The Excelsior Wet Plate Camera is a type of wet plate camera invented by

August Semmendinger August Semmendinger (April 9, 1820 – August 6, 1885) was a manufacturer of photographic apparatuses and the inventor of the Excelsior Wet Plate Camera. Semmendinger first made his cameras in New York City. The second factory where he built his ...

, one of the first manufacturers of wet plate photography. Excelsior cameras were manufactured in both

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

and

Fort Lee, New Jersey Fort Lee is a borough at the eastern border of Bergen County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey, situated along the Hudson River atop the Palisades. As of the 2020 U.S. census, the borough's population was 40,191. As of the 2010 U.S. census, th ...

starting in 1859.

Overview

August Semmendinger began to manufacture cameras in 1859 in New York City at Nos. 410 & 412 West 16th Street under the business name "A. Semmendinger & Sons". He was one of the first major manufacturers of wet plate cameras, a type of photography that was discovered eight years prior in 1851 by

Frederick Scott Archer ] Frederick Scott Archer (1813 – 1 May 1857) was an English photographer and sculptor who is best known for having invented the photographic collodion process which preceded the modern gelatin emulsion. He was born in either Bishop's Stortfor ...

and

Gustave Le Gray Jean-Baptiste Gustave Le Gray (; 30 August 1820 – 30 July 1884)Le Corre, Florence "Translated from the catalogue ''Une visite au camp de Châlons sous le Second Empire: photographies de Messieurs Le Gray, Prévot...'', Paris: musée de l'Armée, ...

. Using their new methods of photography, Semmendinger drew up plans for his own wet plate camera and branded it "Excelsior". The Excelsior camera evolved over time to use novel features created by Semmendinger himself. The first, Patent No. 27,241, involved combining a spring board with a typical photographic apparatus "for the purpose of facilitating a rapid multiplication in photographing". This patent is an integral part of all known Excelsior cameras in existence today. Six months later another wet plate upgrade was patented under Patent No. 29,523, which expanded on the first aiding "in attaching the camera to a movable frame... for the purpose of facilitating the copying of large pictures by photographing." After several years of camera production in New York City, the Semmendinger & Sons business moved across the river to Fort Lee, NJ. August Semmendinger died in 1885 leaving the business to his younger sons who continued the manufacturing of Excelsior wet plate cameras for some time. Many Semmendinger cameras may be found in museums such as the

George Eastman Museum The George Eastman Museum, also referred to as ''George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film'', the world's oldest museum dedicated to photography and one of the world's oldest film archives, opened to the public in 1949 in ...

, and the

UCR/California Museum of Photography The UCR/California Museum of Photography (CMP) is an off-campus institution and department of the College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences at the University of California, Riverside, California, USA. The collections of UCR/CMP form the la ...

Excelsior variations

Semmendinger cameras were most commonly single lens cameras under the model name Excelsior. All were made of finely polished mahogany with a cloth of rubber bellows and brass focusing screws. After Semmendinger's invention of the silver corners (Patent No. 145020), these were included in all future Excelsior model cameras. In addition to the common single lens variety, Semmendinger produced

stereo cameras The stereo cameras approach is a method of distilling a noisy video signal into a coherent data set that a computer can begin to process into actionable symbolic objects, or abstractions. Stereo cameras is one of many approaches used in the broader ...

with combinations of either two or four lenses. All cameras produced by Semmendinger were part of the Excelsior brand, yet attempts have been made to distinguish between variations. Variation 1 often refers to the Excelsior camera featuring a cone, or tapered, bellows. This camera also had a compartment on the front under the lenses where the brass screws used for focusing, securing, and moving the lens board would have been kept. Sizes for variation 1 varied from 6½x8½ inches to 17x20 inches. This model was also available to be made in a 5x8 inch stereoscopic size. Variation 2 refers to the Excelsior without the tapered bellows. This camera also lacked the compartment under the lens, and was used more commonly as a studio or portrait camera. Sizes for variation 2 varied from 4¼x5½ inches to 20x24 inches. Semmendinger's "Mammoth plate" wet-collodion camera saw use in remote landscape photography despite its weight and that of the glass plates it used. It was considered a "monster". Semmenndinger's idea of utilizing that portion of the camera just under the lens and converting it into a sort of cupboard was thought novel. One such Semmendinger "mammoth" is on display in the

J. Paul Getty Museum The J. Paul Getty Museum, commonly referred to as the Getty, is an art museum in Los Angeles, California housed on two campuses: the Getty Center and Getty Villa. The Getty Center is located in the Brentwood, Los Angeles, Brentwood neighborhood ...

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

References

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Overview

Excelsior variations

References

Further reading