Hello all. This is my first post here. I'm just wrapping up on building my second wet plate camera. I started with building a 4"x5" sliding box, have screwed around with it for a year or so, decided I really liked wet plate, and am now stepping up to a larger size. And building the first camera really taught me a lot about what I don't like, or what I needed to change on the second one.

This one will take up to 12"x12", with adapters for 8"x10" and 4"x5", and I can easily make additional adapters for other sizes.

This is about as close to "from scratch" as I can reasonably get. I didn't make the lenses (15" Ilex process and Industar 37), but that's about it. I didn't follow any plans, although I did copy/imitate a few things that I saw online for certain parts of the camera. Namely I kind of used this guy's backend/plateholder setup as I liked the way it looks and operates (http://cdtp-photography.blogspot.com...t-film_25.html), I made this 2x4 tripod (http://www.eyesonthesky.com/DIYImpro...Tripod2x4.aspx) except I made mine with adjustable height legs, and I followed someone's tripod tilting head design I saw online. The rest of the camera is just a matter of building a nice looking wood box, and making sure the plate holder puts the ambrotype/tintype in the exact same position and plane as the ground glass.

I built this one with what is essentially an internal "Guerry Flap Shutter". You push a button on the front of the camera, and a flap flips down inside and exposing the plate. It also locks open for focusing. A flap shutter should work fine with wet plate.

I made custom bellows, plateholder, ground glass, everything. In the past week I've disassembled it, given it a few coats of gel stain, and a few more of amber shellac. It looks fantastic, and old. And being wet plate, I've built a portable darkroom and all kinds of other odds and ends to make it all work. I intend to take this baby on the road as much as I can.

I'll post more pictures as I finish it up, but here's what I have so far. There's a link to more pictures at the bottom.









More photos here:
http://postimg.org/gallery/2t4ozm4k2/