Mahogany half plate Sliding Box Camera with no name Lens
The rise and fall lens panel is mounted with an eight and a half inch focal length, f3.5 Petzval portrait lens manufactured by an unknown 19th.century maker.
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".
To see some of the ambrotypes and ferrotypes I have produced, please go to my results page, my Folk Park page, or my other results page
Since this web site was first constructed I have given up photographing at historical reenactments, so any one interested in my current activities should look at my Present Work 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.
Return to my home page
* 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 150 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.
This sliding box takes half plate (U.S.half plate, 51/2" x 41/4") and smaller size plates, such as quarter, sixth and ninth plate.
I used the sliding box a lot when operating at historical reenactments and although, in some ways, it's my favorite camera, I'm afraid it doesn't get a lot of use these days.
The camera that I use mostly now is my 10"x 8" cherry, this has a rise and fall front and a tilting back, I built this in 2005 and based it on an Anthony camera of the 1870s
Cherry 10"x 8" Anthony style Camera with Dallmeyer 3A Lens
At one time I had some twenty two Dallmeyer lenses, mostly portait and rapid rectilinear types.
Now I confine myself to 2B, 3B, 3A and 4D Patent portrait lenses along with whole plate, 10"x8" and 12"x10" Rapid Rectilinears.
