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Abstract

THE new edition of this excellent manual of photography, which is founded on and incorporates as much of Hardwick's “Photographic Chemistry” as is valuable in the present further advanced stage of the art, retains its position as the best work on the subject for amateurs, as well as professionals. The many new methods and materials which are so frequently being introduced, make it essential that any book professing to keep up to the times must be frequently revised, and Dr. Dawson has in this work presented the subject in its most advanced position. The earlier chapters, after giving a short sketch of the history of photography, enter into a description of the most important experiments, the expansion of which make up the subject itself. This is followed by a review of the various lenses required for the many different purposes to which photography is applied, and their peculiarities are rendered more evident by the introduction of very clear diagrams of them in section. After a full description of the various points connected with the wet-plate collodion process, considerable space is devoted to the more modern subject of dry-plate photography. The many precautions necessary in the employment of the collodio-bromide negative process, as introduced by Messrs. Sayce and Bolton, and improved by Mr. Carey Lea and Colonel Wortley, are fully entered into; and the very rapid method introduced by the latter gentleman, in which the collodion is saturated with nitrate of silver, is given with some very recent formulæ. The subject of printing in pigments, so important in the present day, which “doubtless would become universal were the processes unfettered by patents,” is fully described, with the difficulties attending the “double transfer” of the gelatin film. Following the details of photolithography, photozincography is that of collotype printing, which has become so prominent of late. A vocabulary of chemicals ends this valuable and suggestive work, of which, from want of space, we have had to omit the mention of many points.

A Manual of Photography.

By George Dawson Eighth edition. (J. and A. Churchill.)