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]

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. 

[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.