloured dress the sitter shall wear. Let our student work in harmonies of colour as much as possible, and let him never take outdoor effects in a studio. Make the room as much like a comfortable sitting-room as possible, and hide all the tools of the craft.
CHAPTER V.
FOCUSSING.
Focussing.
Having now seen the principles by which we must be governed, and the apparatus required, we will briefly apply them.
How to focalize.