Originally Posted by
Greg
I believe Atget used the whole plate format???
Anyways... years ago put together a book for our town's museum titled "Collinsville then and now". Used old images made by our town's photographer, Charles Harrington, from around 1890 to 1910. 99% of time he used a 5x7 camera to shoot his glass plates. I initially used a digital camera to capture today's images in color. Several times was able to borrow a 5x7 camera to take the present day images. The experience was totally lost using a FX digital camera to take the present day color images verses using a 5x7. Biggest difference was the relative "height" of the ground from where the initial shots were taken. We have Harrington's tripod in the museum, and his camera's height was a constant 5 feet plus a few inches. Shooting from the same spots where he took his photographs... well the present day ground level varied by several feet in some cases. Even the road level at times changed by a foot or two. Today's roads seem to be much lower that the same roads were around 1900, I postulate for water drainage purposes.
He did shoot a few 8x10 glass plates using an ultra WA lens. Used my 8x10 with a 120mm WA Nikkor to try to duplicate his images, and the lens that he used had to be around 90-100mm... have no idea of what that ultra WA optic was.
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