PHOTOGRAPHY OF ANIMALS.
The question of selecting a suitable camera for photographing animal life is of extreme importance. The ordinary stand camera is practically useless, and certainly quite out of the question so far as wild animals are con cerned. The regulation type of hand camera is really little or no better, having two very great drawbacks, namely, that it is generally made for use with a short focus lens, which is quite worthless for wild animal work ; and one has to guess at the focus—a most unsatisfactory, uncertain, and difficult thing to do. If really successful work is to be accomplished, either a reflex or a twin-lens camera must be used, and the former for preference. Animals, both wild and Crowhurst (shown closed and partly ex tended by Figs. ,t.;59 and b60), and the "Argus,' by Watson and Sons (Fig. 862). The " Birdland " has a very considerable extension of bellows, making it a useful camera for fairly high power telephoto work ; which is a very important advantage to the naturalist photographer, enabling him to get photographs of very shy animals. The finder is of the reflex type. so linked up to work in conjunction with the shutter, that the removal of the mirror and the discharge of the blind of the focal plane Anschutz shutter follow instantly on the pressing of the trigger. This linking up of the
mirror and shutter has been very carefully worked out, so that the discharge is almost noiseless and without vibration. The Argus " has a reflex tinder, the mirror of which is silvered on the surface. The focal-plane shutter is of a new pattern, the width of the slit in the " blind" being regulated from the outside, giving a range of speeds from to of a second, and time exposure at will. The camera is strongly made, and lies been well planned for the work for which it is intended, and is wonderfully portable, a consideration where the photographer may have to tramp many weary miles, and climb into queer places to photograph his restless and timid models. Another admirable piece of apparatus is Dallmeyer's Naturalist's hand camera (Fig. 861), which was awarded the medal of the Royal Photographic Society in 1894. As will be seen, lighting, a most important feature to the Naturalist Photographer. The most rapid plates should, of course, be used.