Re: Camera for making daguerreotypes?

From: Gregory Popovitch <greg@gpy.com>
Subject: Camera for making daguerreotypes?
Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2003 15:40:32 -0500

> Maybe some fellow practitioners of old processes
> requiring plates (tintypes, wet-plate, etc...) can share
> the camera they are using, and the advantages/problems with it.
> Any insight will be greatly appreciated.

When you choose the plate size, there are many factors but here are
two that I realized only after shopping. My material is silver gelatin
process (dry plate) and probably more than 100x faster than
yours... so my insight is limited for your application...

Anyway, I got a 6.5" x 8.5" plate camera from a nice folk in
Pure-Silver mailing list. I was only playing with a future idea of
making my own emulsion but because I got a camera, it made me speed up
the project a bit. Then I shopped for a lens... There are not many
modern lenses which claim to cover this image area on
specification. Many modern lenses are designed for 4x5 or 8x10, at
least on spec. I finally settled with Fujinon W 180mm f/5.6, which
barely covers 8x10 and leaves plenty of room for movement with 5x7 or
6.5x8.5. So if you go by this size, I recommend Fujinon W 180mm f/5.6
(not the NW model, which still says W on the lens but the appearance
and the lens design are different).

I also like to enlarge images... My enlarger (Durst Laborator 138) is
a giant 5x7 enlarger but can't quite blow up the entire image area of
the full plate. If you like to enlarge image, 4x5 would make your
enlarger shopping a lot easier. If you are sure you'll be contact
printing everything, then the bigger, the better, perhaps, but don't
forget about optics here also.

--
Ryuji Suzuki
"Reality has always had too many heads." (Bob Dylan, Cold Irons Bound, 1997)