Now that's a big camera!

[Patrick]

Some of you may have seen this image, and others may have not.

http://richardrenaldi.blogspot.com/2009 ... rence.html

If you scroll down to the third picture, you will see a camera known as 'the mammoth.' During the late 1800s / early 1900s, photographic enlargements were generally of poor quality - resulting in very soft, grainy images. The solution was to use a big negative and from this, produce a print of a similar size. Thus, 'the mammoth' was created. Though this beast was designed and constructed for one sole purpose - to photograph a luxury express train. The size of the glass plates exposed by the mammoth measured 8 x 4 and a half feet. An enormous amount of chemicals were required to develop one of these plates (I can't recall exactly how much but it was an awful lot of gallons.) The resulting images were so impressive with their detail that the prints received "Grand Prize of the World for Photographic Excellence" at the Paris Exposition of 1900.

[beamascope]

Insanely cool. Thanks for the link.

[Patrick]

Edit: I was meant to type 'fourth photo down' but I see that the editing option has now disappeared.