PHOTOGRAPHY.

Golden Bay Argus, Volume XII, Issue 45, 7 April 1910, Page 3

PHOTOGRAPHY.

THE CAMERA AND THE SPIRITS. From time to time photographs are produced which are claimed to bo those of spirits which have materialised at seances. These things are very popular with certain spiritualists. A book by Mr. John Lobb is illustrated by a whole series of them, most of them pretty and exceedingly material-looking ladies. The desire to produce this kind of thing is natural. Although the old sajing that the camera cannot Lie will find few adherents among those who know aught of the ways of cameras, there is the feeling that if &• materialised body can be photographed under conditions which leave no room for trickery the photograph will carry an amount of conviction that will not be obtained in any other way. So it will. But none of the photographs that have yet been produced do carry conviction. A committee composed of EXPERT PHOTOGRAPHERS AND SPIRITUALISTS is at present inquiring into this subject. I think lam correct in saying that no evidence has yet been furnished to it gives any warrant for saying that spirits have been photographed. Most of the prints that are exhibited as spirit photographs bear in themselves evidence of double exposure or of an exposure of the plate previous to the taking of the “spirit.” Many of them are such as any photographer can produce for himself at any time. The ordinary way of proceeding in taking a spirit photograph, which is acknowledged to be nothing but a photographic trick, is to give an exposure of some length to a seated person. The Jens is then capped, and a figure clothed in white Is stationed in front of the dark background. A very brief additional exposure is given, and the result is a photograph of the sitter, and by bis side A GHOSTLIKE IMAGE, through the transparency of which the curtain behind or perhaps some piece of furniture can be seen. Such results\ may entertain one’s friends, and may even deceive the uninitiated into the belief that a ghost has been photographed, but they are, of course, no more than scientific curiosities.

Either by this method or by some modification of this method most of the spirit photographs which I have seen have been obtained. The brief exposure on the ghost figure may have been made beforehand, and 1 then the sitter would have no knowledge of how the mysterious figure by his side was impressed on . the plate. In the same way it can be made after\ the actual sitter has gone. But in whatever way the trick is worked the photograph is simply an under-exposed image of

A LIVING SITTER. In certain cases in place of the sitter there may be taken a print of a portrait of some dead person, the face being surmounted by light drapery. That deepens the mystery, but the process differs in no scientific detail from the other.

The spirit photographers will certainly not be accepted by practical men until they perform their wonders under test conditions. These would include the provision of a tried camera and lens by a 1 standard maker, the insertion of the plates in the dark slides just as they were taken from a previously unopened package fresh from the maker, and subsequent development under conditions that allowed NO POSSIBILITY OF SUBSTITUTION. These are simple proposals. Practically speaking, they are the conditions under which thousands of ordinary photographs are made each day. But one imagines that the spirit photographers will not be in a hurry to accept the terms. Until they do we are justified' in saying that spirit photography is of no practical value whatever.—“ Westminster Gazette.”