The Theory of the Photographic Process

Abstract

DR. C. E. K. MEES, with the help of the Kodak Research Laboratories, has written a book that will be for many years the standard authority on the photographic process. His title describes the book as an account of the theory; but theory is not conceived in a narrow sense as the counterpart of experiment, but rather as including almost everything about photography except its practice. The first chapters deal with the emulsions, what they are made of and how they are prepared; the action of light is then described, the processes that take place in photographic materials under its influence and the large number of theories which has been advanced to account for them. Development and fixation are then discussed, again with the emphasis on the details of changes that take place in emulsions and on attempts to explain them in terms of physics and chemistry. There are further chapters on sensitometry, on the nature of the developed image and on the photographic aspects of sound recording. Finally an, account is given of the use of dyestuffs for the production of colour-sensitive film, and for desensitization.

The Theory of the Photographic Process

By Dr. C. E. Kenneth Mees. Pp. xi + 1124. (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1942.) 60s. net.