The nineteenth century's largest glass plate negatives

[Geoff Barker]

The largest glass plate negatives produced in the nineteenth-century appear to have been made in Sydney, Australia, in 1875. They were made by the professional photographer Charles Bayliss with the help of a wealthy amateur photographer Bernhard Otto Holtermann, who also funded the project.

Only four of the colossal glass negatives produced by Bayliss and Holtermann have been identified and all of them were taken from Holtermann’s purpose-built camera in the tower of his mansion in North Sydney. Two were 160 x 96.5 cm (5.1 ft x 3.08 ft) and formed a panorama of Sydney Harbour from Garden Island to Millers Point.

The other two were 136 x 95 cm (4.4 x 3.1 feet) and were of the Harbour Lavender Bay and Fort Maccquarie and Berry's Bay and Goat Island. All four colossal negatives were acknowledged at the time as being the largest negatives made and appear to have remained so until 1900 when George R. Lawrence built his (4.5 x 8 ft) camera to photograph the Alton Limited locomotive.

Three of these negatives are currently held by the State Library of New South Wales. read the full post