Mahogany half plate Sliding Box Camera with Dallmeyer 2B Lens
The Dallmeyer 2B Portrait lens was made in 1862, the camera in January 2004
The next camera shown is a whole plate (81/2"x61/2") camera with rise and fall front. This is made of American Cherry and has leatherette bellows.
The lens shown is a Dallmeyer Patent portrait lens. The aperture is f3 with a focal length of 111/2".
My 10x8 cherry wood camera with rising front and swing back.
Due to the nature of the sliding box camera, the lens is not interchangeable. The other three cameras being bellows cameras are much more flexible and can take lenses of different focal lengths. They all share the same size lens panel, seven inches square.
I have, in total, twenty different Dallmeyer lenses, with focal lengths ranging from from six inches to twenty five inches. Most of these are Portrait lenses or Rapid Rectilinear lenses.
These twenty lenses share nine lens panels, and I am able to mount any lens on to any of these cameras, although it wouldn't be useful to fit the 18x16 Rapid rectilinear on to the whole plate or 10x8 cameras or the six inch 1B portrait lens on to the 17x14 camera.
To see some of the ambrotypes and ferrotypes I have produced using this equipment, please go to my results page, my Folk Park page, or my other results page
To see some details of my developing box and my camp set up, please go to my equipment page
Please view my Frederick Scott Archer page.
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* I strongly recommend the equipment made by The Star Camera Company.
Although it is fairly easy to find original lenses designed for the wet collodion process, the situation with cameras is very different. Original cameras dating from the 1850s or 1860s are rare and very expensive, and far too important to be used in the field some 140 years after they were made.
So, the wet collodion photographer anxious, when demonstrating the process, to use equipment that faithfully represents that used in the 1860s has few options to follow. Either make the cameras and associated equipment himself or purchase it from an experienced maker of wet collodion equipment*.
George Eastman House Photographic Museum web site has an excellent online display of early cameras and it is not difficult to find suitable models to copy.
The example above is known as a sliding box camera because the camera body is made up of two boxes, one sliding within the other. This type of camera is typical of the kind that travelling photographers of the period would have used. They were relatively inexpensive and robust. Coarse focus was achieved by adjusting the sliding box, fine focus was achieved by using the rack and pinion control on the lens.
In the middle row, again from left to right, 1B Quick Acting Portrait, 2B Quick Acting Portrait, 2B Patent Portrait, 3B Patent Portrait, 5D Patent Portrait, 4D Patent Portrait, 3D Patent Portrait, 3C Extra Quick Acting Portrait, 2C Extra Quick Acting Portrait.
The four lenses in the front row, again from left to right, Triple Achromatic Lens No.3, Wide Angle Landscape No.3, Wide Angle Landscape No.4, and Wide Angle Rectilinear No.1,
The next camera shown alongside is a whole plate (81/2"x61/2") camera with rise and fall front.
This is made of American Cherry and has leatherette bellows.
The lens is a Dallmeyer Patent Portrait lens, with an aperture of f3 and a focal length of 111/2 inches
