Dear friends, 

I've searched for this but cannot find any details of the equipment that John Thomson would have used in Siam and elsewhere in South East Asia in the 1860s. I'd be very grateful if someone knowledgeable or more resourceful than myself could point me in the right direction for these details. I'm planning on doing some historically accurate reenactments of Thomson's shots in Thailand and Cambodia, and I'd like to use equipment that is similar to what Thomson himself would have used.

With sincere thanks for any expert advice,

Sean Hawkey

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  • Regarding  your plans to historically reenact some of Thomson's shots in Thailand and Cambodia, February 26, 2016 is the 150th anniversary of Thomson's arrival at Angkor Wat.  On that day or shortly thereafter he captured the first photograph of Angkor Wat and in Cambodia.  It would be an exceptionally appropriate date for an historical reenactment.

    Good luck,

    Jim Mizerski

  • oh! that is really useful information, thank you so much Fionnbharr!

  • Dear Sean,

    If you ask Ivan Roseman he might be willing to make you a Kinnear replica in the same format that Thomson used for a reasonable price. You can find him on flickr, username "Roseman's" https://goo.gl/W4HLbu 

    He recently finished a 10x8 Ottewill's Registered and Kinnear's pattern is a simpler design.

    Regards,

    Fionnbharr

  • Dear Graham,

    this is precisely the information I was looking for, many thanks indeed. I'm in touch with Wellcome Library now, but I think that this is already exactly what I need. I've also just got Richard Ovenden's book. I am enormously grateful for your help in researching this. I am hoping to recreate some of Thomson's work in Thailand, and so these details are very important for me. 

    with sincere thanks,

    Sean Hawkey

  • Dear Sean

    As you may know Thomson's glass negatives are in the Wellcome Library so they may be able to advise on the type of camera he would have used. If you look at Richard Ovenden's book on John Thomson, the final chapter of the book 'John Thomson and photography' was written by Michael Gray, the former curator of the Fox Talbot Museum at Lacock Abbey. Gray quotes from Thomson's article 'Practical photography in tropical regions' published in 6 issues of the British Journal of Photography in 1866 and notes that as a user of the wet collodion process Thomson recommended that

    'the camera must be strongly made, and the wood the driest, so as not to warp in the hottest sun. It should be portable and of the "Kinnear" form. The only improvement I can suggest on this form of camera is that the sliding front should be capable of being depressed, so that objects below the line of sight may be photographed without altering the level of the camera'.

    Presumably Thomson was a C.G.H. Kinnear camera using something along these lines:

    http://www.antiquewoodcameras.com/ottewill.html

    Best wishes

    Graham Hogg

    National Library of Scotland

    g.hogg@nls.uk

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