This morning I decided to play around with my new HDR program a bit. I’m still trying to figure out exactly which photos it is best able to draw the extra details from.
I’ve had Machinery for about a month now, and we’ve been using it for outdoor shots. It works great for those, but I haven’t tried it for indoor shots of saxophones.
So this morning I opened one of my Toneking photos, and played around until I found the setting I liked best. Then I decided to try and use the program on a number of other Toneking photos that I have in Bassic Sax Pix.
I ended up putting the various edited photos in this montage, which represents over 7 decades of Toneking evolution—culminating in the latest Toneking designed by Gerhard Keilwerth just a couple of years ago.
Starting at the top left, the horns are:
- Serial # ?, but tenor circa 1965.
- Serial # ?. GJK Toneking alto. Circa 2011. Designed by Gerhard Keilwerth; built by Amati.
- Serial # 29XXX. Circa 1957. Keilwerth-stencilled Jubilee tenor.
- Serial # 22XXX. Circa 1953.
- Serial # 12418. Circa 1938. The Toneking Solo was Keilwerth’s top of the line horn of the time. This particular horn is an alto.
Helen..always wondered what happened to German sax manufacturers, Keilwerth etc, when the Nazis decided that jazz was decadent and banned it..
did they carry on making saxes for export?
did they switch to other more acceptable manufacture? Shell cases, maybe..
or close down?
how did the sax players in Charlie’s Orchestra (q.v. on youtube) manage to hang on to their saxes until they were permitted to broadcast and make records for propaganda purposes?
perhaps this is material for another thread..and perhaps your German readers would be able to enlighten us..
jim
Hi Jim.
The saxophone was not banned outright by the Nazi party in Germany. It was still used in military bands. For example, the Oscar Adler company was actually commissioned to build saxophones for some of various German military divisions. These saxophones occasionally pop up on eBay. They are recognizable by their German Reich’s Adler (eagle) over top of the swastika. I don’t know a great deal about the various engravings, and what they signify, but SOTW’s Moderator, Saxismyaxe, is very informed on this topic. IIRC, he has at least 1 or 2 German horns from that era with their military engraving.
You’re right, I think this would make an excellent article. I should ask Saxismyaxe to contribute his knowledge to it. There is so much conflicting info out there, that it’s unclear which is actually correct.
I do have the German research from Uwe Ladwig. I haven’t specifically looked up saxophone production during WWII, so I don’t know what he has written about it. I’ll take a look and see what it says. I do know a couple of other German saxophone historians as well, who I may be able to approach for this.
So, are you gonna talk about these? 😀
Anyhow, I might take a look at that software, too. I do have a bunch of pics that might benefit from its use. However, it’s gotta be easy. I’m already reading too many manuals!
I didn’t know that JK made trombones. I knew they made the Jazzophone (sax-shaped trumpet), but the trombone was a new one for me.
Yes, the software is dead easy. You can do the HDR with only 1 photo, or use 3. Download a trial version and give it a go. That’s what I did. After a few hours of experimenting with it I realized that it was a simpler than I thought. (I have HDR ability in my latest version of Paint Shop Pro Photo by Corel, but Machinery is waaay better.)
Oh, and no need to worry about about manuals. The only manual is the online version you see on the site. 😈
For some that could be really problematic I guess, but me it was no issue.