Post War Catlogs
PATHÉ EQUIPMENT CATALOGUES (Post-War)
I am assuming the following catalogue is from the 1950's, but I have no precise information. I am including it despite there being several missing pages because it is so comprehensive but also for the contrast with the much more colourful French catalogues shown later.
1950's
1957 (Courtesy Pat Moules)
It's amazing the standard of artwork in some of these catalogues, and what effect can be achieved with just a single additional colour - far cheaper than full-colour printing.
I spent a quite inordinate amount of time on replacing the 1957 catalog pix with new ones. This was partly lockdown therapy, as I find the activity of photoshopping to be quite therapeutic. Also I found when I came to it that the originals were in a pretty poor state and needed a fair bit of work to get them up to scratch, tho' I freely admit I got a bit obsessive with it in this case. In particular, the top of the page was often cropped too far and cut off some of the top word (camera/projector). The whole process was tainted by the way the catalogue was put together, which quite threw me. First off, the page layout seemed wrong (and there was no numbering) with the image of the item on the right of the double-page spread, as one would naturally look at it, and the details on the following left-hand side. I am sure you have already realised that this meant the left-hand page did not refer to the picture sitting right next to it. I found this disconcerting and mentally struggled with it, never really sure which item I was dealing with, exacerbated by a degree of repetition over the Lido. It was also problematic since, partly for reasons of image size but partly because I thought it would look better, I was turning each double-spread original picture into two new ones which I would then present in what would seem to me to be a much better order, with the item description following the pic rather than as per original. I was also confused by the order of some items. I expected the projectors to be listed from the lowest price to the highest which, to an extent, they were, but only for 9.5. The 16mm ones were presented with the top-of-the-line optical and mag machine first, followed by optical only and then by a silent version. There was also no mention of any 9.5 optical sound machine, which made me wonder.
Anyway, as a result of all this it took longer than it should and I also decided to check the original, borrowing once more from my good friend Patrick Moules. It turned out that it was correct and complete and in the right (to Pathescope anyway) order. However, a major snag emerged. I re-scanned a couple of pages and they turned out to be blue in colour, rather than the purple shade exhibited by my original computer copies, which were done so long ago it was almost certainly a different scanner. Now, there was no way I was going to start over with a whole set of new scans, so I did my best to turn them blue. Sadly, because of either my inadequacy or that of the programme I use, only one colour gets replaced. Lighter tones of the same basic colour are not picked up (and if they were would be rendered in that one colour), so there is a distict purplish tinge in some places. I shall show you some examples of original purple.
No doubt you are bored rigid with this long account but, as I have pointed out before, Cinerdistan is a valuable resource for me, not just for others, as I would otherwise only be able to remember 10% of what I have done and thought re projectors etc and am forever needing to consult Cinerdistan.com.
So basically what you get is my order of pages, with a bonus purply tint.
and a couple of original scans plus one from my final version.
Not sure of the date of this French Catalogue but it seems pretty late. Am using the pdf format again, but as my pdf writer at least does not like different-sized pix, I am also going to include some images of pages most obviously intended to be viewed as double-page spreads.
Here's another.