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

[TED RICHARDS]

If it was 1843 it is too early for wet-plate (1851) which leaves daguerreotype. 

My guess is that it is wet-plate and that 1843 may be the wrong date.

However, it is all speculation by me. 

[Dr. Joe Rock]

Thank you both... and don't worry, I am still guessing at the moment, as you will see.

What I posted is a detail from a calotype in the Hill and Adamson collection in Glasgow University Library. It is a very small part of:

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

and I don't know if anone has already suggested this but it looks to me like D. O. Hill on the left (big man with big hair!) and a young Robert Adamson on the right. If this is so, then who was operating the other camera? This is a link to the full list:
https://www.gla.ac.uk/myglasgow/library/files/special/ha/listing/nu...

It is a question of size that led me to this collection because it contains calotype negatives measuring around 16½ x 12½ inches (HA 0469-0470 and HA 0476-0484), all of them of architectural subjects and surprisingly large for the date. The first group shows the Scott Monument (construction began in 1841 and complete in Autumn 1844). They are amazingly detailed and were probably waxed negatives. I have in my collection a print from one of these negatives, laid down on card and possibly by Jessie Bertram, such is its quality (attached, photographed through glass - it is a rich brown colour in reality). It is the same size as the negatives in Glasgow.
The question I am pondering is how were these negs were made and after close examination of them online, I think they can only have been made inside a camera obscura, pinned (?) to a board (?). You can see tiny pin holes in the corners of the sheets. This is how Hippolyte Bayard (1801-87) made his positive prints in March 1839, but laying the sheet of treated paper on a piece of slate, set inside his camera obscura (See: James & Janis The Art of French Calotype (Princeton 1983) p. 146).

The question above about who took the picture in Greyfriars churchyard may be relevant as these negs are very sloppy compared the the H&A portraits with very obtrusive J Whatman watermarks on some and a number of poor results.

This small advert caught my eye and I wonder were these images taken for an intended publication that, as far as I know, didn't happen - maybe for the reasons above.I would welcome any thoughts on these very interesting large negatives.

Joe

 

 

 

 

[Dr. Joe Rock]

Sorry, the advertisement was published in The Scotsman on 3 August 1844.

 

[Dr. Joe Rock]

This better image in the Getty shows the two photographers working...

https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/object/107PD0

 

[Fionnbharr Ó Súilleabháin]

That camera back looks no bigger than one to make 10x8. If you scale the darkslide by the width of his hand which would be roughly 4 inches. 

[Dr. Joe Rock]

I agree, the Getty image makes it clearer. I worked out they are photographing the William Little monument, the right pier of which forms the left edge of the image. I have not been able to find such a view and I'm not surprised. I have spent too many hours trying the get a decent view... and they are shooting into the sun! There is a view by Thomas Keith of 1856 where even he dodged the problem...
https://www.capitalcollections.org.uk/view-item?i=3561&WINID=17...

[Fionnbharr Ó Súilleabháin]

That's quite a spectacular monument, it's a pity it's relegated to what looks like a corner spot.

 

[Dr. Joe Rock]

It originally stood on its own against a high wall in 1680 - everything else in the Keith image is later