Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 3).djvu/632

 instantly released, bringing the slit of the shutter across the plate in of a second, and the picture was taken. On development a perfectly clear image of the flying shot was brought out, exactly similar in all respects to another of a similar shot which had been hung up before the camera for comparison on the photograph.

The great essentials to the production of a good photograph of an object in rapid motion are a sufficient light of the proper chemical quality, an extremely sensitive plate, and a shutter of sufficient rapidity. The first of these essentials is absolute, and is the occasion of some quaint blunders on the part of ladies and gentlemen who are smitten with the superstition already alluded to—that a hand camera is a sort of magic apparatus, and quite a different article from all others. They buy a neat little box with a button, which they believe, when touched, will cause a picture to be taken of whatever may be before the little box at the time, no matter where, what the light, or how rapidly the picture may be moving. They have seen photographs of the interior of rooms taken with an ordinary camera—probably with from five minutes to half an hour's exposure. Ah, but this is an instantaneous camera, they argue, and, with an airy snap of the shutter, walk off, confident that the professional to whom they usually leave the development and printing—all the real photographic work, in fact—will be able to find somewhere in that mystic little box a picture of all that room and everything and everybody in it. The enthusiastic innocents do not understand that a hand camera is nothing but an ordinary camera without a stand, made more portable and simple—that, in fact, it is only made a hand camera