Cassell’s “Fully Illustrated” Camera Making
Toronto. While teaching at Humber College, PHSC member (and speaker) Neil Fox taught photography. He had his students construct their own ‘woodie’ to learn the art from the ground up.
In the 1800s, skill in carpentry and bellows layout allowed one to make a fine camera ready for the brass lens and glass plate holder. Many articles and books gave detailed instruction, including the 1894 book, ” Camera Making” (cover shown at left).
There is a book review and articles on camera making in our journal 32-2 issued the fall of 2006.
To introduce the topic, late editor Bob Lansdale writes, “We have gathered together in this issue of Photographic Canadiana, a number of articles, starting on page 4 and later on page 16, dedicated to the building of cameras and bellows. Our information dates back as far as 1894 with the set of instructions printed in Cassell’s “Work” Handbook entitled Camera Making.
“To give a recent touch to camera making President Ed Warner tells us the story of building an 8×10 wooden camera with salvaged parts plus a number of fixtures of his own creation.”
PHSC members have all ready read these articles in either the hard copy version or as a PDF file on the DVD we gave to every member. Not a member yet? Well go to the righthand side-bar, choose a one or three year membership, and pay via your PayPal account (blue bar) or use a debit/credit card (black bar) and you will receive your personal DVD of back issues from volume 1 to 40.
