X-Nico

5 unusual facts about Photographic plate


Haruo Tomiyama

In 1994 Tomiyama was shown the archive of glass plates by the then-forgotten Sado-based amateur photographer Tomio Kondō.

Illecillewaet Glacier

On a more anecdotal level, the Vaux family carefully photographed the glacier and surrounding area, first using glass plates which were transported up and down the mountain and sent back to Philadelphia; and later more modern Mamiya medium format cameras.

Sonneberg Observatory

Sonnenberg Observatory has one of the world's largest collections of astronomical photographic plates.

View camera

At the other end of the bellows, the rear standard is a frame that holds a ground glass, used for focusing and composing the image before exposure—and is replaced by a holder containing the light-sensitive film, plate, or image sensor for exposure.

Walter Hugo

For this body of work he built a room-sized camera and utilised an 18th-century lens to create a series of portraits shot directly onto glass plates.


Caves of the Mendip Hills

Many caves in the Mendip area were photographed by caver Harry Savory early in the 20th century using huge cameras, glass plates and flash powder.

Frank K. Edmondson

Nearly 7000 photographic plates for asteroid orbit studies were taken with a 10-inch astrographic camera at the Goethe Link Observatory.


see also

Jan Kazimierz Danysz

Danysz made considerable advances on the magnetic deflection techniques of Baeyer, Hahn and Meitner, placing the source (he used radium) in a capillary tube under a slit, with a photographic plate in the same horizontal plane.