Message is a bottle

In September, the kids and I spent an hour or so on a bend in the Salt Fork river a few miles from our house. The river is higher in the spring and is lower in the summer and fall months.This particular spot is out in the middle of the river, and an is on the edge of an island of tree branches and brambles trapped together. The kids like to look for shells along the river banks, and this spot is always great for finding a plethora of shells of all kinds.

Logan looking for shells along the Salt Fork River. I made this picture with my Pentax SPII 35mm camera.

This year the water was exceptionally low. We haven't had a lot of rain this spring and summer, so lots of shells are exposed and laying around on what used to be the river bottom.

Among the shells, rocks and other things exposed by the low water was a bottle sticking out of the muck. It caught my eye, because it was a nice shade of teal blue thick glass. When I pulled it out I was surprised to see that it was still intact. After looking it over for a few minutes I was going to leave it be, but the "clean up nature" person inside me (and the curious historian) decided to pick it up and take it home.

Beautiful Dudenhofer bottle found in the mud in the Salt Fork River.

On the side of the bottle is written: "This Bottle Filled By Dudenhofer Bottling Co. Danville, ILL"

There isn't much on the Net about the Dudenhofer Bottling Company. A biography of George Dudenhofer states that he started the bottling company in 1901 in Danville. Another source from an article about these particular bottles states that the company ceased production of bottles at the Danville location in January of 1919.

This particular bottle has a large square "D" on the bottom of the bottle, but no date of manufacture anywhere on the glass. It is thick and irregular, and has whisps in the glass as well as some air bubbles trapped during the bottle making process.

It is a great little bottle! I can only imagine how it ended up empty, resting in the bottom of the Salt Fork River some time about 100 years ago. The amazing thing is that this bottle stayed together, and has hardly any signs of abuse at all.

When I find the time, I would love to do more research on the Dudenhofer Bottling Company in Danville. I imagine a trip to the library and some mircofilm is in order :) But then again, that to me is the fun part about finding a piece of history.

Balda Super Baldina: Shootin 1950's style

I received a text message from my good friend Anne. It read "What's a Balda?" She found this nice little chrome camera at the local Goodwill store, and wanted to tell me about it.

She sent along a picture with her text message. At first I thought it was a medium format camera, because it looked too big for 35mm. Well I was wrong, this cute little camera is actually a 35mm rangefinder camera from postwar Germany.

She said I would probably like shooting with it, so she sent it off to me to add to my antique camera collection. Thanks Anne!

As with anything in my life, first came the research on this camera. Tracking down the history of the camera is just part of the fun.

The camera was made by the Western Balda Company in the 1950's, and christened with the name Super Baldina. It has a collapsible lens that snaps into the camera body, and is a split image range finder camera. It was made in a few different versions. This version has one of the more common three element Baldanar 2.8 50mm lenses. If you would like to read more about this camera you can check out an article here.

The cute little 35mm Balda with the lens extended in the shooting position.

The camera came in half of it's original case, but it is in remarkably good shape. It probably sat around  for a while, but has wear marks which show that it was used quite a bit. The rewind knob on the left side of the camera has worn through the printed text on top of the dial from rewinding lots of film.

$6.38, not bad :)

You can see the wear marks from rewinding lots of film in this camera.

A sticker inside the camera from McCurry Foto Co. in Sacramento, California.

I cleaned the front elements of the lens, and cleaned the front and rear glass on the viewfinders and rangefinder windows. I did a run though on the shutter speeds and apertures. The slow speeds seemed a little off (slow) so I stuck to shutter speeds 1/60 and up to be on the safe side. The big question mark for this camera was the rangefinder. It is a series of mirrors that reflects light into the viewfinder, and allows you to superimpose two images together in order to focus the camera. Not knowing if the rangefinder was calibrated (or if the camera had been dropped down a flight of stairs in its lifetime), I put a roll of my favorite black and white film in the camera (Arista.edu Ultra 200 or Foma 200) and took it for a walk in the woods with the kids.

And the results: WOW! The camera is amazing. The rangefinder was in perfect calibration, as I made images both close up and far away to test out the focusing abilities. My biggest surprise was the sharpness of this lens. The photos are tack sharp, amazingly sharp to be honest, especially coming from a consumer grade camera from the 1950's.This camera is all metal and glass, no plastic and no batteries. It is very well made and worked flawlessly. Not bad for a 60 year old camera!

A picture of my kids perfectly focused, with out of focus elements in the foreground and background.

The lens did great with this closeup. And beautiful details in the whites of the flowers.

A landscape shot of the lake. I wish I would have had a red filter to punch up the clouds in the sky.

big camera for big tintypes :)

In 2007 I made a trip to New York with Mark Zimmerman to attend the wet plate jamboree at John Coffer's house. John is an amazing guy, and one of the people responsible for the resurgence of wet plate photography.

I brought along my new wet plate camera made for me by Ray Morgenweck of the Star Camera Company. My camera is a reproduction square bellows Anthony style camera. It is awesome, and since purchasing it new in 2007 I have made many plates with it.

My camera can only make images up to 1/2 plate (4 1/4" x 5 1/2") which is just fine for most of the work I do. I would have probably been content with this image size, but folks at the jamboree were using all sorts of camreas, including larger format camreas to make big tintypes and ambrotypes. Seeing large wet plate images in person is an amazing experience. I knew that I was eventually going to go bigger with my work.

Going big with wet plate means going big with a camera. Unfortunately most cameras have been out of my reach, and for the last four years or so I have been looking for an affordable way to make it happen. I was all set to start building my own 8x10 inch wet plate camera this winter when a beautiful old camera became available:

 

 This is a turn of the last century 8x10 Agfa Universal studio camera. A fellow wet plate photographer Christopher Morgan was selling it on one of the wet plate forums. It is large and in charge, with huge front and rear standards. This gracefully beautiful camera has seen a lot of use over the years. It has bumps, scratches, stains, wood filler and lots of character. It is a fixer upper, and will require a bit of work. The bellows are new, but do not have any frames and they will need to be attached. The wet plate back is a new Star Camera Company 8x10 back and snap in ground glass. The camera back does not have any means for attaching the wet plate back at the moment, so I will be building part of the rear standard so that the wet plate back and ground glass will snap into place.


To show you the size of this camera, I photographed the Agfa with my 35mm Pentax SPII perched on top of the rear standard:

You can also see the difference in size between my 1/2 plate plate holder and the new 8x10 inch plate holder. It is gonna be pretty cool pouring 8x10 inch tintypes and ambrotypes for sure!

I have two big brassie lenses that I have been wanting to use for a few years. One is a ginormous Darlot projection lens with an 11 inch focal length, and a smaller no name projection lens with a 17 inch focal length. They should work out quite well on the more than ample 9 inch square lens opening on the camera.

So I have a winter project :) That's ok, I am really looking forward to making 8x10 tintypes and ambrotypes. In addition to making frames for the bellows, new lens boards, fix a few pieces on the camera, and rebuild the rear standard... I will also be making two new 8x10 dip tanks for the silver nitrate and fixer solutions. Oh and a tripod. Whew!

When it is done, it is going to be awesome. I can't wait.

485 miles in the van, Manhattan without the hurricane and some chickens

My van packed full of wet plate goodness.

Last weekend I did a marathon photography trip taking the big ole red van on a wet plate adventure!

On Saturday I made the trip up to Manhattan, IL for a their annual Days of Old festival. Ironically I was in Manhattan, IL at the same time Manhattan, NY was getting pummeled by the hurricane. The weather could not have been better in Illinois though, bright sunshine and pleasant temperatures.

This is the second time I have been to this event, and both times have been a blast. I really enjoy talking about the wet plate process, and explaining to the public how photos were made in the 1860's. Getting the camera down, letting the kids look through the ground glass, and talking to adults about the chemistry used and the hardships faced during this time is what "living history" is all about.

 

 

 

My set up at the Manhattan Days of Old festival.

The Krause family of Mantino.

 

 

 

I made a few nice tintypes at Manhattan and met some great people. I have really been embracing making modern work with wet plate, and have enjoyed making images of both living historians as well as modern subjects. There is something special about wet plate, it gets beneath the skin and reveals a depth in a person's character that film or digital photographs can never show.

Both the Krause family from Mantino, and the Kunkel family from Manhattan  held their pose for 6-7 seconds without moving. Getting kids to do this is pretty awesome, I know how hard it is get my kids to sit still! Both families did great sitting in front of the camera :)

 

 

The Kunkel family of Manhattan.

 

I set up next to blacksmith Steven Helis. In the few hours we both demonstrated during the event, I learned a lot about the history of blacksmithing, how metals and their use has evolved over time, and how technology has perfected the craft of blacksmithing over the ages. It was great, because I eat this stuff up. I am always interested in learning about the past in a first hand experience.

Blacksmith Steven Hellis

I wrapped up the day with a two modern portraits. Maria Aust of Joliet walked up to my tent with her boyfriend Clay Manheim. After giving them the nickel tour of the wet plate process, I had Maria sit for a portrait. Her smooth skin and direct eyes really communicate well with the wet plate process, and I enjoyed making a portrait of her.

Maria Aust, 1/2 plate tintype, 10 second exposure.

My final image of the day was of Manhattan Speical Events Coordinator Rachel YellowEyes. Rachel spent most of the afternoon speeding around on her golf cart taking care of event business. It was nice to get her to sit still for a few minutes and have her portrait taken :)

Rachel YellowEyes, 1/2 plate tintype, 8 second exposure. 

I packed up my van and sped west along the construction cone and lane closure road called I-80 to spend the evening with my good friend Anne in Albany, Il. We had a great time catching up, talking with her and her family, and she fed me so well! Thanks Anne for the great pit stop and great times!

Sunday morning I left Albany for Muller's Lane Farm in Rock Falls, IL. Paul and Cyndi Muller run a homestead farm at the tail end of a sub division just south of Rock Falls. Both Paul and Cyndi work hard on the farm all year, taking care of livestock, making homemade jams and preseves, fresh farm eggs, soaps, honey and other crops. Paul is one of those do it yourself kinda guys, and he does some blacksmith work as well. In fact Paul built my head brace that I use in my wet plate work, and the trip to Rock Falls to make some portraits was my payback for his great work.

Curious chickens checking out the darkroom and drinking from the wash water.

I set up under the trees at their home, and made a series of plates for Paul and Cyndi as well as Melissa Tallman and Phillip Brening who were visiting the Muller's that day. My buddies all afternoon were a flock of the most tame and curious chickens I have ever seen :) They kept wanting to drink out of my wash basin, so I had to shoo them away in between plates. It was hilarious!

After a couple of tries, I was able to get a photograph of Paul and his horse, and I made two portraits of the Muller's under their weeping willow tree. The shade was muddled as it was coming through the slender leaves of the willow tree, and made some excellent portraits. I also made pictures of Melissa Tallman and Phillip Brenning. I have known them for some years in the reenacting community, and have watched Phillip grow up over the years. It is amazing how time flies.

Paul Muller and his horse, 1/2 plate tintype four second exposure.

Cyndi Muller and her antique spinning wheel.

Paul and Cyndi Muller under the willow tree.

Phillp Brening, 1/4 plate tintype, 5 second exposure.

Melissa Tallman  and Phillip Brening, 1/2 plate tintype 5 second exposure.

It was an amazing weekend, with 485 miles of driving over two days making pictures outside in beautiful late summer weather!