Seeing double

One of the houses I visited today had shelves of books on the American Civil war, together with loads of photographs and display cabinets full of old brass lenses.

I turned out that the husband was a keen Civil War reenactor. When his health started to fail him he too up wet plate colloidal photography. He repaired cameras and made his own camera's

The photographs were astonishing, as were all the beautiful hand made cameras he had. Just amazing. He made this stereoscopic camera. The two images are viewed side by side in a special viewer to give a 3D image. A fascinating visit.