December challenge; brown and f4

This is an Instantograph half-plate camera, dated 1896. The metal (brass) plate in the foreground is the aperture - in this case marked ‘4’. (You may need to go large to see it more clearly). It comes with a set of apertures - which are nothing more than a series of plates with different size holes.

There’s a brass tube that connects the lens to the camera body; it has a slot in the top and the aperture simply slots into the ….. slot.

So to take your picture, simply select the aperture from the vast array at your disposal - slot it in the slot, throw a black cloak over your head, remove the lens cap and count…… after 5 or 10 minutes, you can tell your subject to relax while you take your glass plate to the local photo store and ask them to develop it. They’ll probably give you a funny look; perhaps you’ve forgotten to remove the cloak?

Note; techie bit. I chose the f4 aperture plate because the hole was big enough to be aesthetically pleasing, yet small enough to the hide the blu-tack at the back, which is keeping it upright.

I used an aperture on my camera of f2.2 in order to throw the background out of focus. The Instantograph is a nice shade of mahogany, but I played with various sepia tones to give it a ‘brown’ look.

Too much information?