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 HAVE two Victorian brass and mahogany half-plate cameras. One, which I acquired quite recently as a box of bits, is un-named, and is feeling rather sorry for itself with split and rotting bellows and a split in the baseplate where the quarter-inch tripod bush has been asked to support too much weight too far off vertical, a fairly common occurrence I gather if the owner carried the tripod around with the camera still mounted on top. It needs quite a lot of restoration, but at least it’s complete so far as I can see, and all the brasswork is sound, if somewhat green and corroded.
     I also have the remains of a quarter-plate camera which was given to me in pieces after someone with more enthusiasm than ability rashly started to restore it and then gave up. I think most of the essential bits are there but I will have to make one or two bits for it before it ever takes a picture again so it may be some time. I’m going to enjoy restoring these antique brass and mahogany cameras from a bygone century, when I get around to it. It will be a nice change from working on classic cameras where most of the work is stripping, cleaning and lubricating. If something’s broken, you look for a damaged donor camera to supply a spare part.
     With these Victorian cameras, there aren’t any spare parts even if you could find a similar camera because they were individually made, though the mahogany blanks may have been roughed-out by woodworking machinery to save time. Many of the craftsmen who made them had served long apprenticeships as cabinet makers and used hand tools for much of the work. If anything’s broken or missing it has to be repaired or made.
     The last brass and mahogany example I’ve got, an Underwood Field half plate, is fortunately in good original condition. It needs very little restoration at all, just a clean.

THIS was made by E. & T. Underwood in Birmingham (Birmingham in Warwickshire UK, not in Alabama). There are two ivory (not plastic) engraved plates let into front panel. One of these, above the lens says ‘E. & T. UNDERWOOD, PATENTEES AND MANUFACTURERS, BIRMINGHAM’. The other, below the lens, says ‘THE FIELD, UNDERWOOD’S PATENT’. It’s a fine example of the Victorian camera maker’s craft, and it’s in lovely condition. The French polish on the mahogany shines as if it were new, and there are only slight signs of tarnish on the golden lacquered brasswork.
     I got it in the 1960s, after my sister took over the family antiques business when my father died. Apart from restoring antique clocks for her, I didn’t take an active part in the business, but occasionally went with her to help pack some of the antiques she’d bought. On this occasion we were packing some china and glass that she’d bought from an elderly lady, and the lady said to my sister: “I don’t suppose this is the sort of thing you sell, is it?”
     ‘This’ was a canvas camera bag containing the Underwood together with three mahogany double book-form plate holders, a Thornton Pickard shutter and a brass-bound Rapid Rectilinear lens. My sister said she wasn’t really interested, but I might be. After examining the camera I made a quite generous offer for the time, which was accepted. Then the lady said that I might as well also take the other bits and pieces in the loft. They had all belonged to her husband who

Pictures coming shortly

had been interested in photography and who had died some thirty or more years before.
In the loft I found a box containing a number of porcelain developing trays, some glass-stoppered bottles which had once contained developer and fixer, some crumbling packets of chemicals for making up developer and three Victorian wooden tripods. She refused to take any money for them, saying that she was moving, and if I took them it would save her throwing them away.
     I haven’t been able to find out much about the history of E. & T. Underwood and the models they made, except that they were well-known camera makers, so it’s difficult to date the camera accurately. However, there are pointers. It has the tripod turntable patented by S. D. McKellen in 1884, so it must have been made after that. The Thornton Pickard shutter that came with it is separate, so it can’t be used to date the camera. However, there is, unusually, a mahogany box built on the front lens standard that looks original but it may possibly have been added at a later date. This would have prevented the camera folding flat if the baseboard didn’t have the large cut-out for the McKellen turntable.
    This box has some blocked-up holes in it that correspond almost exactly to those in the box of the Thornton Pickard shutter, so it looks as if the camera once had a built-in roller-blind shutter mounted, most unusually, behind the lens. If it did, indeed, have a T-P Time and Instantaneous shutter built in, that would put the date after 1892, when Thornton patented his T & I shutter.
     The last pointer is the shape of the corners of the bellows. These are square, not bevelled at 45 degrees. Bellows with sharp square corners were vulnerable to light leaks when the corners got rubbed. To prevent this, bevelled-corner bellows were introduced in the late 1880s. Square cornered bellows had all but disappeared by 1900, but I wouldn’t imagine a maker of Underwood’s standing waiting ten years or so to introduce such an important improvement, so on balance I think the most likely date of the camera is the early 1890s.
     There isn’t a focusing scale anywhere, focusing is by the ground glass screen at the back, and as there are no shielding flaps for this, the photographer had to duck his head under the traditional black cloth. As is quite usual on cameras of this period, the back plate carrying the focusing and plate holders be fitted in the back of the body for either upright or horizontal pictures, and the screen is on long-arm hinges so that it can be swung out of the way to insert the plate holder.
     You focus by moving the lens standard on a normal rack and pinion arrangement. Also, if you want to use a short focus wide angle lens, the back can be slid along the baseboard up to the lens standard so there isn’t a long baseboard sticking out the front to interfere with the view of the lens. The lens panel has a rising front and can also be tilted, or swung if you like, to lean backwards, but not forward. The back can be swung forward or backward and, by sliding one side more than the other along the baseboard, you can also get a small amount of side swing. It’s not so versatile as a technical or a monorail camera, but you can satisfy the Scheimpflug relationship to increase the depth of field for some pictures. A thoughtful feature is a small pendulum on the lens standard, and another on the back part of the body so you can check whether or not they’re vertical. By the way, if you haven’t met the Scheimpflug relationship, I’ve run through it briefly in the Chit-Chat section.
     I haven’t got any plates to try out the camera, but I keep promising myself that one bright summer’s day I’ll set it up outside and try to make some paper negatives using bromide paper exposed at about 3 to 5 ISO, roughly the speed of the plates that were around in the 1890s. Like a lot of other things I want to do, I haven’t yet got around to it.

THIS is the half plate camera from the 1880s I acquired in pieces in a box. The woodwork was dull and grimy, the bellows were in tatters, the brasswork was a delicate shade of green, there was no viewing screen, no darkslides and no lens. But most of it is pretty well complete and I hope in the not too distant future it will once again be a working camera. I'll put progress reports from time to time in My Repairs.

MORE than a century ago this quarter plate camera was some Victorian's pride and joy. If its ever going to look like a camera agin I will have to make several bits and pieces for it, not the least of which is a brass rack, one side of which is missing. Something tells me it could be rather a long-term project.