Old Thornton Pickards??

[soeren]

Recently there have been quite a lot of these for sale on the Bay. All seem to be in Half plate? (4½X6½?) and not horribly expensive. Only thing is they seem to need a special tripod mount. Other than that what are the cons of those old things? And while we are at it any pros?
Best regards

[Martin Miksch]

Sorry for hitchhiking,
I got some of this halfplate Thornton Pickards in a rather bad condition to assemble at least one running, but I dont have the proper plateholders and dont know where to get.
Maybe some kind UK member has some for sale or knows where to get.
Thanks and kind regards
Martin

[soeren]

No problem Martin, you are not hijacking the thread.
So you got several cameras, how many and did you succeed in making one working? Which part of them is the most worn apart from the bellows?
Best regards

[rknewcomb]

Hi,
Not just Thornton Pickards...
The bookform plate holders are not only size specific they are often maker specific and more so in larger sizes even camera specific. Not all halfplate holders are the same size in the way they fit a camera. The wooden slides are often cracked and will need to be made light tight again.
The ground glass panel on these cameras is one that folds on hinges over the rear standard of the camera when inserting a film/plate holder - instead of the more modern spring back. These panels sometimes will have a small bend in the frame causing them to not seat completely flat while in the glass folded down focusing position. They seem to need an extra turnbuckle or small brass "keeper" to make them lay flat enough to not cause a focusing error when compared to the actual plane of the "film". One area of wear is often the felt light trap strip or surrounding wood on the rear of the camera. Since the old bookform holders do not have any light trap ridge between the holder and the camera body this can be an area to inspect.
Something else to note is that many of the early plate cameras were not user friendly to interchanging lenses. They often required large lensboards that were also part of the rising or sliding front panel movements of the cameras.
Please note: I like old plate cameras. The above are just points I have run into on my journey with these cameras.
Robert

[r_a_feldman]

I made an adapter for my half-plate field camera to use regular 4x5 film holders. It has "ears" like the original book-form holder. To get the correct focus, i carefully measured the position of the film plane in the original holder and matched that in my adapter/holder combination. There are pictures in post #9 in the thread http://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/showthread.php?t=51845

Bob

[soeren]

How about making a springback adapter, is that possible?
Best regards

[r_a_feldman]

How about making a springback adapter, is that possible?
Best regards

Should be possible, but you would most likely need to completely remove the old back. I say this based on my Japanese half-plate field camera. The ground glass swings out of the way on hinges, so unless you remove it when you put on the spring back (which should have its own GG), it will just be flapping in the wind.

The back (GG and film holder) on my camera comes off so it can be rotated from portrait to landscape, so it would be easy to adapt a spring back from some other camera. No need to worry much about how the film and GG register, also, as that would be taken care of in the new back. Just make sure that the new back is parallel to the back of the camera.

Bob

[rknewcomb]

Many of the plate cameras are physically quite small for their format size. So, even though a half plate 4 3/4x 6 1/2 size seems close to a 5x7, don't expect to be able to convert a half plate camera to shoot 5x7 inch film - may just not be enough room. You may have to go with the next smaller size then the camera was made for. If you're lucky, you'll get a camera with a few matching original holders in a kit.

[r_a_feldman]

Many of the plate cameras are physically quite small for their format size. So, even though a half plate 4 3/4x 6 1/2 size seems close to a 5x7, don't expect to be able to convert a half plate camera to shoot 5x7 inch film - may just not be enough room. You may have to go with the next smaller size then the camera was made for. If you're lucky, you'll get a camera with a few matching original holders in a kit.

Which is what I did -- I went down to 4x5 with my adapter. I also have an original book-form holder that I could use as model for my new back (how to shape the "ears" on the sides) and to measure where the film plane should be.

Bob

[soeren]

Many of the plate cameras are physically quite small for their format size. So, even though a half plate 4 3/4x 6 1/2 size seems close to a 5x7, don't expect to be able to convert a half plate camera to shoot 5x7 inch film - may just not be enough room. You may have to go with the next smaller size then the camera was made for. If you're lucky, you'll get a camera with a few matching original holders in a kit.

I was thinking 4X5" conversion though the 5X7" had crossed my mind :)
So a conversion is possible but is it easy too?
Best regards

[Michael Carter]

Hi,

My web site has measurements of a pile of half plate book form holders that do not fit any cameras I have. If you can use one or more let me know. I can take pictures to show the hardware configurations for identification. They ARE all differently made and it is quite interesting to see how many different ways it was done.

Michael Carter

http://www.studiocarter.com/collecting.htm