Patented Camera: Containing the New Optical Laws of the Camera Obscura or Daguerreotype, demonstrated that converging perpendiculars of the Camera image were indeed mathematically correct and concluded: "Art has always represented objects geometrically, or as they cannot be seen in the perpendicular and visually, or as they can be seen in the horizontal direction."3 But his findings were ignored. Indeed, amateurs were warned in manuals and instruction books never to tip the camera. Many hand cameras were even equipped with levels to assure the viewer that he was holding the Camera horizontally.
Wolcott and John Johnson claimed to have taken "profile miniatures" in New York in October using a patented Camera of their own invention in which a concave Mirror was substituted for the lens. The resuli were at first indeed miniatures, for the plates were but three-eighths of an inch square. A few months later they were taking them 2 x 21/2 inches, and opened a studio that the New^brk Sun, in its issue of March 4, 1840 called "the first daguerreotype gallery for portraits." Robert Cornelius, a metal worker, opened a studio in Philadelphia early in 1840.
This trick is never as satisfactory as getting the picture the way you (or your clients) want it on the negative, once and for all, at the time of shooting.Besides, the view Camera has other advantages which are than 4 x 5. I have shot thousands of pictures with an 8 x 10, and I can tell you that wrestling the dead weight of Camera and tripod makes every job fall into the category of hard labor. Also important is that the cost of everything, camera, holders, tripod, lenses and film, goes up when you go into 8 x 10.
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Photography
