Designing a new Wet Plate Camera

[Ray Morgenweck The Star Camera Company]

Greetings, this is my first post here, and it is to ask a question.....Some of you may be familiar with my little camera company Star Camera, and the line of Wet Plate and Daguerrian Cameras I build. Over the years there has been a shift from the more historic oriented collodion photographer, to one who wants to explore its artistic possibilities. Having built 150 camera over the years, I would like to design a new model that appeals more to the modern user. BUT, I do need to keep traditional materials (Mahogany or Cherry and Brass) and woodworking methods. I need to keep it strong to support large brass lenses. If you are interested in wet plate, give me your views on what you would like to see in a camera. Thanks, Ray www.geocities.com/starcameracompany

[Steve H]

Ray,
#1 - get a real host. I cannot get through to your site, as it seems you have exceeded geocity's bandwith. =(

[Jason Greenberg Motamedi]

Hi Ray,

Nice to see you here. I have, as you know, one of your whole plate cameras which I am very happy with. The best thing about these cameras are their stability and big lensboards. That said, I do miss a few aspects of modern design. Notably, I like LOTS of bellows extension, so with whole plate I use up to 28" extensions. For portraiture, I find that only rise and fall are really necessary, since the curved field of Petzval lenses makes tilt or swing very difficult to use. Of course, for landscape use with flatter field lenses, front movements are very important. Rear movements are less important for me, but I am sure most others use them regularly.

jason

[John O'Connell]

If I were getting into colloidon (or, heavens forbid, Daguerrotype) I'd go at least full plate and want the at least the kind of movements I could get on a Kodak 2D. Front rise/fall, 15 degrees of back tilt, and at least 24" of extension on the camera. Many more lenses would cover full plate than 8x10, so you'd want the camera to have a minimum extension of around 90mm---I'd guess that the 90mm Super Angulon XL would come very close to hitting the corners of full plate.

A design like your Mammonth Matt Brady camera would also be acceptable in a smaller size: rise/fall plus tilt on the front, no moves on the rear. A camera without any tilt would probably be a hard sell to most LF photographers.

I took a look at your site and you have some very interesting offerings, but coating my own printing paper might be the limit of my need to suffer for my photography!

[C.A]

I like the look of wet plate images, especially their limited depth it gives the image a melted look with the centre being very sharp and concentrated. I've always wanted to try them, but there's no one in the UK to give guidance. I don't think a lot of movement is necessary, loads of movement to use with superwide lenses would kill the effect for me. I'm probably the opposite to most LF users on this forum, I shoot a lot of portraits and prefer lenses with limited depth and coverage as I like soft edges which bleed into darkness.

[Joe Smigiel]

Ray,

I think you are correct in thinking there is a new type of wetplater out there that wants to use modern tools (or adapt old lenses to new cameras. etc.,) to do non-reenactment imagery, and I think you are on the right track offering wetplate camera backs specific to various view camera models for those fine-art oriented photographers. Personally, I'd concentrate my efforts there. How about sliding backs as an addition to your product line? Is here a way to make a new thin plate holder that would fit in film spring backs and automatically situate the plate on the sheet film focal plane? If you could build that, people could use their current equipment easily only having to carry one thin holder around. That would be marketable.

If you look at available choices of contemporary cameras and those before, the glaring limitation is the size of the front board. To use some of the older, bulkier lenses, the camera front has to be huge. That isn't going to appeal to backpackers who probably won't be crazy enough to do wetplate in the woods anyways and try to haul other supplies and darktents on their back. As far as more modern cameras, I think the competition will be too stiff so improvements to the back system again seem like the place to concentrate commercial efforts.

In any event, if you are determined to redesign entire camera systems, somehow getting the front large enought to take big portrait lenses for various formats along with incorporated (or maybe front-mounted boxes for) Packard Shutters seem lacking in current camera offerings. If you could get a bit of front tilt and rise/fall into it and long extension as well, you probably have 95% of it covered.

[Clay Turtle]

Ray, you maybe on the cutting edge of things to come! I have been shooting 4x5 for a short time & film is getting harder to find. I was in the local suppliers shopthe other day checking on the available film, the salesman answered my question then started up about going digital.
I answered, I like film. I will shoot film as long as I can get it & when I can't well then I will be looking you up to buy a wet plate. Keep up the good work, we will be in dear need of your expertise all to soon and good fortune on your new camera, would like to hear more about the project so keep up on posting.