Thanks to a really cool recent find at a local garage sale, I’m about to experience a new hobby. Alternative, or dryplate, photography.

I bought an old camera from the late 1800s. 1896 actually. I will post details about the camera soon. This camera does not take film. Film was invented in the late 1880s, but was not super popular yet. The simple Kodak Brownie box camera changed the game in 1900, though, and dryplate photography dwindled from there.

Dryplate photography basically means that the camera exposed light to a glass plate that had been previously treated with a light sensitive silver gelatin coating. Most dryplate cameras could only expose one photo before having to swap out the glass plate or flip the plate holder around for a second exposure.

I’m really lucky that the camera I bought came with one dryplate glass negative, shown above. I scanned it and this is the scanned negative image.

And here is what it looks like after inverting to normal colors and tweaking the histogram levels.

Pretty cool, huh?!?

Anyone out there in Internet-land have any idea who these five relaxing old-timey gentlemen are? Feel free to put your guesses in the comments!

Thanks,

Kurt