Visit to Niepce's Point de vue du Gras in Mannheim

This week I have been to Mannheim (Germany) to see the first photographs that was made by a camera. It is part of the exhibition "Die Geburtsstunde der Fotografie / The Birth of Photography" in the Reiss Engelhorn Museum.

I went to Mannheim only to see this photo. The rest was interesting and nice, but not sufficient reason to travel to Mannheim and stay there for a couple of days. The 1826 Niepce photograph was worth all the trouble. For me it was a very exiting moment to see the Point de vue du Gras in real and from only a few centimeters distance. It was the chance of a lifetime and something that I will not forget.

It was not allowed to take photos at the exhibit, so I can't show you any pics from my visit to the rooms. But here are some photographs from the internet.

The photo in its original frame, photo by the Harry Ransom Center, Texas, that owns the Point de vue du Gras.
This comes closest to what I have seen in Mannheim.

This is a digital scan that also give a good impression of what the photo looks like. In real you can't see all the parts at once, as you have to move your head to view the plate from different angles to see what is on it.
The three bumps in the corners were made in 1952 when they tried to photograph the plate at Kodak.

Helmut Gernsheim rediscovered the plate in 1952 after it had been lost for more that half a century. Above is a much retouched reproduction that he made in 1952.

This is a computer image depicting the original scene that was photographed by Niepce in 1826 from a window of his house. In the photograph left and right are mirrored, so the pigeon tower on the right (in real) appears on the left in the photographs. This image is a reconstruction of the view. The buildings do not exist anymore, but the house from which the photo was made is still there and can be visited.

There is a lot of information on Niepce and the first photograph available on the internet, so I won't go into it here.
What I will do is provide some more information about the exhibition. If you want to see it, you can do so until January 6, 2013. After that the Point de vue du Gras will return to Austin, Texas.
There is a beautiful and well made catalog available, with all the 250 photos, for € 30 at the museum. It can also be bought online (probably for a higher price). The first 80 pages are devoted to Helmut and Alison Gernsheim, who founded the Gernsheim collection of historical photographs that is now at the Harry Ransom Center. Then there are about 10 pages on the Point de vue du Gras. Pages 96 to 274 show all the photos, accompanied by short descriptions. In the appendix there is an index on names and some information about the development of photography. It is bilingual: German and English.
The book has hard covers and measures about 24 x 30 cm.

The photos on display are a mix of old and "modern" works. There a some important daguerreotypes, like the full plate Notre Dame and the Ile de la Cite, made by Louis Daguerre himself in 1838. Also there is a salt paper print by Fox Talbot, The Bridge of Sighs, St. John's College, about 1845. Other well known photographers include Berenice Abbott, Ansel Adams, Paul Strand and Francis Frith, Felix Beato or Herbert Ponting, to name a few. All the big names are there, but only with one or two photos.

 And here, to end this blogpost, is a video still of the Museum Zeughaus, where the photos are on display.

"Pete the Kid" or a gunslinger in the making

This summer my mother moved to a home for the elderly. On the attic of her old house there were still some boxes with stuff I had left there. I had to go trough these and make two piles: one for the junk and and one to  take home. In the boxes I found two old photo albums and when I leafed through them many memories from my youth looked at me from the paper. Some pics I took out but the majority landed on the junk pile. That's the fate of most photographs...
There are a few pics that I saved and that I want to show here.

 

In the top and bottom left pic the gunslinger might look convincing, but the bottom right portrait gives him away. He looks far from mean or weathered like the real Billy the Kid from the end of the 1870's.

The pics here date from a century later, sometime between 1977 and 1980. In those years I had a 35 mm reflex camera and these were made with it. The gunslingers outfit consisted of a toy pistol, an old coat (early 70s style!) and discarded hat from my grandfather. I thought it didn't look very convincing then, but looking at the pics now the outfit isn't that bad at all. The real mean men of the West didn't wear Hollywood outfits, as I have found out later.

The prints were enlarged with a cheap enlarger in the bathroom and tinted in solutions of tea and coffee to make them appear old. I somehow still like them, despite their technical flaws.

Here's the real Billy in the 2.3 million dollar ferrotype that was sold on June 25, 2011.

Versailles time warp & some eBay bits

Let's start with the eBay items from the previous blog. The wooden No. 4 Cartridge Kodak with plate back sold for an amazing US $ 599 after 30 bids from 12 different bidders. Small wonder that a second and a third example of naked No. 4 Cartridge Kodaks appeared at the same dealer. They also sold for nearly $ 600.
It is true that the cameras are beautiful and whoever "restored" them, did a very fine job with the wood and brass. If s/he would be as good with leather, I would gladly have my cameras restored by this person. But to avoid any misunderstanding: there is no original wooden Cartridge Kodak, just like there are no wooden Bulls-Eye Kodaks, Falcons, Flexos, Eurekas etc. The only original wooden Kodaks are the Ordinary box cameras of the early 1890s.

The amazing Adams & Co. book camera sold for a meagre 3100 Pounds. My guess would have been at least three times that amount.
The Camp Fire Girls Vest Pocket Kodak with case sold for $ 660 and the No. 1 Panoram with case went for $ 252 to a new owner.

In the past month some other interesting items were up for sale, like a gorgeous No. 2A Beau Brownie in rose with original case. It sold for $ 860.

A No. 4 Folding Kodet Special fetched $ 450. Another one, but in naked condition, is for sale right now. Starting price is $ 100 but no bids yet.

A little treasure that I bid on but didn't get was the portrait of a cute girl with a early 1890s No. 3 or No. 4 Kodak Junior. It went for $ 76.

Nothing Kodak, but a bit historical humbug, is my latest video creation. I called it: Versailles Time Warp. It is the "story" of a lady in the early 1900s who visits the park at Versailles and catches a glimpse of Marie Antoinette walking through the garden. Obviously a case of time warp ;)
My wife says that nobody will understand the video. She might be right, but I enjoyed making it and the result is what I had in mind when I started the project. My video is loosely inspired by the adventure of the two ladies Moberly and Joudain who visited Versailles in 1901 and got mixed up in a time warp (or maybe had just tasted too much wine before the stroll). Humbug or not, here's my video.

eBay watch, a Flat Folding Kodak & two articles

One could fill a couple of blogs about all the interesting cameras that pass by at eBay, but I don't have the time for that, nor the knowledge. Nevertheless I picked a few that I like to put in the spotlight. Let's start with the bad one:

A naked No. 4 Cartridge Kodak, pre 1900 model with wood lens board and brass fittings. There are lots of them around and if you are patient enough, you can find a very nice one without trouble. So, if you are the unlucky owner of a bad one, there's small chance of selling it at all. What to do? You can strip off all the leather, take the brass fittings off, sand the wood and paint it with colorless lacquer, polish the brass, and put it all together again. Then there is a big chance of selling it for US $ 150 and upwards... It looks nice on a bookshelf, and who cares that it's historical bullshit....

After having said that, let's go to the really interesting stuff. What about a Adams & Co. disguised book camera? It looks very much like the 1892 Scovill & Adams book camera, but the book titles, the shutter mechanism and the access to the plate holder are different. Value? I have no idea, but the better known Scovill & Adams book camera was sold recently for about € 30,000 at Breker auctions.
The eBay auction ends on August 11, price at the moment is UK pounds 151. Try your luck ;-)

Another beauty is the Camp Fire Girls Kodak, a special version of the Vest Pocket Kodak Model B. The Camp Fire Girls Kodak was manufactured from April 1931 until January 1934. I do not know much about it, but it seems to be rather rare. Have a look at the George Eastman House info and at the amazing collection of Ruud Hoff.
The auction ends in two days, price at the moment is $ 602.





The last one is a No. 1 Panoram Kodak model D with its original case. The camera is not very rare, but the case makes it an interesting item. The No. 1 Panoram was introduced in April 1900 and discontinued in May 1926. The Model D entered the scene in August 1907. The former rigid box like back was replaced with side and back doors. The camera that is for sale can be dated between November 1917 and 1926 because of the serial number and the levels.
Price now $ 185 and only a few hours to go.

So far so good for the cameras that are still for sale. One that is not for sale anymore is the latest addition to my collection: a Flat Folding Kodak. I already had one, but this is a slightly different model. Read more about it on my site (link above). The one with the shutter speed lever in the center below the lens is the new one.

The camera was in quite a bad state when I got it. The bellows was very dry and faded and the back panel was separated from the roll holder mechanism by force. I have glued the parts together and treated the leather with a mixture of creams and oils. First I used black Rapide leather oil that was recommended by a fellow collector. The oil was absorbed very well by the dried out bellows, but blackening power was not enough. So I tried to mix it with Venetian Cream, which sometimes is too wax-like. The combination worked miracles. I could paint it on the leather with a soft brush, it was absorbed perfectly and it restored the black color very well without making it too black. The old soaked leather is very vulnerable, so let it dry for at least one day before you touch it with a cloth to polish it a bit.
For the bellows this treatment was not sufficient. The leather was still as stiff as cardboard. I applied a firm coating of Tana colorless leather cream with a finger, rubbing it in gently and taking care that it reached all the corners and folds. The bellows responded very well and looks 99% better than when I received the camera.

This week two of my articles were published in print. The first is the English translation of my Scheimpflug article. See it in Photographica World No. 141, 2012 issue 3, the journal of the PCCGB. It was first published in the dutch Photohistorisch Tijdschrift Nos. 3 and 4, 2011.
If you are not a member of the PCCGB you should reconsider that. The journal is well worth the money as are all the activities of the PCCGB.

The second one about the extremely rare 4 x 5 inch Bulls-Eye camera made by the Boston Camera Mfg. Co. in 1893, is in Dutch and published in Photohistorisch Tijdschrift, No. 3, 2012. It describes the camera and contains the sparse details that are known about it.

Niepce & the Vue du Gras

"Le point de vue du Gras" is coming to Europe again! Yep, so I don't have to go to Austin, Texas, to see the world's first (surviving) photograph in real live. The famous Niepce picture, that he took from a window on the first floor of his house way back in 1826, is part of an exhibition in Mannheim, Germany. It can be seen in one of the Reiss-Engelhorn Museums from September 9, 2012 until January 6, 2013.

Unretouched and uncropped version of the Vue du Gras photo, plate size 16.2 x 20.2 cm.

Helmut Gernsheim rediscovered the Niepce photo in 1952, after it had been lost since 1898. To celebrate the 100th birthday of Helmut Gernsheim, 250 milestones of photography will be exhibited in Mannheim in the  Forum Internationale Photographie on the 4th floor of the Museum Zeughaus. The Museum Zeughaus is one of the Reiss-Engelhorn-Museums in Mannheim and is located in the C5 quarter. Read more about the Geburtsstunde der Fotografie on the site of the Reiss-Engelhorn Museums.

This photograph was made with a sliding box camera that is still kept at the Musée Nicéphore Niépce in Chalon sur Saône. 

On the internet and in the standard literature there is not much to be found about this camera, although it is an interesting apparatus. This "Chambre de la Découverte" as it is called is about 30.5 cm wide and 31.5 cm high. It consists of two boxes. The front box holds the lens. The top half of the front panel can be taken out, allowing a single lens to be mounted in a groove in the front panel.

The back half is really the most interesting. It holds a frame that can be rotated around a horizontal axis. On this frame a second frame is mounted, that can be moved up and down. This sounds like the first tilt and shift movement in a camera, but I do not know if the mechanism was meant for this. The sliding movement could just be meant to accommodate several plate sizes.

Here are two pics from a film in which a reproduction of the camera is shown. In both the mechanism of the sliding and rotating frame is visible. In the second photo the frame is tilted.

As far as I know the sliding frame did hold the light sensitive plate. The plate rested against the larger tilting frame. The window in this frame is slightly less wide that the opening in the sliding part. You can see the effect of this construction in the original (uncropped) Vue du Gras photo. There is a no-image border to the left, right and bottom of the plate, but the image extends to the top of the plate. This is in accordance with the frame construction, where the top part of the scene is not blocked by the frame mechanism. Remember that the image is up side down in the camera.


So far so good. I hope one day to visit the museum and see the camera in real life. For now I have to do with the 1/6 scale model I made of it (height is 5 cm). It was an interesting undertaking, in which I had to find as much information about the camera as I could and study all the details. This is a great way to learn a lot. I got no help from the museum (thank you very much!), so I had to guesstimate the size of some parts, but I think the model is quite accurate.

1895 Eastman Bullet photo & other Kodak rarities

This week I added a rare photograph to my collection, that was made with the first model of the Kodak Bullet camera. There is no text on the mount stating "made with the Bullet camera", but there is a hand written date of July 1895. At that time the only Kodak camera for 3 1/2" square photos was the No. 2 Bullet, model of '95. This  camera was introduced in March 1895. The next model for this size is the No. 2 Bull's-Eye, which appeared in August 1895. The Bullet was replaced with the Improved model in April 1896. The camera is not well known and relatively rare.

I'm always looking for original photographs to go with my cameras and I consider this pic as a great find.

The 1895 model No. 2 Bullet with fake
crocodile  leather.

Earlier this year I added a No. 4 Panoram photo (size: 30.2 mm x 8.5 mm) to the collection. It is an interesting pic of an old fort, a house and a man under a tree. The picture is framed but when I took it from the frame to scan it I noticed a faint hand written text on the back: Miss Turnbull 3774 or 3114. Maybe this number is a telephone number, but until now I could not find a Turnbull with this number in the old directories. I wonder where the picture was taken and I hope that the name/number combination can shed any light on this. Anyway, the photo is nice and I share it with you here.

Some other niceties at eBay are, to start with, an envelope with a 1888 Kodak ad on it. It sold for US $ 127.50. This truly is a rare item and a fine addition to any Kodak collection. I can't remember seeing one of these before.

A Brownie Gift box went for $ 156 to a new owner. It is the box only, no contents. The Gift Box was made in 1924 and aimed at the '24 Christmas market. It contained a No. 2 Brownie camera, two rolls of film, an instruction booklet, a portrait lens, an album, glue, a booklet "At home with the Kodak". It is considered a rare item.  See this website and this one for more photos and a description.

New addition: Susse Freres camera

Well, what do you expect after 30 years of collecting early Kodak cameras? I guy might want to try something else, nothing wrong with that. But what can you do? Leica? No, I'm more a wood and brass man. So why not go for the best: daguerreotype cameras. And what is better than the first commercial Daguerreotype camera? So I set my mind on having a Susse Freres camera.

First a bit of history before I go to my newest addition. On 22 June 1839, Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre signed a contract with two manufacturers to produce the first cameras, Alphonse Giroux and the Maison Susse Frères of Paris. The Giroux camera is well known today, but the Susse Freres camera was only known from a Susse Freres ad. This ad dates 10 days before Giroux announced his camera. In 2007 a Susse Freres camera was auctioned at Westlicht of Vienna and sold for € 576,000. This camera was originally owned by Prof. Max Seddig (1877-1963) who was the director of the Institute of Applied Physics in Frankfurt am Main. Seddig gave the camera to his assistant, Günter Haase, as a present. Prof. Günter Haase died on February 20th 2006 at the age of 88 and left the camera to his son, Prof. Wolfgang Haase.

Susse Freres Daguerrean camera that was sold at Westlicht in 2007.

Enough of history. How did I get mine? Imagine a little shed in the shade of trees. An elder tree is hanging over the roof. Inside is a workbench with tools, an old cabinet and shelves with boxes on it. From this little shed came my camera. Admire it in the video below.

How do you like it? But before you get too enthusiastic (or maybe jealous?) let me tell you the whole story. When I decided some weeks ago to keep my photographers studio model, it struck my mind that it would be nice to have a Susse Freres camera in it. I have admired it since I first saw it in 2007. So I set to work to make one. Not full scale but on a 1:6 scale. First I did some research to find the exact dimensions of the original. On a Spanish wiki page I found the sizes, but these seemed not to correspond with the photographs I had. I asked Westlicht and Jo Geier from Westlicht provided the correct dimensions (the Spanish wiki corrected the information). The real Susse Freres camera is 52 x 37.5 x 32 centimeter (LxWxH) so my model had to be 8.7 x 6.2 x 5.3 centimeter. I had a nice piece of wood I could use for the project and I started shaping all the panels and wooden parts. From a sheet of 0.5 mm brass I made the lens tube and other metal parts. The original camera is stained black, so I could not simply paint my scale model. I blackened it with a marker and wiped the ink with turpentine on a cloth. This gave a very good effect. I used a real lens with the proper focal length for the scale model, so there is an image on the ground glass.

I am pleased with the result and I liked making the model. Now of course I have to have a Giroux camera... and the 1826 Niepce camera... and a Fox Talbot mouse trap camera.... I'm afraid I found myself a new hobby.

Goodbye to Venetian Cream & hello to George Eastman on YouTube

For many years I have been using Venetian Cream to restore the worn, faded, scratched, scuffed and dried out leather on antique cameras. It worked miracles. Alas, the manufacturer stopped making it. Now I will have to start experimenting again with home made concoctions of leather dyes, shoe cream and the like. I am not amused! But maybe someone out there knows the perfect alternative....

This week I found a video about George Eastman on YouTube (actually three consecutive videos) that is worth while to watch. The story it tells is well known, at least to me, but there is some nice footage in it about Kodak Park that I have not seen before. Actual movie footage is rare and mostly panning and zooming in on photographs is used to give a film like effect.
Embedding the videos is not possible, but here are the links and a few screenshots:

Video 1  Video 2 Video 3

Brownell in the camera factory

Emulsion cooking

Last but not least, there has been another goodbye this week: I have given away my Durst M605 enlarger with Componon S 80 mm lens and all the dark room paraphernalia that I still had. I had not used it for many years and I am pretty sure I never would use it again. So, good bye fine instrument.

1870's photographers daylight studio

In 1988 I started preparing a photohistory exhibition to celebrate the 150th anniversary of photography in 1989. I had a large room in a local museum to my disposal and I started to design the exhibition. Among other things I wanted to show the evolution of cameras and the impact of inventions on the kind of photos that were made. With the help of some fellow collectors I managed to fill a 20 yard glass wall with all sorts of cameras and photos from the first hundred years of photography.

In 1988 I had also researched the 19th century photographic history of the city of Roermond, close to where I live, and was able to show all the interesting products from the local photographers, from tiny lockets with portraits to a large panoramic photo of the building of a bridge over the river Meuse in the early 1860's.

What I did not have was a photographers daylight studio. So I set to work to build one. I decided to make it on a 1 : 6 scale, simply because I had two Barbie dolls that I "borrowed" from my eldest sister, and they measured about 28 centimeter. Maybe a bit tall for 19th century people, but it would do. I had a nice library on the history of photography, so I had enough information to put together a studio like it would have been around 1870. During more than one year I worked on it, making two studio cameras (one is a four lens cdv camera), props, head rests, the glass roof and curtains, a table and tiny albums and photos on the walls of the studio. A friend made the clothes for the dolls.

During the past 23 years the studio was stored at the home of my parents. Now my mother is moving to a home for the elderly and I had to decide what to do with the studio. It is a bit too large for my museum and I prepared to sell it. This weekend I took a number of photos that I was going to show on eBay. While I was taking the pics my wife suggested that I should consider again if I really wanted to sell the studio. Well... you probably know how it ended. Although it is too large for my museum I decided to keep it a little longer. I just have to move the glass cabinet a bit to the left and the chair a bit to the right and I will also have to find a new place for a little table, but then the studio will fit into the room.
Here's a video showing my scale model of a 1870's daylight studio.

Two new videos

Between the clouds of today I was able to shoot two videos of my newest additions. First there is the No. 5 Eastman Plate Camera, Series D, that I have described before. In the video you can see it with the full extension of the bellows. It is an impressive instrument of good quality. In its day it cost US$ 97.00. In 1902-1903 that was quite a bit of money if you consider that the average year income of a public school teacher in 1900 was $ 328.

In the second video you see a wooden version of the Boston Bull's-Eye camera of 1892-1895.