Edwin Smith

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Keith tapscott.

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Could anyone tell me anything about this photographer such as his working method, cameras etc.
I'm not sure if they were taken with large format, but they look as if they were.

Thanks

Keith.
 
Mostly LF, I think. A few years ago the RIBA had an exhibition of his work and they hold his archive. His published work is mostly architecture. He was a very fine photographer, much less famous than he should be. British restraint, I presume.
He co-authored several books with his wife, Olive Cook. Also a very comprehensive book on “All the Photo Tricks” (?) giving practical advice on ways of manipulating photographs - a long time before Photoshop, of course.
Well worth googling him.
You might like to see this:
www.ribabooks.com

Evocations of Place: The Photography of Edwin Smith

Buy Evocations of Place: The Photography of Edwin Smith by Smith Edwin: Elwall, Robert from RIBA Online Bookshop. ISBN 9781858946382
www.ribabooks.com
 
Edwin Smith used a Thorton Pickard Ruby field camera, probably Half plate, and a set of 1912 Zeiss Protar lenses. Post WWII he also used an Ensign Autorange 6x9 camera. He'd started with a Contax 11 and a Tenax in 1935 before moving to LF.

The Zeiss Protar lenses are still sought after, excellent coverage and sharpness, well corrected, and because of their design higher contrast than a Tessar or eqivalent.

Ian
 
According to Peter Hamilton writing in An English Eye - a book about James Ravilious, one of the cameras Smith used was an Ica 9 x 12cm bellows camera. Smith's wife Olive Cook passed this on to Ravilious after Smith died.
 
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According to Olive Cook.'s introduction to Edwin Smith, Photographs 1935-71, he first used a quarter plate camera during WWII, acquiring a heavy 1904 Half plate TPRuby camera, which was his favourite camera according to his wife. He stopped using it in 1970, using a Lijnof instead.

Ian
 
There's no technical details in my Edwin Smith book, and Olive Cook's 1984 introduction is a little misleading. She says he used a Contax II from 1935, a model introduced in 1936 and a Zeiss Tenax which took 2x2½" negatives, the Tenax models were 6.5x9 or 9x12cm. She goes on to say he abandoned 35mm in 1938. He was married to his first wife 1935-37, and he met Olive in the early 1940s.

He bought second-hand cameras, so there may well have been others. Olive does say he seemed to begrudge spending money on equipment.

Ian
 
Thanks Ian, the Zeiss Protar lenses you mentioned are of interest.
I haven't heard of them before.
I do have a 5x7 camera.
 
Here in the UK Ross Zeiss Protar lenses were quite common before WW1, Ross made Zeiss & Goerz lenses under licence.

Edwin Smith used 3 EWA Protar lenses, the serial numbers show they were all made in 1919 not pre-WW1. EWA is Extreme Wide Angle

Protar 1:18 f=32cm 341102
Protar 1:18 f=14cm 341081
Protar 1:18 f=8.5cm 340946

These are not the typical Protar, but they are all cemented front and rear cells, so only two internal air/glass surfaces, like Dagors. He probably got them cheap as they are barrel lenses, and most people wanted lenses in shutters, but his Ruby field camera would have had a Between Lens TP roller blind shutter.

So his lenses were all f18 widest aperture, I have an AM (Air Ministry) Ross EWA it's a Protar, but they were f16 not f18, Surprisingly it's easy to focus just need a little longer under a dark-cloth.

Ian
 
Those lenses certainly produced good quality photos.
I wonder what films and processes he used over the years.
 
The negatives were reprinted for then1984 book, apparently most were Ilford or Kodak medium speed films, so Plus-X or FP3/4. There are no records of chemistry, however he made up his own pigments for his painting, so he may have mixed from scratch,

Ian
 
Earlier in his career he had the loan of a professional darkroom in an advertising agency, so presumably he was using standard chemistry. He doesn’t seem to have said much about non-standard developing techniques but he did know about adjusting negative developing times to control contrast. Apparently his own darkroom had no running water for most of his career. Nevertheless, his prints are excellent.
All this is from memory. My bookshelves seem to be a bit shambolic.
 
David M said:
Earlier in his career he had the loan of a professional darkroom in an advertising agency, so presumably he was using standard chemistry. He doesn’t seem to have said much about non-standard developing techniques but he did know about adjusting negative developing times to control contrast. Apparently his own darkroom had no running water for most of his career. Nevertheless, his prints are excellent.
All this is from memory. My bookshelves seem to be a bit shambolic.
Click to expand...
Perhaps he mixed his own chemistry from photography books such as a D76 type or D23 type for film processing along with a standard paper developer formula.
I can't find any information online though so just guessing.
 
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@Keith tapscott. you can find some information here: https://the-golden-fleece.co.uk/wp/edwin-smith-ways-of-working/

"his last camera, an Ensign Autorange, and a lot of his later work was done with that, producing 6×9 cm negatives on roll film. He used a variety of film types, predominantly Kodak or Ilford of medium (125 ISO) speed."

"used a variety of film types, predominantly Kodak or Ilford of medium (125 ISO) speed."

"It was not possible to create modern prints that matched his originals by pure exposure and development alone."

"worked on his prints with bleach (and possibly intensifiers) after exposure and development in the darkroom."
 
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