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Old-School Photography

From New Zealand Society 29 August 2014

Brian Scadden’s passion is old-school craft photography on cameras dating as early as the mid-19th century – some of which he designs and builds himself. These cameras, which can weigh up to 60kgs, predate film – and the images are captured instead on a plate of glass. Amelia Nurse visits him at his portable workshop in the Wairarapa for a demonstration.

Brian working on the “Behemoth” 20’ x 24” wet-plate camera.

With the “Behemoth” at Park Road Post Production.

Original 12’ x 15” studio camera ca. 1890s.

Stereo field camera, ca. 1890.

Brian with travelling darkroom wagon in Oamaru around 1998.

Wet-plate field camera I built for USA trip in 2006.

Portable dark-tent and camera set-up in Nelson, 2006.

Travelling darkroom wagon at Cape Palliser, Wairarapa.

Wet-plate image of re-enactors at Howick Village, Auckland 1996.

Amount of equipment needed to make a wet-plate photograph.

Tent and dark-tent set-up at a Western Action shoot, Palmerston Nth, 1996.

Old woman. American 1/6th plate Daguerreotype, ca. 1850s

Camera Obscura I built for Puki Ariki Museum, New Plymouth, 2008.

Wet-plate image of Confederate re-enactors in the Wairarapa, 2000.

Half-plate field camera, ca. 1890s.

Wet-plate tintype of Brian in the late 1980s.

Wet-plate ambrotype of Oamaru folks, ca. 2002.

Portable darkroom

From Brian’s collection of historical photographs

Glass plate of the austere interviewer

The images in this gallery are used with permission and are subject to copyright conditions.