Bringing a 113-Year-Old 3D Camera Back to Life!

11/23/2024 ISO 1200 Magazine 0 Comments

Finally the transformation from a 113 year old film/plate camera to a modern wet plate camera is finished. I completely redesigned the plate holder again and created a ground glass. To hold the ground glass and the plates in place I 3d printed springs that are mounted with magnets on the lid. And the lid is as well mounted with magnets on the plate holder. A lot of very satisfying clicks when working with the camera. If you missed it, watch part 1 and part 2 of my renovation video. And there is also a video about what was in the camera when I got it, you can find it here (over 100000 people watched it)

Check out my video for the full walk through: can’t wait to shoot tintypes and ambrotypes with this 113 year old beast.

As Always my designs start in Tinkercad and after that I do the first test prints.

You only saw the final result in my video, I printed and designed much longer to get it right

While I was printing, I started to work on the ground glass for the camera. If you are interested, there is another walkthrough about how to make a ground glass. You can find it here

it’s a good idea to clean the glass before cutting it. I am not a master of cutting glass, but after the third plate it worked out

Grinding the glas is the easiest part, you just have to make sure you don’t scratch the other side

As you may have noticed in my video, I made many more plates that I will use later for ambrotypes with this camera. After the prints were finished, I finally could mount everything together.

This turned out fantastic. I love how the magnets hold everything together and turn this vintage camera into a steam punk machine.

I started to check the ground glass in the studio.

with the magnifier I could see how sharp these old tessera design lenses are. Can’t wait to use them with tintypes.

It was a long way, but I am finally there.

You may also like: How to Make a Darkroom Timer/Thermometer with a Klockis

About Markus Hofstaetter:

Professional photographer for wet plate, portrait, events and virtual tours. You can find more about my work on my website, my blog, on Facebook, on Instagram or on Youtube. You can support me on Patreon, buy me a tea or just PayPal me so I can create more articles like that. You can find my main instagram page here and my street photography page here. Prints are available here.

Thanks for sharing Markus. Original post on blog.markus-hofstaetter.at | For individual Workshops (starting with one person) please contact me here: www.markus-hofstaetter.at/pages/kontakt