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A few weeks ago we did a brief post about a mysterious new camera. So how did that whole plate camera come to suddenly make its appearance in the Ebony catalog?
The short answer is that two people placed orders for cameras to be custom-built in this format. Who would do that? Why? And what’s involved in obtaining a special camera like this?
History
First, a bit of context. The 6½ x 8½-inch format dates back to the beginning of photography, when Daguerre chose that size for his “daguerreotype” plates. That “whole plate” size, along with fractional variations on it, became well established during the brief but vigorous flowering of the daguerreotype; together with the half plate and quarter plate sizes, it survived through the succeeding glass plate era and into the era of cut sheet film in the twentieth century. Judged by the availability of new cameras, whole plate remained an important format in the United States at least into the 1930s, though after World War II it was rapidly eclipsed by 8x10. The format remained in common use far later in Japan, however, with new yatsugiri cameras and adapter backs being offered at least into the 1970s.
Today, whole plate is of interest primarily to photographers who like to make contact prints, and to compose the picture in the intended final print size at the time of exposure. Among contact printing aficionados, some find the slightly smaller size and more elongated proportions of the 6.5 x 8.5" negative more pleasing than the larger, squarer shape of the more familiar 8x10 format. Compared on the one hand to smaller and on the other to larger sizes, whole plate is also unusual in that the prints typically are practical and pleasing both in the hand and on the wall.
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