Moving up in wet-plate collodion photography

During my first year taking wet-plate collodion photographs, I have used an inexpensive 4x5 Omega view camera, fitted with a normal 210 mm lens. 

My trusty 4x5 Omega View.

Although it is a modern large format camera designed to shoot with film, using it for wet-plate collodion only required a simple modification of the film holder. 

It is fairly easy to modify a modern film holder to accept thicker aluminum or glass plates.

At the beginning I felt somewhat limited by the size of my tintypes (3.25x4 in), but learnt to love the format and the intricate delicacy of the small photographs.

This is my favorite portrait of Elaiza from the Collodion365 project

Nonetheless I have decided to move up and invest in a larger 8x10 camera. After much research and soul searching, I found a camera that seemed to fit my needs and my budget: a calumet C1. As most people, I eventually found myself on ebay bidding on a C1 and biting my nails hoping that someone wouldn’t outbid me within the last few seconds of the auction. After a little bit of drama, I received the beast yesterday:

The Calumet C1!

With an old fashion 35 mm Canon SLR to give a sense of scale.

Its cosmetic condition shows that it has been well used, but as the Calumet C1 has a reputation of toughness and longevity I am not too worried. The crucial point is that the bellows are light tight and that all movements are operational.

I chose a C1 for a few reasons:

·      It is a workhorse, and is tough as nail.

·      It folds to a somewhat manageable size.

·      It has a lot of bellows. (I take a lot of still life photographs with small objects, but I don’t have the finances to buy a dedicated macro lens, so I have to rely on long bellows to achieve an adequate reproduction ratio.)

·      It has a lot of movements: tilt, swing and shift in front, tilt and swing in back.

·      It is affordable.

Of course the camera has some drawbacks:

·      It is very heavy (16 lbs)

·      It is pretty ugly…

Now I am in search of a lens for my lovely monster. I have to say that I have learnt a lot about large format lenses in the past few days. Here is a very brief and crude list of information that I found useful when shopping for a lens:

1.     A normal lens for an 8x10 falls in the 300 – 360 mm range of focal lengths. A wide angle lens would have a focal length inferior to 240 mm.

2.      With an 8x10 camera, the minimum lens coverage is 13 in. or about 330 mm. 

3.     You can easily find information on the internet on each lens coverage. It just take a bit of time, and is not that exciting…

4.     The best resource I have found to get acquainted with large format lens is: http://www.largeformatphotography.info/lenses-primer/

5.     You can find convertible lenses that will offer two or three different focal length depending on how many of the lens’ elements you decide to shoot with. It might be an affordable alternative to buying multiple lenses.

I will keep you posted on my progress...