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Wet Plate Collodion Camera: What I made before I made strops

Tony Miller

Speaking of horse butts…
I wanted to share a little bit of my other interests.

Many years ago before I made strops commercially I built wooden wet plate cameras and conversion backs. I started doing wet plate photography when it first made a resurgence about 20 years ago and built this camera for myself. It is a sliding box folding bed camera and takes a 5 x 7 glass plate and the plate holder and ground glass screen interchange positions in use. Patterned after a mid/late 1800s European design I built it to replicate an antique camera and aged it appropriately. This one spent time at the George Eastman House in Rochester NY and used in workshops for curators and staff before coming back home to me.

For about 5 years I built one off wet plate cameras and conversion backs for vintage and modern view camera for various photographers and Civil War reenactors. My first client was Sally Mann and I also did work for Robert Maxwell a celebrity and fashion photographer and one for John Coffer, the "Father" of modern wet plate photography as well as many others. I did about 12 -15 cameras and conversions during that period. I had been an avid woodworker/patternmaker as well as leather worker for years so already had the skills to build items like this. (Before doing that work I was a stone cutter doing lettering and designs in marble and limestone)

I am still an avid photographer, mostly analog (film) and a little digital and shoot 35mm, medium format and large format and have a home darkroom.

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