The Key West Citizen

Before The
Camera

A recent survey of Capper publications disclosed that 88 out of every 100 people have one or more cameras. In fact, 42 out of every 100 people have one or more cameras, two in 100 have five or more.

The survey went to more than 1,700 persons, and the results showed that 1,451 of them owned still cameras and 138 had movie cameras.

However, there are hints that business is usurping the place of the amateur as the biggest user of photography—at least the biggest consumer of photographic materials.

The manager of Eastman Kodak, industrial sales division, Paul Barbee, said that photography has become as important to the engineer as the slide rule. He said it permits the engineer to analyze, record, communicate and dramatize.

A recent survey by Kodak showed that 61 per cent of the larger chemical firms have their own photo departments. Almost half the food and drug concerns maintain their own staffs of photographers. And in the paper industry, the figure is 65 per cent.

What do all these photographers do?

With the rearmament program security in plants has become a bigger problem again. And thousands of identification photographs are needed for badges and pass cards.

As we have said, photographs have come to be recognized by engineers as important aids. And boards of directors of big corporations often see reports largely in pictures, instead of reading them.

Photographs drive home the lessons of safety in factories and help train new workers, as plants expand rapidly to handle increasing military production.

Even inspectors often carry a camera, which gives them not only a reliable report, but documentary evidence.

The magazine Oilways, published by Esso Standard Oil company, has estimated that industry is spending at least 250-million dollars on photography this year.

The scramble of both amateurs and professionals for photographic equipment and materials with production reduced by rearmament shortages, has produced some gaps on the market.

Argus cameras, incorporated has just reported business up 66 per cent, partly due to heavy military production. Several things have now been discontinued and President Robert Lewis foresaw for the future what he called "serious curtailments of production due to inability to obtain materials."

However, new products continue to come onto the civilian market and some of them from foreign factories. Dollar-short foreign lands are buying little and exporting all they can to the United States.

In the sub-miniature field, a flash gun is being offered now for the Japanese steky camera. It's light and uses only midget bulbs.

Stereo photography is coming in for greater emphasis.

A Minneapolis concern is offering the first stereo movie attachment. A mirror arrangement splits the picture in two on each 16-millimeter frame. A similar attachment is made for the projector, and the show is viewed through special spectacles, giving a three-dimensional effect.

A New York store has opened a stereo department. The store claims it is the first to do so.

A shatter shield for individual flashbulbs has been offered by a products company of Cincinnati. The shield of heavy plastic grips the individual bulb, and is snug enough to permit removal of the hot bulb from the flash by gripping the shield. It is designed to eliminate the danger of shattering flashbulbs in the firing.