Help with a camera...

[Dr. Joe Rock]

Can anyone tell me the specific camera being used here? The date is around 1843. If the man at the back is holding a darkslide (and not just steadying the camera) then it appears to be a very large format.

Joe

[Dr. Joe Rock]

I now realise that my print (below) is from the Glasgow negative HA0469. It has the same tear on the left side near the top - although it was in better condition when the print was made.

https://www.gla.ac.uk/myglasgow/library/files/special/ha/details/HA...

Joe

[Dr. Joe Rock]

Hi Roger,

Yes, it would make sense that they used a portrait lens as that is apparently why they bought the big camera. It is worth saying that my print is of course only half the story, which is why it is so sharp. It's on a relatively modern emuslion rather than another sheet of calotype paper... and of course, the images we see on the Glasgow University website are also very sharp for the same reason; they are digitally reversed negatives. If printed on calotype paper they would look much softer.

I realised after writing my last reply that the smaller negatives, around 13 x 11 (and variations), could well have been used in the big camera as a way of avoiding the clearly visible problems associated with preparing much larger sheets and at the same time, making optimum use of the lens...

I hadn't realied until I went back to the Glasgow site that almost all of the material acquired in 1953 represented the 'leftovers' from the H&A studio in much the same way that the famous Thomas Begbie collection included failed experiments and stray material by other photographers. The great value of the material is that we can see how H&A struggled to get to the level they did... and all in such a short space of time. By the way, I retired to Whithorn... better scenery!

 

[Dr. Joe Rock]

Thanks Roger, all very helpful. By the look of it H&A did make extensive use of their large camea obscura - or more accurately, travelled extensively using it, getting as far south as York. I am now wondering something else, which is; why my print of the Scott Monument is so 'flat' to use a modern term. It is incredibly sharp in the centre for a calotype but the lens clearly didn't cover the full 16 inches and so the top and bottom of the negative is soft. All of which must have been annoying, that such a large negative, clearly with issues around preparing the neg chemically, only provided a sharp usable area equal to the size of a neg from the next size down in their range of cameras.They appear to have had a camera that could take 13 x 11 inch sheets.

I wonder did they stain or paint the inside of their large camera obscura black. If not then the amount of light bouncing around inside a timber box almost certainly caused flare fogging, espeially with a long exposure...

[Roger Watson]

Good observations and questions. Most lenses have a sweet spot of focus, and usually the lenses were large enough that the soft outer edges would be outside the visible image area. I can't remember where I read it, but I seem to recall that British opticians had trouble getting larger glass blanks from which the lens was ground. The French were more advanced in making glass. That could account for the substandard lens. It might also be that they used a portrait lens to shoot landscapes. Portrait lenses are made for speed, plus on portraits, as long as the face is sharp the edges matter less. 

I've examined several dozen early cameras. Some are black inside, many are raw wood. The only people I know of who experimented with white internal surfaces in the camera were the Boston daguerreotypists Southworth and Hawes. Dr Mike Robinson did his doctoral dissertation (https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5a63a84d692ebe91943f2e97/t/5...) on the daguerreotype. His methodology is to experiment with these techniques in his studio in Toronto. He is an extraordinarily skilled daguerreotypist and makes his own cameras. He experimented with the S & H white lined camera, which is mentioned in the dissertation.

 

i just noticed that you're in Edinburgh. I live over in Fife. Near neighbours.

Roger

[Roger Watson]

Cameras (or camera obscuras as they were still often referred to) were available for purchase in Paris from August 1839. The first were based on Daguerre's design for shooting what became known as whole plate daguerreotypes (6 1/2 x 8 1/2 inches). Giroux made the first but was immediately followed by Susse freres, Lerebour, Chevalier, Molteni and others. By October you could buy them in smaller sizes 1/2 plate, 1/4 plate etc. the camera in the picture you posted looks like a 1/2 plate camera.  Though made in Paris they were quickly made available in the UK. Talbot bought two of the Giroux cameras through Andrew Ross of London in October 1839. He never appears to have used them to make daguerreotypes, but instead used them for calotypes. He recommended Lerebours cameras to one of his correspondents.

 

Of course Sara may be spot on with these being Scottish made. Once Daguerres manual began to circulate in both French and English, the illustrations in the manual would give any scientific instrument maker a good idea how to make them. Sizes larger than whole plate were made as well but rarely used for all the reasons one might suspect, (weight, difficulty in handling, greater cost, and the problems of getting and sensitising/developing these gigantic sheets of paper).

 

in paper based photography, various methods were used to hold the paper in place in the camera while making the negative. Talbot used sealing wax and pins. The positive prints were made under pressure from a cover glass, so pins were not necessary.

 

I hope this is of use. 
Roger Watson

[Dr. Joe Rock]

Hello James, Thank you for the reference - I must look it up to see where he found the information. Just checked the Glasgow set and sure enough, a whole run of Linlithgow, in one case on small and format but all the others large... and looking further, views of Durham and York also on large format. Pinholes too, mostly at the top. One with no pinholes - of the Linlithgow gateway - and very skewed. So it does look like they were having trouble centering the negative and keeping it in position. All fascinating and more grist for the mill - so thanks again.

[Dr. Joe Rock]

Thank you Michael and Sara, and great to hear from you!

This does explain why before the Autumn of 1844 he had a camera that could do justice to the Scott Monument. Looking through the negatives of St. John's Free Church again I realised that only four, probably taken on the same day (you can follow the shadow) had the pinholes in the corners. One negative in the series is badly squint and that is more likely to be the result of the paper moving rather than the camera being out of the vertical. So I think the pin holes were an experiment in keeping the paper secure.

A similar problem still occurs with 10 x 8 film in a darkslide which can 'pop' away from the surface. My solution was to have a small, well rubbed square of double sided sticky tape in the middle of the slide. It was just enough to prevent the film falling out of focus... and that was in a Sinar which behaved like a yacht even in a light breeze. Which is why I am full of admiration for the series of negatives of the Scott Monument...

Maybe I should write up my observations... Joe

[James Hamilton]

Hi Joe!

Following on from Sara, Roddy Simpson in "Hill and Adamson's Photographs of Linlithgow" (West Lothian History and Amenity Society, 2002) p.16 states that the large 16" x 13" (430 x 326 mm) camera was used in Linlithgow, and suggests that more than one camera went with Adamson on the trip there (which reflects on the scene in Greyfriars where clearly at least two cameras were on scene).

I'd be very interested indeed in any writeup you do for this!

 

[Michael Pritchard]

On behalf of Sara Stevenson who writes: 

Dear Joe

Good to hear from you!

The camera in this calotype is likely to have been made by Thomas Davidson, who made cameras for the circle in St Andrews, which David Brewster much admired. In Brewster’s article on ‘Photogenic Drawing’, Edinburgh Review, January 1843, p.327, he wrote: ‘… we have now before us a collection of admirable photographs executed at St Andrew’s by Dr and Mr Robert Adamson, Major Playfair, and Captain Brewster. Several of these have all the force and beauty of the sketches of Rembrandt, and some of them have been pronounced by Mr Talbot himself to be among the best he has seen.’ Footnote ‘All these calotypes were taken by means of excellent camera-obscuras constructed by Mr Thomas Davidson, optician, Edinburgh.’

This means that Robert Adamson is likely to have set up in business in Edinburgh in March 1843 with two or possibly three Davidson cameras.

In Spring1844, when Hill joined in an extended partnership with Adamson, he commissioned a large camera (bigger than the one in the calotype here) from Davidson, which Davidson referred to in a letter, headed ‘The Solar Camera’, to the Photographic Journal in 1859: 'Messrs Adamson and Hill … had also a camera, about two feet square, fitted up for taking portraits as large as life; but the imperfections in it, & difficulty of preparing paper so large, were against it. I also made a speculum of 24” diameter & 30” focus, for the aforesaid, for taking smaller portraits, or to reflect light on the object; but that was never much used.’

 May I refer enthusiasts to my book The Personal Art of David Octavius Hill, Yale 2002 and S Stevenson and A D Morrison Low, Scottish Photography: The First Thirty Years, National Museums of Scotland, 2015.

With my best regards

Sara Stevenson

[Michael Pritchard]

It looks like a standard box form camera for daguerreotype or calotype photography. Hard to determine the size but it doesn't look especially large, whole-plate or smaller. There's not quite enough detail to determine if it's a sliding box design. The illustration below is from Edward Palmer's Photographic Manipulation, second edition, London, 1843. Described as 'a very convenient camera for Photographic or Calotype Drawing; it consists of a mahogany box...'

A 'sliding frame' holds prepared paper for Calotype use or the holder will take a wooden frame is used for holding a prepared Daguerreotype plate.